Where am I at now with my action research?
Answer: Have not officially started collecting data, but getting all of the following information dialed in... DQ: What tools and procedures can a PE or athletic program put into place that will easily transition from face-face-face to distance education? RQ1: What is the impact of incorporating technology into PE lesson design? a)Do students exercise more often when using the tools? b)Does student scores improve with the use of tools? How I will measure: I plan to collect this data first by providing a Google Form Survey to students: “Fitness Trackers/ Running Apps Personal Use Survey.” This survey will spit the students into two focus groups…. Those who use fitness trackers and those who do not. (a) The survey will go on to ask them about their exercise habits in their everyday lives. Through their answers provided, I will see if there is a correlation between use of tools and daily exercise habits. (b) Allow students who use fitness trackers to use them during class time and assign the class a long-distance run. Collect data in the form of students run times…. At a later date, re-assign run, but this time require students who previously did not use a fitness tracker to now use one. I hope to see if there is any correlation between the use of trackers in class and student performance. RQ2: Does this use of technology improve students’ health and fitness? a) What are their attitudes towards exercise b) What is their personal fitness status? c) Do they follow a personal workout plan? How I will measure: (a/b) Survey students on current attitudes towards exercise and their current habits related to health and fitness, like whether or not they already follow a personal workout plan. After providing all students with a chance to use tools, requiring them to create a personal workout plan, and follow through with their plan, re-survey students on their feelings towards exercise and their personal fitness status. (c) See if there is a correlation between students who have already followed a personal workout plan in the past and their responses regarding feelings about exercise. (CONCERN) Is subquestion (c) in the right spot here? Does it go along with the overarching RQ2 (“use of technology”)? Would it fit better under RQ3, or should it perhaps be scrapped altogether? Should RQ2 just be reworked? RQ3:What tools and strategies support face-to-face and online learning? a)How can I leverage digital tools and media to make physical fitness a social enterprise? How I will measure: Refer to answers provided by survey in RQ1 to gather data on which tools students generally prefer to use on their own time. Provide new survey which gathers data on students’ feelings about tools and strategies used in class this year. Informal and formal assessment of student work provided in distance lessons. Reach out to physed experts on social media to gather data on what tools and strategies other teachers are utilizing -- teachers on Twitter, PE Central group on facebook, Journal of Physical Education Research. (Questions!) Do RQ3 and sub-question (a) work together? Is having only one sub-question okay here? Are these methods of data collection sufficient?
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Adora Svitak’s TED Talk (Wow -- What an impressive 12 year old!) resonated deeply with me and had me reflecting on my practice, proudly at times. One of Ms. Svitak’s chief arguments is that adults need to be learning from kids, just as much as the reverse. Immediately I thought of my action research, and how I will be collecting data directly from my students, such as which fitness apps they prefer to use, and ultimately learning about my practice from them. If there is one thing this young speaker makes very clear, it's that adults can learn from kids. Not only does she clearly express that with her words, the whole talk quite literally demonstrates that a 12 year old can offer a lot of great knowledge. Ms. Svitak also points out that oftentimes kids have restrictions placed on them which underestimate their abilities and inhibit their growth. She goes on to say that instead of restricting them with rules and underestimating students’ abilities, we need to take their wishes into consideration. I always try to create more student buy-in by collaboratively creating class norms with them early on every school year. I’ve always believed that students will treat me with more respect if I treat them more like “adults” than “kids.” Teachers who flex their power on students with unnecessary rules are only creating restrictions and hard feelings. I’ve seen teachers go too hard with rules and expectations early on in the school year, only to immediately lose buy-in from too many of their students. A very wise colleague once said to me: “Students don’t follow rules because the teacher repeats the rules all the time. Students are much more likely to follow the rules simply if they like your class and want to be there.” Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk, “How to Escape Education’s Death Valley,” caught my attention the second he gave PE a shoutout: “A real education has to give equal weights to the arts, the humanities, to physical education.” Woohoo! In all seriousness, I became a PE teacher because like Mr Robinson, I believe it is often overlooked, yet invaluable to a child’s development -- both physically and social-emotionally! Mr. Robinson’s point that “[Great teachers] are not there to pass on received information. Great teachers…...mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage” had me drawing parallels to similar arguments presented by Falk and Blumenreich, McDowell and Darling-Hammond. I’ve always tried my best to limit the amount of class time spent giving direct instruction to students, while maximizing their time learning and growing through play and exercise. By putting my trust in students, treating them with respect, allowing them to have a voice in my class, and by making my class as enjoyable as possible for everybody, I hope I am taking the right steps towards putting them on the path to a successful future. When making the decision in the spring to commit to this masters program, the wicked problem I wanted to solve was “How can we do PE online?” Since then, it’s evolved to be a bit more specific, as well as applicable to both online and in-person learning... What tools and procedures can a PE or athletic program put into place that will easily transition to distance education and support students to develop lifelong habits?
