What would this year have been like if I had never decided to commit to this master’s program? I would literally have zero idea where to begin with virtual lessons. I have learned so much, it’s difficult to even summarize.... If I were to break it down by semester, here would be my personal learning highlights over the past 3 semesters.
1st semester - summer - I learned about digital tools which I was able to immediately employ with my classes via virtual lessons when we began in the fall. So crucial I gained this knowledge when I did… Again, I would’ve been totally lost. 2nd Semester - fall - I learned all about how academic research is conducted and academic papers are written. This was tough! Feel like if I had another shot at it now though, it’d be much less daunting now that I kind of know what I’m doing. Continued to build upon my knowledge of establishing a positive and equitable classroom culture. 3rd Semester - spring - I learned about some of the intricacies of graphic design! Designing my infographic and logo was no simple task… I have a lot more respect for all of the thought and intentionality which go into logos everywhere. Finally, being able to showcase all I have learned throughout this master’s program via my capstone website was an incredibly gratifying and proud experience. Please check it out if you wish! -----> My Capstone Website. I am so grateful to Touro University and to NapaLearns for helping to make this possible. Most of all, thank you to my truly amazing professors as well as my awesome, supportive and inspiring Cohort 19! I will always remember and appreciate you all!
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I will never take another logo for granted ever again! It’s amazing how I come across countless logos every day, but before 703 class, never thought twice about all the intent behind them. This program has opened my eyes to the intense amount of detail and purpose in the world of logo making and graphic design. My personal struggle also lies in this field of graphic design - not necessarily the creative part - but the operational aspect. Making my logo was fun! Getting it to be a true PNG and in vector form has been quite challenging without having any background in graphic design whatsoever. I’m still working on it (but might be losing hope and patience at this point). Am I missing something obvious here? I cannot wait to have a real final product that I can be proud of creating!
Touro University California is a university under Jewish auspices founded upon the universal values of commitment to social justice, intellectual pursuit, and service to humanity. As such, Touro University California is dedicated to the following:
When I think about how the work I’ve done in this program fits with Touro’s values, I think about how the underlying primary objectives for all my classes have always been to play with sportsmanship, be a good teammate and cultivate positive social skills. Simply put, I call it learning to "play nice.” In Touro terms, I always try to instill an “acceptance and appreciation of diversity” among my students. Obviously it is of the utmost importance to be accepting and appreciative of different cultures, but from the PE perspective, my mind goes straight to the goal of instilling an understanding among my students that there will always be a diverse range of athletic ability within any PE class - everybody has different ability levels and we must be supportive and understanding of all of our classmates regardless of how skilled they are within a certain sport or activity. One of the primary motivators of choosing the research project I did was also the hope of teaching something to my students that could hopefully make an impact on them for the rest of their lives. Running/ fitness smartphone applications are not going away any time soon, and hopefully my research project gave them the introduction to this technology they need to continue to experience the benefits that they have to offer for a long time. In Touro terms, the idea is to “increase their intellectual inquiry and passion for lifelong learning” (and health). Lastly on a personal note, shoutout to Touro for being founded with the help and support of the Jewish community, and being committed to these ever-so-important values. While I currently do not consider myself a very religious person, I was raised culturally Jewish and have always been proud of it, but can’t help but feel even prouder now to be getting my Masters degree from Touro. Shalom! How am I doing with my progress towards completing this Masters program? 1. Logo The image to the left is my logo. The smartphone represents the implementation of smartphone running applications in PE and the clipboard/graph represents the goal setting/ progress piece. and I’ve had several different versions but this is the one I’d definitely like to go with. My very frustrating issue is trying to convert it to a PNG. Is this something that needs to happen or can I get away with a white background? 2. Infographic At the bottom of this blog you can see my infographic. After lots of great feedback from my professor and fellow cohort members, I’ve toned it down with all the different fonts, banners and crazy color schemes. And I have to agree… it looks much better now. Thanks y’all! 3. Mini-documentary Mini-documentary is still a work in progress. I have a pretty basic skeleton of A-roll and B-roll, but need some more of both. I am in the process of writing my “script” so the next time I sit down to record A-roll, I hopefully won’t be so tongue-twisted. The important thing is I feel like I have a good vision of what I want the final production to look like, so I don’t feel too overwhelmed with this one. 4. Executive Summary I’ve begun writing this and am confident I will have it completed in the next day or two. It is mostly copy and pasting / paraphrasing from my research paper… is that bad? 5. Capstone Poster At the time of writing this blog, I have not yet looked into this one, but plan on getting after it very soon, once my executive summary is complete. My go-to organizational strategy is a pen and paper to-do list. Seems a bit primitive these days, but it has never failed me! Even during virtual learning, I believe it has to be necessary to encourage students to do the same. All throughout my career as a student and ever since I’ve become a teacher, schools have always been so diligent about encouraging students to write in their planner. Even though everything has become more tech-heavy these days and we are getting away from paper and pen learning, I believe the pen and paper planner will always be essential for the success of our students. Infographic
