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.

My Picture

Here if the image of my first MS 150 bike ride with my team.

My Picasa Page


MS 150 Team SRO by Derek Osborne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Creative Commons

This is a picture I would use in my swimming classes to teach the water safety unit. When we get smartboards or projectors in the future, I will have access to technology to show this type of photo to help ensure the students understand the concept of water safety.

Water Safety Information Sign (Terry Stewart) / CC BY-SA 2.0

I think that adding images to the curriculum I teach can be very helpful. I will be looking to add images to PowerPoint presentation that cover a wide range of topics in my health and pe classes. Images can motivate the learner and get a visual on the topic whether it is sports (pictures of athletes doing the skill being learned), safety (above picture) or health (nutrition, mental illness, drugs, etc.). Images will be a helpful tool in my future teaching.

My Picasa Page

PC Maintenance and Security

There are a lot of issuse concerning pc maintenance and security. I have heard about these topics before, but do not understand what they mean. I have chosen three tutorials to help me learn more about pc maintenance and security.

Tutorial #1 Compare and Contrast Hardware and Software Firewalls
Hardware firewalls are part of the router. Their main purpose is to keep your network private and invisable from hackers. Software firewalls are programs like Norton and McAfee that scan the computer for invasions. People need to know what the firewall is and what it does. The item that suprised me was programs like Norton are firewalls. I just thought it was a program for safety, not a firewall.

Tutorial #2 Using Window's Clean up
Windows clean up program is a quick and free way to free up space on your computer. I have seen costly programs that do the same thing, but this one is free. I will be using this program on my computers to improve performance and clear space. I think this item will also help others clean up their computers. The item that suprised me was the face that it is so quick and it is free.

Tutorial #3 Securing Internet Explorer
Even with firewalls and security software, our computers are at risk. This tutorial showed me how to adjust my settings within Internet Explorer to control Active X. A few clicks of the mouse can be the difference between being attacked by a website and maintaining safety. Sharing this tip can keep a lot of computers safe. What suprised me was that websites can attack your computer and install unwanted and dangerous items just because I did not have properly check my settings.

Getting Things Done!!

Organizing and staying on top of all of my daily duties is a task I definitely need help with. The getting things done program offers a lot of possibilities to get my items in order. I suppose in some way, I already do a lot of the things suggested in the program, problem is I do them in my head and with a lot of different inboxes. Email, phone calendar, desk calendar, home calendar and written lists are how I handled the information. I organized everything with the paper and pencil method with an inbox on my desk at work and home.

I started to try to streamline the process by limiting my inboxes. One for paperwork, one for email and a calender on my phone. As was said in the article, this proved to be the hardest part of the process. I am trying to learn the One Note program and my goal is to make it my inbox for everything. In the meantime I am using the three items listed above.

The processing of the items in my inbox was a little confusing. I read all of my emails soon as I get to a computer. When I get the HP Slate tablet, I will have more access to my emails. Trying to use the two minute idea has helped me get a grasp on all of the items in my inbox. I use a list for paperwork, and it is fairly easy to decide what needs to be done now and what can wait and be classified as a project. Calenders have always been hard for me. I start using one and for one reason or another, I stop using it. The desktop calender has always been the best for me. I am starting to put items on my phone calender and will begin to classify them.

The organization process is started, but needs a lot of work. My paper and pencil lists are the best way for me right now. I can see what needs to be accomplished and when. If I can transfer these lists to my phone or One Note, my organization will be a lot better. As for email, I have started to sort important emails in folders. The folders I have right now save emails that could be important down the road. I also need to spend more time imputing dates into my phone calender and not just the desk calender.

The review is the most helpful part of the process. It allows me to look over all of the items for the day and act upon them appropriately. I need to develop the weekly calender, I am hoping One Note will be the solution.

As for the Do process, I am improving. I have noticed that my lists and inboxes really only contain items relative to my work life. I need to put my home life into my inbox and get those items accomplished as well. I believe I am accomplishing most of what needs to get done, but there is room for improvement.

Going through the process was not easy. It will definitely take some time for me to get a system down that works for me. I can see the value of using the GTD process. It will allow me to see the tasks in my inbox, because I will almost always have access to it, thus making me more organized. I will continue to use this process to help me manage my home and work lives and to ease the stress caused my the many tasks that need to be accomplished.

