Blog Post #14

1. First watch Helena Baert's video Technology in PE
2. What are some technological tools Physical Educators can incorporate in their class, and what are the benefits?
Answers to part 2.
Pedometers and Accelerometers. These are great tools to incorporate into physical education classes. Pedometers and Accelerometers count the steps students take each day and motivates them to adopt a more physical lifestyle. These are wonderful tools to connect the students with other subjects, such as math or geometry.
Heart Rate Monitors and Pulse Sticks. Heart Rate Monitors and Pulse Sticks are important tools to show students how unique their bodies are and how different we all are from our peers! These tools are great to teach the students what exercises and different physical activities help increase the heart rate, resulting in calories burned. The sooner educators can incorporate pulse sticks the quicker they can be introduced to more advanced heart monitors.
Active Gaming & Excergaming. Examples of these tools are Wii Fit, and X-box Kinect. These devices make exercising more enjoyable for students who rather play video games than play outdoors. Using the Wii Fit for physical educational purposes helps students increase coordination.

3.Pick a sport you enjoy playing or watching and find ways of incorporating technology into that particular sport to make it more health related, or beneficial. Also find a video example of how it can be incorporated.

Answers to part 3.
The sport I enjoy both playing and watching is basketball. There are many ways to incorporate technology into basketball and make it beneficial for the participants. As a future basketball coach I plan on using pedometers to track the distance my players run during practice so I can gradually increase the running to maximize the amount of running I can get out my players. Another technological tool I plan to use are flip cams, ipad or some type of video capturing device. This would be the most beneficial technological tool for my players. Using video is a critical part for critiquing a players movements/actions while at practice or during a game. Watching video of a previous game is important to get an understanding of what the players could have done better and correcting the mistakes. The last type of technology I plan on incorporating into my basketball team is YouTube. YouTube is a great way to broadcast special talent to the world to see. This gives a student athlete free promotion to showcase his or her talent to colleges and scouts around the world which could lead to scholarships from colleges around the world.
Video Example. This is a video of some young basketball talent showcasing their ability to the world. Their dad coaches them and records every practice and workout he puts them through to perfect their work habit and knowledge of the game. They call themselves "Shift Team," the father critiques their skills by use of video then uploads the videos to YouTube to encourage scholarship offers due to their hard work ethic. By watching the videos at home the players can see what needs more practice and what not to do in the game. This is a prime example of using technology in the game of basketball.

Project #10 Movie Interview

Project 12 Part B Smartboard

Blog Post 13

Education legend Sir Ken Robinson picked the talks he loves - all full of insight, bright ideas, and of course, creativity. What can we learn from these TED talks? -Dr. Strange Shane Koyczan: “To This Day...for the bullied and beautiful” Author: Brylyn Cowling Shane Koyczan’s "To This Day...for the bullied and beautiful" is so powerful. The main topic of discussion is about bullying. He mentions that when we are very young, we are expected to define ourselves, or others will. Isn’t this the way it works? If you aren’t bold in who you are, won’t others define us with terms and stereotypes that may not apply to who we actually are? When this happens, how do we stand up for ourselves when we do not even know who we are yet as a person? Who I am now is not who I was in high school. Who I am now will not be who I am in 10 years. Life is a growing experience. A physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growing experience. Why is it that we start at such a young age being so critical of one another? Is it a learned behavior? Is it in our genetic makeup to be so critical? Who are we to judge one another? Don’t we all have faults? We are none by zero means perfect, so why is the human race like this? We are asked at a very young age what we want to be when we grow up. People ask you this question, and then shoot down your dreams and aspirations. Why are dreams so easily dismissed? What is it about our dreams that are so wrong? Children and young adults should be encouraged to dream and aspire to be whatever they are passionate about. Something very interesting and enlightening Shane mentions is that we grew up to cheer on the underdog because we often see ourselves in them. Isn’t this true? I can reflect back on so many instances when I stood up for someone because I could see myself in their struggles and pain. I could, at times, relate to what they were going through. What did I learn from this TED Talk? Most importantly, I learned to be encouraging. I will have to encourage my students to stand with me in putting an end to bullying. I will have to positively encourage each of my students to be creative and to DREAM. I will have to be sensitive to each of my students’ needs. Students are forced to come to school to learn content required by the state. Not only do I want my students to be educated in Mathematics, Science, Language Arts, the Arts, Technology, etc., I want my students to be educated in how to be a compassionate human being in our diverse society. I want to teach my students the importance of respect for others and themselves, self-worth, and discipline. Wow! Our society has a long ways to go, but the change in our society begins with me. “If you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself, get a better mirror, look a little closer, stare a little longer, because there’s something inside you that made you keep trying despite everyone who told you to quit.” -Shane Koyczan Mae Jemison: Teach Arts and Sciences Together Author: Victoria E. Williams

