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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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. |
About Dustin Green:High School PE Teacher Archives
March 2021
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