Monday, September 27, 2010

Monitoring my GAME plan Progress

I work best in stages. As a new dad, football coach and high school physical education teacher, I like to approach things a little at a time and so that is how my GAME plan has been going. I think about it a little bit every day. I have been looking at two National Standards to better integrate technology into my physical education classroom. Over the weekend I browsed through my lap top (while watching the Cleveland Browns, of course) and was enlightened on how to better meet these two goals:
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments

Both are critical for taking my classroom into 21st century learning.

The creativity factor I have decided will come in the form of flip video cameras that my students can use to take footage and creatively edit as part of my curriculum of my weightlifting class. My school is limited, but we do have a few of these cameras and the students love to use them. This would help them with form and give them the drive to be more competitive. I surfed the internet and found Prezi (www.prezi.com). This looks like a really cool site that would give my students the opportunity to create something better than a slideshow, more like a movie production!

Next, I am looking at my second goal, especially in relation to this week’s resources. I found that I can assess my students in four different ways: forced option, open-ended, performance-based and project-based, all while tying in technology (Cennamo 2009). Recently, I have become more acquainted with Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com). This program would allow me to assess my students in a couple of these ways using technology. There is so much to integrate. It seems overwhelming at times as I work towards meeting two National Standards in my classroom.

The questions I have now are, once I use these tools in my classroom, have I succeeded? How often should I be integrating them and still keep physical activity at the forefront? I will keep searching.

Joel



Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Carrying out my GAME plan


To review, I am currently earning my master’s degree in Integrating Technology into my Classroom, which for me is a physical education setting. More often times than not people are quick to criticize how I am possibly making this connection. However, when I started this program over a year ago, my reasoning was that I am always going to need to know how to use technology no matter where I go in life and so here I am. Currently I am looking at Dr. Katherine Cennamo’s GAME plan, which stands for:
G-Goals
A-Actions
M-Monitor
E-Evaluate (Laureate 2009)
Currently, my GAME plan is to strive to improve upon two indicators. I would like to meet the National Standards by helping my students to be more creative in my classroom. Also I would like to better develop digital learning and appropriate assessments.
To carry this out, the resources I will need include the flip cameras as I had discussed earlier. Also my students will need to upload the footage into a computer so we can view it together to use it as a critiquing aide for the weightlifting unit that I want to integrate it into. We could get creative with this by using Windows Movie maker and allowing my students some time to edit their footage and even put it to music. I have to be cautious though about how much stationary educational time we are spending versus kinesthetic which is my number one priority.
To further incorporate more creative lessons I have been utilizing the web and specifically physical education blogs. These offer great suggests as more and more teachers tap into 21st century learning. One in particular that has caught my eye is http://www.sparkpe.org/blog/. What do think? Am I getting closer to meeting my goals?
Joel Peterson


Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas. Baltimore: Author.
www.iste.org

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Looking at The National Educational Technology Standards

When looking at The National Educational Technology Standards, there are two performance indicators that I know I can improve upon in a physical education setting. To do this I will use Dr. Katherine Cennamo’s GAME plan (Laureate 2009).
G-Goals
A-Actions
M-Monitor
E-Evaluate

The first indicator I would improve in my classroom is 1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity. This indicator is important to helping my students develop their 21st century skills and I do not do a good enough job of fostering this. The action I could take is to do more critical thinking physical activities that require group effort and interaction. Such as moving students from point A to point B while meeting certain criteria, or getting everyone over a rock climbing while using all the tools that I supply. These were activities that I did in college that I know would help my students. I could monitor my growth by charting how many times a semester my students are able to engage in these type of critical thinking activities to make sure I am incorporating them often. I can evaluate my growth through students’ feedback and suggestions.

The second indictor I would like to look at is 2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments. My students love tying in technology and I have only begun to do this through use of blogs, etc. I would like to use flip video cameras to help students in my weightlifting class use better form when lifting weights. We could use these videos to critique each other and assess performance. I would monitor this by looking at the footage for productive participation. Lastly, I would evaluate the integration of this indicator into my classroom by using the web to see what else teachers in physical fitness are using flip videos for to see if I could integrate them more.

Resources:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas. Baltimore: Author.

www.iste.org