Albert Einstein once said “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. Mae Jemison is a very ambitious individual who is an astronaut, a doctor, an art collector, and a dancer. Jemison inspires educators to create bold thinkers through merging the two subjects of art, and science together. Through TED talk Mae Jemison: Teach arts and science together she explains her perception of education from telling her own experiences and from her time spent in space. Educators job is to lay the foundation of our students to prepare them for the jobs of the future. If we are teaching material in an insufficient manner we are lacking in the efforts to prepare our students to be successful. Who does not want to be creative, or logical? Of Course, everyone desires to be creative and logical! These are two characteristics that correlate to each other when merging arts and sciences together. Mae Jemison said, “The imagination and creativity that it takes to launch a rocket ship, is the same imagination and creativity it takes to carve a piece of wood.” If we want to inspire our students to be the future of tomorrow we should think about the way our education is being taught today. Jemison described it best when she said, “Science provides an understanding of universal experience and arts provides a universal understanding of a personal experience.” As future educators we need to begin revitalizing the sciences and arts in the educational system. Jemison said, “My chemistry teacher use to hold up a ball and would say this ball has potential energy, but nothing will happen to it until I drop it and it changes states.” Nothing will happen until we risk taking chances and change the way we are teaching arts and science’s in education. We need to forget being fearful of failure, and become daring teachers who are willing to make risks to conquer true success of the education our students deserve! I believe that teachers should integrate art into every subject, not just science. If art was integrated into more subject areas student’s would be more interested in the material that was being presented to them. Yes, our philosophy of the way science is being taught needs improvement. I do believe that blending art into science will provide a better understand for students, but I think that integrating arts in every subject could shed light and create a more engaged learning process for every subject that is being taught. I have never taught in a classroom before, but I still believe that to be a successful teacher one must be unique, daring, and fearless. A teacher must learn to adapt to her students, what works one year may not work the next. I do believe however, that when adding art and involving incorporation of art into any subject, one will never go wrong.

Shukla Bose: Teaching one child at a time
Author: Duane Nelson



Shukla Bose is founder and CEO of Parikrma Humanity Foundation. The Parikrma Humanity Foundation is a non-profit organization that runs schools for under-privileged children in India. The schools provide quality English education to children from slums and orphanages. In the beginning of Shukla starting her foundation she realized the outrageous number of children that are uneducated. In the video she states that 200 million children from the age of 4 to 14 should be going to school but are not, another 100 million children are attending school but cannot read, and 125 million cannot do basic math. Shukla states that 250 billion Indian rupees are dedicated to government schooling with 90 percent going to teacher and administrative pay. The problem with this is that India has the highest teacher absences in the world. This reflects on the children's education because 1 out of every 4 teachers do not attend school the entire year.

At the beginning of her search to better education for the children her first school consisted of 165 students in a two story building with half of a tin roof. In just six years her foundation created four schools and one junior college. This included 100,100 children out of twenty eight slums and four orphanages. Shukla's main focus is to give these children from the slums an education and a peaceful place to live. The education that these children are receiving has inspired other family members of the household to want to learn as well. Shukla and her foundation started noticing that 80 percent and sometimes even 100 percent of the parents were attending school meetings. Many of these parents showed great interest and asked for a class to learn how to read and write. With this high interest from the parents she started an after school program for the parents interested in learning to read and write. Shukla Bose and the Parikrma Humanity Foundation have already helped out countless number of people and are planning to continue in the years to come.

Charles Leadbeater: Education innovation in the slums video
Author: Phillip Hall

Charles Leadbeater's video talked about how some of the world's poorest kids are finding transformative new ways to learn. The video starts out talking about how some people have better advantage points in life, for instance a poor child vs. a privileged child in the education world. What Leadbeater means by this is, your advantage point determines what you can see. The advantages some students have basically determines everything they will see and the questions they ask will determine the answer they get. The lessons children learn in school in developing countries are not for academic purposes but how they can stay alive. Education is a global religion and EDUCATION+Technology=HOPE for students in developing worlds.

Most of the education in our society is pushed upon rather than being self-influenced. Leadbeater states that education needs to work by "pull not push" method. In order for children to stay entertained and influenced about their education they should be motivated to do so, rather than having an education forced upon them. The "pull" method influences a student who looks to sell drugs and make easy blood money through criminal activity to stay alive rather than rely on education to play a role in life. The idea of a curriculum is irrelevant to children in developing countries who may see drug dealing as a necessity to survive. Education should start with things that would make a difference to them in their lives or settings.

Motivation is the key. Learning has to be productive for it to make sense and be self influenced. There are two types of motivation: extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation means that education has a payoff, but you may have to wait quite a long time for it. However, that's too long if you're poor and have daily needs to meet. Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that comes from inside an individual rather than from any external or outside rewards, such as money or grades. Intruistic motivation is the key concept for a child seeking an education in a developing world. Developing countries use this technique to teach students essential things they need in life, for exapmple, how to make soap! Making soap is a very intrinsic way of learning.

