Final Reflections CEP 811

Another eight weeks have flown by and the course has come to an end. I have learned many new things in my journey through CEP 811, and would like to share them through the questions below:

What are some things that you have learned about effective teaching strategies when integrating technology?
I started taking the Educational Technology Program classes, I was nervous. I felt that I had no knowledge of how to teach with technology beyond the research paper. What a difference a few months makes. There are teaching strategies that I use everyday in the classroom that are easy to use with technology. Scaffolding is a basic technique used in physical education. It comes into play with technology using webquests and StAIRs. I believe that certain concepts in physical education can be taught with technology and be even more effective than the live, in class presentation. We have an online portfolio for our physical education students to complete, and this course validate the different types of teaching styles present in our portfolio. The addition of webquests and stairs will enhance the overall fitness portfolio for out students. Physical education should be an activity class, but there is information to be learned about keeping oneself healthy, and teaching some of that content through the use of technology and effective teaching strategies makes the course even more valuable.

How did integrating web-based technologies help you think about and evaluate uses of technology?
Using the web-based technologies has been a great help to me as a teacher. Learning how to use technology is the first step for a lot of teachers. The fear of the unknown is what, I believe, keeps a lot of teachers from using the technologies available. I was feeling lost and confused when we first started, even though I completed 810 previously. I did not know what FTP or AFS space was, I did not know how a web page was created, or that I could create my own, I did not know what CSS was or did, and did not know what UDL principals were. Being able to put my work online or on a website or wiki is an invaluable tool. It allows for access of material from any Internet connected computer. Being able to create my own web page or wiki will only allow more access to material and allow for discussion and collaboration for my students outside of the gym walls. The UDL principals opened my eyes to how some of the students can fall behind in a subject if their needs are not met. Applying these principals to my units and lessons will allow all students to have a fair opportunity to learn the material.

How have you met your own personal goals for learning about technology integration?
My goals for learning about technology integration have been met, but not satisfied. I wanted to learn how to use the technologies available to me in the physical education setting. We started meeting the online requirements with the introduction of the online fitness portfolio. I knew it was a good idea, but more could be done with it. Learning how to create StAIRs is the first step into making our online experience meaningful to the students. Increasing the collaboration and discussion between students in class will help them understand what others are thinking and learn from different perspectives. Learning to use the FTP Filezilla program was great. I wanted to learn to "put stuff out there", and now I have. Submitting items to MERLOT was also a great experience, I always thought that was for published articles, now I have a new perspective on the types of information available to me. Teachers having a space to collaborate and share is an invaluable tool. My goals have been met, this was a great course.

Do you have any new goals? What are your plans for reaching your new goals and your long-term goals after this course is over?
My new goal is to become even more creative with the tools I have already learned. I believe this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can be accomplished with tools like StAIRs, webquests, AFS space, and web pages. Our classes will be integrating more technology as the years progress and I want to be at the forefront of that movement. Our technology will not be limited to online content, the addition of heart-rate monitors and active gaming systems will also allow the students to see their development in the course work. My plan for achieving this goal is to keep creating and utilizing the resources available to me. One of the most important things I have learned is all of the different ways available for teachers to collaborate and share items to help on another. The final way to reach this goal is to keep exploring unfamiliar technology. The only way it becomes useful is to learn how to use it, and if I can't figure it out, someone out there if probably willing to show me. I will also be continuing to take classes from the MSU Edtech department again starting after football season is over.

CEP 811 Online Learning Experiences

The online technologies available to students are numerous and come in very handy in the the physical education classroom. The online portfolio is one of the best ways to show student learning in physical education. We haved used one for two years and are continuing to tweak it. We want our classroom time to be devoted to activity and not so much sitting and listening. The online portfolio allows the students to do the learning at their own pace and time to not lose too much activity time. Currently, we have eight items for the students to complete for the semester. The students record their fitness test scores, answer 10  multiple choice questions a week, read articles and write about them, answer journal topics about class, log their outside physical activity, create a nutrition plan and create a fitness plan. This helps the students reflect on their experience in physical education and allows us to cover topics online that used to take away from our activity time.
The online portfolio allows us to cover physical fitness topics, rules of games, procedures of class, skills for games, and give the students a general knowledge of how physical education can benefit their health. It has proven to be a valuable tool and allows us to use different types of pedagogical strategies. The students can see their fitness scores up against the standards and deduce, along with possible teacher guidance, how to improve their score in a journal entry. They also answer general fitness knowledge questions from the NASPE PE ASK test. When they have been through the class and built up this knowledge base through the online and class portion, they then create a plan to help keep themselves healthy. The scaffolding of the portfolio builds their knowledge base to the end product. It gives them support along the way, then allows them to create a personalized program to follow. We are going to add webquests to the portfolio in the future.
Along with the portfolio, the physical education program could introduce a blog or wiki to discuss topics related to teen health and fitness. This would allow the students to place all their opinions in one localized spot and respond to one another. The way we have it set up now is just posting on their own page, there is no sharing.
The hardest part about using these technologies in physical education is the students want to be active and participate in the activities. They have the mind set of technology has no place in the gym, "why do we have to do it?"  It is a mind set we are working to change. The students have a lot to offer, they just have to understand there is more to physical education than just playing.
The technologies my students would have the toughest time with are the discussions with an online expert,  online resource validation and the RSS feeds. The online expert would need to be someone engaging and quite possibly well known for the students to pay attention to. It is all a part of changing the mind set of "just playing" in physical education. The online resource validation would be hard to monitor as most of our online work is done at home. Possibly a webquest to teach them would be helpful. The RSS feeds would be valuable as a tool for them to read and reflect on, however, I think they would find one article and not keep checking back for updates and more information. With the right mindset, the RSS feeds could be an important factor in the online portfolio.