I was lost. When I think back to where I was at regarding my pedagogy, almost exactly one year ago at the start of distance learning, like many other teachers I had no idea where to begin. Perhaps PE teachers especially needed to figure out how to adjust more than anyone. Based on many conversations I've had, when the majority of people think of online PE, they imagine the teacher leading a workout and all students following along and diligently exercising on-camera. This is problematic for several reasons… For one, as much as I pride myself on my high energy-style of teaching, I do not think I can effectively make it through five workouts, one for each class, every day of the week. More importantly, requiring students to exercise on-camera is kind of an ethical grey area, and something that neither my students or I want happening. Thankfully, with the help of Touro University's Innovative Learning Master’s program, I have expanded my Teaching Pedagogical Content Knowledge, or TPACK, in such a way that my virtual PE lessons don’t have to be as one dimensional and dull as the “exercise on-camera” class. When it’s time to exercise, my students work within Edpuzzle, following Youtube workouts which I have converted to Edpuzzle videos with notes and questions for reflection. This way they can be held accountable for completing a workout without having to exercise on-camera. I have also utilized Edpuzzle not only for workouts, but for instructional videos with content from practicing good nutritional habits, to how exercise makes you a better student, and even a Ted Talk on the importance of sleep. I have also utilized virtual class time this year to focus on running and fitness applications for smartphones, from functionality to all of the benefits they can provide. Many of my students have taken advantage and shared their progress via screenshots of their data. I’m hopeful that the use of running and fitness applications will lead to more of a more passion for exercise and ultimately more active lifestyles. My lessons often direct students to work within Google suite - most commonly Google Docs and Forms. While basic elements of Google Suite such as sharing access and making copies were challenging for my students at first, I am proud of how smoothly integrated into my curriculum it all is now. The difference is like night and day from month one of this school year. Now when we have a lesson in which we view content online, such as a website with key concepts on nutrition, or a youtube video on mindfulness, completing the follow-up Google Doc or Form has become second nature for my students. Quizizz is also a favorite among my students as well, as we often use this tool as a way to review key concepts from previous lessons. All in all, I am very proud of what my PE class has become in our current hybrid model of learning. My TPACK journey has been a long one, but boy has it been worth it. I am no longer lost. I wrote out my interview questions. I had a vision of me sitting down in front of my laptop and answering these questions. I thought I could organically and smoothly flow about my research with no script. I pressed the record button. Mind goes absolutely blank.
My uncut A-roll is very weak and embarrassing. Thank goodness for movie magic because my interview needs some serious cutting and editing. Apparently when it comes to being on camera, I cannot talk good. I have now learned that I absolutely NEED to write a script. Writing is something I know I am okay at. Because my A-roll is 30 minutes of video with only maybe 2 minutes of usable audio (and 28 minutes of stop and start nonsense and stuttering), I’m planning to start cutting together the interview footage I have with my B-roll. Perhaps not the most traditional way to make a movie, but I know once I begin editing, my documentary will begin to take more shape and it will help me to write the rest of my script. I enjoy editing but am terrible on-camera. I feel confident about my vision and process for this documentary however. I will need another day to film A-roll and B-roll once my rough cut is made. I would say right now within the learning pit I am somewhere between “I need to work hard at this” and “I think I’m getting it!” I had my students film themselves for a few flipgrid assignments earlier this year. While I participated in the assignment too, I did not experience this sort of camera shyness. However, I can now certainly imagine what some of my students were probably feeling. If I do assign another Flipgrid project with my classes, I will be sure to suggest writing out a script beforehand. NVUSD Mission Statement
It’s tough for me to find any real holes in NVUSD’s mission statement. It’s pretty apparent that it was written by expert mission statementers... That being said, as a biased PE teacher/athletic coach, I guess my one gripe could be the need for a greater focus on physical activity for our students. By reading all of the the districts goals within the NVUSD mission statement, I noticed physical education was mentioned only one time -- within Goal # 1 -- “Improve performance outcomes for all students, and at least one year’s growth in one year’s time in all core subjects (ELA, Math, History/Social Studies, Science), World Language, Visual and Performing Arts and Physical Education.” Likewise, Athletic programs are mentioned once under the subheading “Students thrive socially, emotionally and academically” ... “Promote and support athletic programs that comply with current best practice and provide student athletes with opportunities to learn and grow.” I’m wondering if PE (or even recess/ lunch / student free- time) can be mentioned as well within the context of social and emotional health of all students in the district, as this is obviously important for everyone, not just those who participate in extracurricular athletic programs. Rather than just focusing on “growth in one year’s time” when mentioning PE, our district's mission statement might be improved with a specific goal around the social/emotional/physical need for students to be active. Reflecting upon the production of my capstone project, I haven’t ran into any serious issues so far. I just finished one of the first steps of tediously linking everything together on my capstone website… so far so good. I am excited to continue to build that site and ultimately create my mini-doc to go with it. Back before the days of wanting to be a teacher, my major as an undergrad was actually media studies and film production, so (hopefully without getting anyone's expectations too high) I do feel comfortable with the prospect of creating a short film.