The models that work best in the developing world are the "Chinese Restaurant Model" which uses the same principles but different applications in different settings. The Chinese model spreads vs. the "McDonald's Model which scales. Our education systems can learn more through the Chinese Model rather than using the "McDonald's model. Our systems fail to reach the people they most need to serve, they often hit the target but miss the point. Leadbeater makes a point in the presentation; We need a global wave of social entrepreneurship to create highly motivating, low cost ways to learn at scale in the developing world. The two types if basic innovation: sustaining and disruptive. Sustaining innovation sustains an existing institution and disruptive innovation breaks it apart and creates different ways of doing it. Sustaining & Disruptive can be in a formal or informal location. Our systems focus more on sustaining in formal setting and developing worlds focus on disruptive and need more reinvention. Where some of the world's poorest kids are finding transformative new ways to learn this informal, disruptive new kind of school, Leadbeater says, is what all schools need to become.Charles Leadbeater's Video

Blog Post #12

Sir Ken Robinson: Changing Paradigms Collaborative

Sir Ken points out at the beginning of his video that we are still modeling our schools from times long ago; the 19th century. A time where people grouped children as academic (smart) or non-academic (not needing to be educated and basically illiterate). He also points out that during this time,our culture was based on Enlightenment and our economy on the Industrial Revolution. He believes our current system of education is structured on another era that simply does not work for the 21st century classroom.

In the video, Sir Ken states that we must 'Change the Paradigm of believing a child is academic or non-academic. Also, that we must teach children at their ability level. He believes that our current system, working under the beliefs of the Industrial Revolution, which keeps our children from learning at their full potential. He states that students should not be taught in age levels because even though children may be the same age, their levels of intelligence and creativity are very different. He believes children learn differently and must be taught differently.

As you view the video, anyone can see that Sir Ken is not a fan of medication for ADHD students. He makes reference to ADHD as being our modern plague. We felt as though he was comparing the ADHD plague in today's society, to the culture of Enlighentment and the Industrial Revolution era. Each plague playing a disservice to our children's education. Sir Ken points out to his listeners that we are living in the most stimulating times in history, with media and different forms of technology thrown at us daily. His point is, how can we penalize a student or anyone for that matter, for having a bit of ADHD. He helps the listener understand that there has been drastic changes in society since the 19th century. Therefore, we must change our teaching habits to fit the needs of our students. I felt that this is not something we have to think about doing, it is something we have to do to meet the needs of the society we live in. Sir Ken believes ADHD is a made up epidemic and that as educators, we have to allow children to discover their creativity and learn differently. The teacher also has to be willing to teach differently, not teaching children in what he calls batches.

Sir Ken Robinson also explains the difference in Aesthetics and Anesthetics. Aesthetics is when a person's senses are operating at full peak; they are at the top of their game. Anesthetics is when a person's senses is the total opposite. The person shuts their senses down and deadens their ability to be creative. ADHD would be under the influence of anesthetics. Sir Ken makes it clear that we place too many limits on many of our students and prevent them from reaching their full potential. He states that their are so many very bright students out their that we as educators have damaged because of these limits. We do this by continuing to model our educational system by an ancient rule. We must take these limitations off and allow our students to soar; then and only then will we see change needed to embrace the 21st century classroom.

The last part of the video dealt with Sir Ken's view on standardized testing and curriculum. He believes that this is definitely not the direction we should follow. This is one of the man reasons he believe it is crucial we 'Change the Paradigms'. In this section, he explains the difference between divergent thinkers and creativity. His definition of creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. Divergent thinking on the other hand is being able to think outside the box and have more than one answer or idea. Divergent thinking is not the same as creativity but true creativity cannot exist with it.

The thing we took most from this video, is that we as a society, especially educators, must get over our old habits. We must embrace a child's creativity, understand that students learn differently, stop using ADHD as a reason for not teaching the overstimulated student and discontinue the 19th century style of educating. How to Escape Education's Death Valley: Collaborative

The information I took from Sir Ken Robinson's video, is how educators have the ability to challenge student more effectively. The three principles crucial for the human mind to flourish are: 1st principal- human beings are naturally different and diverse, 2nd principal- curiosity and the 3rd Principal- human life is inherently creative.

Human beings are naturally different and diverse. Education on No Child Left Behind is based on conformity. The education is necessary but not sufficient. True education has to give equal weight on arts, humanities and physical education. Sir Ken gives a great explanation on why ADHD isn't an epidemic! He makes a valued point that if you sit a child down and give them hours of boring work, don't be surprised if they start to get frigid and rowdy! Sometimes, this is not the fault of the student, just poor teaching skills.