Because my passion behind this research has always revolved around online learning, our current format for school hopefully shouldn’t be an impediment on my research. I’m hoping that on the contrary, this period of distance learning could be conducive to the research that I need. With that being said, I still have a ways to go in dialing in exactly how I will go about collecting data, and I feel that I need to figure that out quickly. Whether we continue to do distance learning, or return to in-person, I’m hopeful that I’ll have enough experience in both realms to get to the bottom of my driving question. I can apply design thinking to my dilemma by considering my end user…secondary PE teachers and students. What have other PE teachers found to be effective in supporting learners develop lifelong habits while teaching from a distance? What motivates students to want to be active when learning online? Will effective strategies for online learning in PE transition well to in-person learning? According to Linda Darling-Hammond, the reason the world is becoming “flat?” Globalization due to massive technological advancements in recent decades. Whereas the United States used to be the gold standard when it comes to education, recently we are quickly falling behind other countries which are more effectively adapting to the times. “The amount of new technical information is doubling every two years, and it is predicted to double every 72 hours by 2010” (Darling-Hammond 4).
When thinking about the exponential advancement of technology, I can’t help but think about what we’re being faced with as teachers in 2020. If 10 years ago new technological information was already doubling every 72 hours, I guess the amount of new tech teachers are being bombarded with in 2020 isn’t a fluke. Tech is only going to expand from here -- Put on your learning caps everyone! My head feels like it wants to explode when I begin to try to think about our educational system, its problems and what I would change. When we think about trying to improve our system, there is no one quick-fix. This would have to be a massive shift in educational philosophy and policy altogether. Darling-Hammond points out that in addition to inequities in schools caused by poor funding and lack of resources… We also simply need to revise what we are teaching our students. Recently, higher-achieving nations “Reveal a robust and disciplined approach to teaching mathematical reasoning and complex problem solving where knowledge is continually applied to real world problems and students are asked to go beyond routines to use mathematics flexibly in new situations” (12-13). I have often marveled at the lack of real world knowledge that our students graduate high school with. (Disclaimer: next sentences may be offensive to math or science people)... Why is it that students are required to take calculus before learning anything whatsoever about financial literacy? Why are students required to take biology in which they need to memorize all the parts of a cell, before knowing anything applicable to their own bodies, health and nutrition? To try to improve our system, there would need to be a massive amount of policy change from our government. Without wanting to be too political here, when I think about how most federal programs targeting education reform were basically eliminated during the Reagan era, as well as the damage done by the No Child Left Behind Act, it hurts my soul to even begin think about the long-term implications of Trump, DeVos and education in this country. Probably not the best perspective to take, but I sometimes think it’s just easier not to think about the big scary picture at all and just focus on my students. Darling-Hammond, Linda (2010). The Flat World of Education. New York, NY: Teachers College, Columbia University. My driving question has been through a long journey these past eight weeks. It began as “How can we do PE online?” and for a while, I stubbornly thought it could remain that. When I finally admitted to myself that I sounded more like a caveman and less like a graduate student conducting research, my DQ then began a wild ride with the following considerations:
-Can PE teachers and coaches improve their instruction and facilitate active learning with new tech tools? -How can we effectively incorporate technology into PE and coaching to enhance student learning? -How can we effectively incorporate technology into PE and coaching at the secondary level to make our students more motivated and active learners? -How can the incorporation of technology in PE lesson design increase student efficacy? (something about lifelong learners!) -What are the systems for students tracking what they're doing health-wise which will transfer from classroom to distance learning? Doing routine enough to become classroom procedure Then I began to think about three research questions in relation to my capstone project. I want my capstone project to be a resource for secondary PE teachers for “How to Tech in PE,” including digital tools for youth, high school collegiate athletics. The goal is to make digital learning and effective implementation of technology in physical education and coaching more tangible for physical educators and coaches everywhere. Right now I'm hoping my DQ and research questions lend themselves to this goal. They are currently as follows (though evidently it can always change at any moment!)