CEP 811 Wiki Lab

I found my school, Oxford High School, on Wikipedia. I noticed in the athletics section, there was no reference to the navy blue turf being installed at the school. I added a line about it with a external link to the website article about the turf.


It is the line about Navy Turf

 I have also created wiki of my own called CEP811osborne. I put some basic information about physical education as an introductory paragraph. I then proceeded to "flood" my page with all of the widgets I could put on there. I have a link to a second page with delicious bookmarks for exergaming, a you tube video on use of heart rate monitors, a google calendar and a glogster I was playing around with in CEP810. I also added a revision history, a list of wikis I am a member of, a reference list and a tag list. These last items do not look as good, I will have to do some revision to make the page look better.

UDL Guidelines

My lesson on Touch Football is a unit designed for 10th graders in physical education. I felt very good about the lesson as I went through the UDL guidelines checklist. I do not have a perfect lesson, but I am fairly happy with the results. I believe the lesson provides the students with learning opportunities in multiple ways (lecture, demonstration, notebooks, Moodle, collaboration, feedback, practice, and assessment). The students get to work together after learning the skills and also evaluate another team and provide them feedback. During the process, I discovered items that need to be added or improved upon. All of the text items need to be decoded for the students and currently there are no assistive technologies to help the students with the technology parts. The assessment piece could also be bulked up some. I need to create a end of the unit rubric for performance and team play. Also, a self assessment rubric for the students regarding their social behavior during the lesson would also need to be added. Overall, I believe it is a strong lesson that will become stronger with the new changes based on the UDL guidelines.

Link to UDL Guidelines Worksheet

CEP 811 Evaluation of Learning Material

A review of Understanding the Nutrition Facts Label.

This resource is a interactive lesson on how to read a nutrition facts label. The lesson presents information on how to read a food label. The students move their cursor over different parts of the screen for more information. Then, the students take a quiz. It is a valuable tool for the students to learn after they have learned about the different nutrients that food has to offer. Nutrition is one of the topics I am always looking for something new to use as it is such a vast topic and hard to get the students to understand the importance of. I can see the use of this site as an assignment on a Moodle page for the students to complete at home as a reinforcement of the information taught in class.

Quality of Content

• The site does present valid concepts about how to read a food label. Students in high school have seen the labels before, but need to learn how to read and decipher the information for their own diet needs. It is a simple concept that carries a lot of importance.
• This site offers educationally significant concepts for educators teaching about nutrition. After students have learned about what the nutrients do for the body, they need to know how to find the foods with the right nutrients. Or, they will be able to tell if a food is helping or hurting their body.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool

• The information of reading food labels would fall in the explanation and demonstration stages of learning. After viewing the presentation and taking the quiz, the students should be able to read a food label and determine what nutrients they are eating in a particular food. This lesson is aimed at middle and high school students learning about nutrition in health class. The interactive portion of the presentation will engage the students into the topic of reading food labels as the presentation is full of information and the quiz looming keeps the students mind on the information. This presentation can easily be integrated into a curriculum as a in class quiz or as an assignment on Moodle, depending on technology available. This type of presentation can be utilized in a variety of different topics in all subject areas. The presentation type allows for the uses to interact with the information and it tests their knowledge after the presentation. Good learning assignments can be developed easily with this type of application and it would just take the time to transfer lecture material to the presentation.

Ease of Use

• The layout of the site works well for this type of assignment. The buttons are easy to find and select, but it was a little hard at first to figure out which label was which and the text on the labels can be a little hard to read even with the magnifier. The material is very easy to follow and the students should not get lost unless they do not put the cursor over each part of the food label. The presentation tells the users when they have gotten a question right or wrong and it gives them the chance to correct their answers. The presentation is easy to use and does not require much technical support to use. The material is presented in a way that is familiar, clear and allows them to control the pace of the lesson. The presentation is visually appealing to students and presents the information in a way that is more stimulating that the usual lecture.