RSS Reflection

Joining the wave of RSS feeds has been an enlightening experience. I had no knowledge of what the google  reader is. I had seen the RSS feed button before, but did not know what it was or what it did. Since completing the RSS lab, I have been exploring the vast array of information available on the internet and have created a google reader (pictured above) and added feeds to it. I started with the feeds required for the assignment and then ventured out for topics that relate to my subject area of physical education. I have found some good and some that do not offer the content I want.

The feeds I chose that relate to physical education consisted of lesson plans, creative ideas, state and national organizations and the MYP IB program. These sites contain a lot of information that will be valuable to me as I grow as a professional. The state and national associations (AAPEHRD and MAPEHRD) allow me to keep up to date on what is happening in the profession at a higher level than just my school district. There rest are  blogs and websites that offer articles on physical education. The blogs are helping me to discover new and creative ideas that people are using in PE. Mr. Robbo uses the ipod touch to teach movement concepts, SPARK offers innovative ideas on how to teach skills and discussions on "political correctness" within the profession, and the IB blog gives insight to how to teach in the MYP PE program. The websites with feeds are professionals writing articles, which seem very similar to the blogs, just not as personal. I have found this experience to be a great way to get professional development on my own time. I can incorporate the new ideas I find through the feeds to improve my teaching and the students learning. A wealth of information is at our fingertips for free, no more worrying about money and time away form the students to get all of my professional development. I know I will be able to incorporate some of the ideas I have read about into my classroom.

I posted a comment on the MYP IB PE blog that I have been following. The post was describing the process of completing the movement compositions piece for the IB program. I commented on how much I liked the organization of the blog and asked a few questions in regards to the topic. We are transitioning to become an IB school and any help we can get will help ease that change.

The feeds that do not relate directly to physical education are proving to be just as worthy. I like to read about the new technology and uses that are available and coming soon. The amount of technology I have learned in the past three weeks has left me wanting more. The technology feeds keep me up to date on even more technology available for me to learn to use. The general education feeds are a good way to see what is happening around the nation and what thoughts people have on helping to improve the educational system. I find myself not reading as many of these, but a few catch my interest.

I have found the RSS feeds to be a valuable resource for my future professional development. However, it is not easy to keep up with all of the feeds. I will, over time, streamline the number of feeds I am following to the ones that I find the most value in. Some of the feeds do not update as much as the others. It seems that the more specific the topic, the less it is updated. The more general topics can have up to 10 new posts a day.

I believe I will be able to use the RSS feeds to improve my skills as a teacher. The goal at our school is to prepare our students to be able to compete in a global society. My use of the RSS feed will help enable me to be able to give the students the skills, in physical education, technology, or both, to accomplish that task.

Social Networking

Before starting this course, my knowledge of social networking was Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. I did not realize all of the different site that were available, or at least did not consider them to be social networking sites. After completing this lab, I now see how I can join a lot of personal and professional communities online to help in all areas of my life. My workflow needs a lot of help. The days of comming home from work and having to find something to do are over. Teaching, MAET classes, wife, three year old daughter, and coaching baseball and football take up most of the day. The tools availble on social networks can help me organize better and not feel so much of a time crunch.

Professionaly speaking, the social networking sites seem to offer some of the best profesional development a teacher can find. If i am struggling with an issue, there is probably a site that can help me.  These site have endless possibilities.

Personally I have been on Facebook for about three years, it has helped me to reconnect with old friends, family members, and collegues. Social networking allows me to connect with people, sports, entertainment and interesting informatin.

RSS Feeds

I have been using Google Reader for finding RSS feeds. I found the experience to be fairly easy and finding feeds not to difficult. Wether or not the feeds I found are useful have yet to be determined. I am posting a link and I am working on a screen shot of the page.

http://www.google.com/reader/view/#overview-page

Web Pages versus Blogs

The traditional web page of that started on the Internet was a professionally completed web site with mostly copyrighted material. People surfing the web could view these sites only, there was no way to comment on the information presented on the web page. Blogs changed all of this. Blogs are personal pages that can be created by anyone wanting to publish material on the web. People can post thoughts, feelings, information or anything else they want for people to see. Also, others are allowed to be authors on the same site and the people reading the posts can comment on what the author put in their post. The difference is in professional copyright material and the ability to publish content and have others contribute to it.