The second principle, Curiosity, is the engine of achievement; kids prosper best in a broad curriculum. Task vs Achievement was also discussed. Task vs Achievement: the role of a teacher is to facilitate learning. The video pointed out that testing is sometimes a problem in teaching. Standardized tests shouldn't be the dominant culture of education, they should be diagnostic. It should be used to point out a child's target areas, so the educator can form lessons that focus on these weak areas. Standardized test does not make students excited and curious about learning, they limit students to making a score rather than giving them the knowledge to applying what they've learned in the real world.

Principles three, human life is inherently creative is one of the most important principals discussed in the video, in my opinion. We create our lives and we can recreate them as we go through life. Education isn't a mechanical system, it's a human system. As a human system, individuals require different approaches to learning; people learn differently. Students should not be made to learn the same as every kid in his class or school. Mechanical systems aren't made to be individualized but a human system can helps students in more specialized ways. Ken Robinson: How to Escape Death Valley

Ken Robinson: How schools kill creativity



Ken Robinson gives a great lecture and keeps the crowd interested by being humorous. He believes all children are artistic and creative, but the problem is that we lose it growing up or it is educated out of us. There is a universal hierarchy in education; where math and languages dominate, followed by humanities, and lastly the arts. He mentions that many professors, while highly educated, only use their intelligence within their own minds. They tend to forget that intellect can exist outside of the brain. He believes that people need to be more dynamic in their learning and have original thoughts. Robinson defines creativity as being original. The school curriculum focuses on more note taking and lecturing instead of giving students the ability to think on their own. If the school curriculum focused more on Project Base Learning this would allow students the capability of using more creativity. As future educators it is our responsibility not to steal the opportunities of creativeness but allow them to explore the possibilities.

Blog Post #11

First Graders in Ms. Cassidy's Class

The video about the First Graders in Ms. Cassidy's Class, shows in a first grade class what we as college students have been learning all semester. Students in the class are experiencing technology that college students are using today. From the video, they appear to be as knowledgeable or more knowledgeable than I am with some of the technology tools discussed. These students are not only familiar with these tools, they are applying these skills within their lessons. First graders in Ms. Cassidy's class are using the following: Blogs, Smartboards, laptops, high tech headphones, Skyping, Wikis, videos and even Nintendo DS'S. The students also made reference on how to comment properly on blogs. Again, they seem to have a heads-up on us. The students in the video state that the use of different technology have made them better writers, better problem solvers and better communicators. They said that technology has even helped them share more with their classmates. The students in Ms. Cassidy's class threw a shout-out to one of our EDM 310 classes about learning ALPHABETS through WIKIS. These student are not limiting their technology abilities to only their classrooms, but also sharing it with other students across the United States and perhaps the world. They make me want to do even better in this class. I simply wish I had more time. Great video.

Skype Interview with Ms. Cassidy
The interview with Ms. Cassidy was very interesting. Ms. Cassidy's approach to the use of technology in the classroom, is similar to what we have been learning with Dr. Strange in EDM310. Ms. Cassidy's approach is to teach students technology as early as possible. She do not believe that we should wait to teach our children all the new technology that is available today. She believes as I do, since the world is changing so much, it is our responsibility as future teachers to teach our children these changes. I also agree, that we CANNOT teach our children the way we taught them even five years ago.

Ms. Cassidy believes and uses blogs in her class because she believes that the student's work is read by an audience instead of just one person, the teacher. To me, the more people commenting on a blog, the more perspectives you have about the topic. Collaborating over blogs is a great way to see how things are all over the world. For instance, events happening in the world are looked on differently in different parts of the world. I also agree that it is not just a good idea for today's teacher to be technology literate, I think it should be mandatory. I believe a teacher should have to pass a test that shows computer literacy before they are offered a job. (Did I just say that?) Since we have been blogging all semester, this is the technique I will definitely use in my class. Even though I am majoring in physical education, I think blogging and tweeting is a technique I will be able to use effectively. For instance, I will post assignment, share ideas, post important dates and group projects on my blog. I will be able to communicate with parents, peers and students; enabling me to share information at one time.

I think the impediments I may have is assessing assignment dealing with technology. I guess in this case, I will also have to use Ms. Cassidy's suggestions. I will develop a fair system of grading on collaboration. We will have to view assessment differently. To me, grading is a bit over the top anyway. I think if a person can show they know the skill, they should be given a decent grade. I can remember having to do 50 problems in math, but the teacher was assessing the same skill. Did I not grasp the concept after the fifth problem? I believe this wastes valuable time; we could have been learning the next concept/skill. I think by using Ms. Cassidy's approaches, we will not allow our students to be left behind. I think she is a teacher who wants her students to be top of their game when it comes to technology. What I worry about, is the next year's teacher. Will all the work she did in first grade go in vain? Ms. Cassidy's Class Blog

Project #13 Smartboard