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.
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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? I actually first looked at An Truong’s capstone website, “Training with Technology,” among first getting started in this Master’s program, when I had absolutely no idea where I wanted to go with my research. Mr. Truong lays out his journey in a very effective and digestible way within his website. The audience for his capstone appears to be other physical education teachers looking for ways to incorporate tech into PE, insight into tech’s impact on fitness goals, and/or strategies for motivating students in the PE classroom. In addition detailing specific ways of incorporating tech into his PE lessons for the purpose of his research, he shares resources which were effective for him and his students, such as Kahoot, Quizizz, Adobe Spark, Google Forms, Eductopia.
The other capstone websites I explored also seemed geared towards an audience of teachers. When I think ahead to my capstone, the debate becomes whether I want my audience to be PE teachers or students. I think I could make it in a way which could benefit students, but the question then becomes, does anyone create their capstone websites designed for an audience of students? When would students be exposed to and actually utilize the capstone website? The four capstones which I explored were filled with useful information for teachers such as teaching strategies, lesson plans and content standards, so I did not feel like they were intended for students to directly see. Before the pandemic, transliteracy was becoming an increasingly valuable skill for students (and teachers) to have. Since the start of distance and hybrid learning in March 2019, transliteracy instantly became not only important, but an absolutely crucial skill for students and teachers to demonstrate in order for virtual learning to function effectively. In some ways, teaching virtually makes incorporating transliteracy into my teaching easier. For example, being able to share screen and walk my students through a given lesson or assignment both visually and with my words, in theory should make understanding the content more feasible for students, as opposed to only talking at them. Hybrid learning has challenged me to include a variety of lesson designs in which students must demonstrate transliteracy skills. My students have had to answer google forms, complete edpuzzle video assignments, make copies of slides and edit them, fill out documents and attach them before submitting to Google classroom, participate in Zoom visually, verbally and in the chat, participate in live peardecks, film themselves inventing a game to be played at home and upload it to Flipgrid, etc. And this is all for PE!!! I can only imagine how innovative some classroom teachers must be in incorporating transliteracy into their curriculum in the virtual classroom.
Sketchnoting includes visual aspects of imagery in combination with reading/writing of words and/or short phrases. Visual learners, English learners and special needs students can benefit from the ease of interpreting a sketchnote presented to them. Likewise, including assignments which allow artistic and creative students to present their work via sketchnoting could greatly benefit those students, rather than forcing them to write, write, and write more with more traditional methods of instruction. I have had students sketch “how they like to stay active” within pear deck, as well as have had them create a personal collage of images on Slides, but now think I may expand on/combine these lessons by having them create a sketchnote representing their personality and how they like to be physically active. |
About Dustin Green:High School PE Teacher Archives
March 2021
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