As I compare the professionally made documentary film, “Kenny Stills - Why I kneel,” to some of the older capstone videos made for this Master's program, some differences in style are very apparent. For one, the professionally made documentary uses a wide variety of footage -- a combination of found footage from his playing career, historical found footage from the civil rights era to contemporary media coverage, B roll filmed for the purpose of the documentary, as well as A roll in the form of interview footage. The older capstone videos I explored showed the interviewee within the same shot with very little variance the majority of the time they were shown on camera. I hope my mini documentary will be a useful product for PE teachers who are looking for innovative lessons and considering a productive use of technology in class for their students. I plan to alternate between many different shots and types of footage, from B roll, footage of smartphone running applications being utilized, to even found footage featuring professional athletes or relevant memes -- anything which will keep my audience entertained -- all while minimizing my time on screen. Not to sound like a bitter grandpa complaining about ‘kids these days,’ but darn it... kids these days are less active than they used to be. Anybody with a bit of common sense could tell you that. The internet, video games, smartphones, instagram, TikTok, youtube, TwitchTV - most of these physical activity killers didn’t exist even just a few decades ago during my childhood - back in the day when meeting up with friends at the park, or playing driveway basketball, or going on a walk were the only ways to be social. Add to our current situation a stay-at-home pandemic, and kids are surely struggling to find ways/motivation to be physically active. That is why I wanted to tackle a research topic which focused on ways to get students to want to be more physically active. Leaving my house to go on a run is not something I have ever been dying to do, but I know that personally, when I incorporate a run data tracker to keep track of my progress, it serves as a major motivator for me to actually get out there and do it. I wanted to see if the use of running apps and goal setting would have the same positive effect on my students.
In the future, I plan to continue to incorporate running apps into my PE classes - both virtually and in-person. This was my first time ever doing this, so I know there are ways to dial it in and improve with each attempt at it. I am even considering implementing a type of social network in which I have all of my students in each class become friends within the running app (Nike Run Club has this capability). That way all students can keep track of progress, view leaderboards, complete with each other, and so on. I think I’ve gotten all I can out of my running app curriculum this time around, but I look forward to building on it next year. The logo making software I chose to work with is Logomaker.com. The program itself is super easy to use and made the logo-making experience simple and stress-free. By far, the most difficult aspect for me was dialing in what my logo should actually say. The title of my research paper is “Impact of Personal Goal Setting and Running Apps on Student Physical Activity Levels and Performance within a Hybrid-Model High School Physical Education Setting.” As you might be able to imagine with a title like that, there are many different directions I can take my logo in, in terms of what it says. I began with something in mind about physically active students at home and school, but logo maker told me that would be way too long - probably for the better. With word efficiency in mind and considering how running apps played a big role in my action research, I decided to keep it simple with the first draft of my logo - “Running Apps in PE” (For now… Looking forward to my brilliant fellow cohort members’ feedback!). I know there is something better out there, but right now my brain is blank. *Edit* After scoping out some other awesome logos from the cohort, my latest thought is... Does my logo need words? |
About Dustin Green:High School PE Teacher Archives
March 2021
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