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.