Personal Learning Reflection

Looking back on the past two months, I have learned a lot. I came into this experierence having heard of some of the Web 2.0 terms, but had no idea what they were. I can now speak on what Web 2.0 means and how it can be used. Before I took this course, my integration of technology into teaching was to have the students use word processing and had just started to use Moodle. The technology I integrate into my classes needs to educationally appropriate and useful to the students.

The way I was educated and learned to educate was with the lecture learn method. The teacher stood in front of the class and lectured, students took notes, read the textbook, and took a test at the end of the unit. This class has shown me a new way to teach and keep the students engaged. While there is still a place for the teacher lecture, some students learn that way, different techniques need to be imployed to improve learning for all students. The TPACK system we learned about has the teacher use their pedegogy, content knowledge and technology together to help the students learn and advance in a technically advanced socitey. Also, the integration of different technologies will allow different learning styles to be accomendated. Teaching one way only restricts the learning enviornment. Allowing the students to do research, create different types of projects like Prezis, Glogsters, Podcasts and Screencasts, will give the students a sense of ownership in the class and material and allow them to do some of the teaching in class.

The Internet has become a very powerful tool in education. I have used it in my class for research purposes and not much else. I know the students probably have a wider range of knowledge of the type of tools and games available on the Internet. My knowledge of what is available on the Internet has increased with this class and has helped to ease some of the fears I had about it's use in the classroom. Using the Internet in the classroom requires the use of expensive machines, and I believe that the more I use them, the more at ease I will feel letting the students use them. Technology and the Internet are here to stay and I am planning ways to integrate both into my teaching and making sure the students are being productive in a safe environment. One of the main advantages and disadvantages of the Internet is the available information for research. It is very plentiful, but provides opportunities for people to steal materials and use them as their own. The digital citizenship is a very important aspect to teach to the students.

In my personal growth plan and my technology plan, I want to learn how to use the new technologies available to me, along with some that are not currently available to me due to funding. In the course of this class, I have become familiar with cloud computing, social bookmarking, digital citizenship, blogging, and wikis. I feel confident in my abilities to use these technologies and to integrate them into my teaching. I do not know everything yet, but I am going to keep learning. The SIG group project help me to see how a collaborative assignment can work and allowed me to explore how to make physical education and health more relevant and engaging for the students. I was able to explore the topics of active gaming and heart rate monitors that will play a huge role in physical education in the future. This type of group project is what I envision for possibly both physical education and health.

My goals will remain the same as outlined in the personal growth plan and technology plan. I want to keep exploring ways to integrate technology into my classes, which means I have to keep using them to learn their capabilities. Also, my personal learning network has grown with the advent of the social networks and RSS feeds. What a great resource for learning and sharing ideas. The main goal I want to add is to become better at teaching digital citizenship. It is too easy for students to take someone else's work and claim it for their own. I plan on teaching that topic at the beginning of classes to help solve this problem.

I want to keep learning and evolving as a teacher. This will involve me learning and integrating technologies, following my PLN, and finding ways to fund new programs for technology. This course has enlightened me to the future of education and I just want to keep learning.

Personal Learning Style

I believe I am a visual and kinesthetic learner. The attributes of these two groups help me to learn. Physical activity is my life, I am a physical education teacher. So, moving and learning are two of the way that help me to learn. The strategy that works best for me as a learner is a process we call tell, show, do. First, tell what to do, then show what to do, then have the students do it. This process allows me to practice what the correct technique is and correct the errors. I also like to figure out how to do things on my own. However, I need to have some type of guidance to get me started. I have enjoyed figuring out how to use all of the new tools in this class, but for me, it would not have happened without the guidance of the class. Tell me, show me examples, and let me do it is how I learn best.
The strategy that has had the least amount of success is the lecture-recall. I have a hard time focusing on a lecture. For me to understand the lecture and stay with it, it needs something more. The PowerPoint's are helpful, they add some technology that spruces up the presentation, but it still needs more. That is the big question though. How to educators get across the information to students who all like to take in the information in different ways?
The conclusion I have come to is to have a range of strategies and use them at various times. this may sound simple and the idea of it is. However, it requires more effort, organization and focus on those strategies and what the preferred outcome of the lessons are. I will become comfortable with the strategies so  that the transition between their uses is smooth and unnoticeable. This is when the organization skill comes into the preparation effort. Next, I need to keep track of how many times I use each technique, making sure that I do not primarily use the one I favor. And, I need to focus on the manner in which I use them so that i am using them correctly and the most beneficial to as many students as possible. additionally, this will prevent me from being predictably boring.