... DQ: What tools + procedures can a PE program put into place that will easily transition to distance education and support students to develop lifelong habits? RQ1: How can the incorporation of technology in PE lesson design increase student efficacy and create lifelong learners? RQ2: Which tools support a student who prefers individual exercise routines vs a student who needs the social aspect? RQ3: Which tech tools and strategies will allow youth, high school and collegiate athletic programs to effectively teach year-round? Lucky for me, incorporating gaming into my class comes naturally. In PE, the game is usually the curriculum itself. Every day in my class, students are “playing” something while learning/honing new skills and concepts. I believe I’ve implemented both game-based learning and gamification with my classes in the past. With game-based learning, the content is the game itself. When I have my students play capture the flag (after a brief explanation of basic rules and objectives), the onus is on them to figure out the best strategy. In this example, the strategy is the content and the students are learning the content through gameplay. Edutopia’s article “3 Ways to Use Game-Based Learning” explains “When using games, try to avoid intervening when students are figuring something out” (1). Over the years, I’ve gotten better at keeping my distance and observing my students’ brains work together to figure something out. A less experienced me would jump in and help immediately if I saw a concept wasn’t being perfectly understood at first. But I now see the great value in allowing students to figure out the best strategy to go about achieving their objective. Gamification, as opposed to game-based learning, is when game elements are introduced to support the content being learned and to help motivate students. The best example I can think of for gamification with my classes is with the team building unit I’ve been teaching for the past four years. Throughout our team building unit, students are put into teams of 6-8 and are shown a wide variety of collaborative games in which they must work together to achieve a particular goal. The games are all explained and/or modeled through direct instruction, demonstrations and cue cards. Therefore, the content is taught directly to students before the game begins, not through gameplay. The gamification aspect is enhanced with “cash” being earned through successfully completing a team building objective. Over the course of two weeks, teams go through each team building “station” and are potentially awarded a certain amount of "money" based on how successful they were in achieving their objective. At the end of the day, every teams’ “banker” deposits their cash, and totals are tallied up on a big scoreboard. I’ve incorporated scoreboards and even tournament brackets into some other units we do, however it’s important to always keep the balance between competition and sportsmanship. Sometimes introducing a scoreboard when unnecessary in PE will only lead to overly-competitive teenagers and hurt feelings. It’s important to know when to gamify and when not to. In Eddie Obeng’s Ted Talk, “Smart Failure for a Fast Changing World,” he reveals that the rules have changed regarding how our world works. Whatever we used to believe might not still apply today. He is primarily referring to globalization and tech as the cause for this change, but the notion of the old rules no longer applying and innovation as essential is incredibly relatable to our situation with needing to make a decision as to how to reopen schools and what it’s going to look like. In the “old world,” teachers and school shave been going about their ways for a long time. We cannot afford to continue to implement these outdated models, because (a) we know more effective ways to teach, and more importantly (b) we are in an unprecedented pandemic and returning to a traditional format seems to be out of the question.
I also think about Obeng’s message in relation to PE design specifically during this pandemic. The old world’s ways of teaching PE no longer apply now, for obvious reasons (close proximity, physical contact, locker rooms, etc.). Obeng mentions that in the old world, failure is unacceptable, but in our new world, innovation is essential and therefore smart failure should be encouraged. There could not be a more perfect time for me to be learning what I am in this program and have a chance to immediately apply it to my students. I will need to be innovative. Some lessons might fail, but Eddie Obeng would say not only is that okay, it’s absolutely necessary if I want to evolve with the world around me. I decided to take a break from the DQ stuff and write about transliteracy today instead. “Transliteracy is the ability to read, listen to, synthesize and apply what we gather across different platforms” (1). When I think about students demonstrating transliteracy, I think of a specific example that applied to me when I was in school. I think about all of the film and video production classes that I took in high school and college. Video production requires effectively writing a script, working a camera, choosing what shots/visuals to include, and considering when to incorporate titles, dialogue or possible captions. There is a ton of creative freedom in video production, but one must be sufficiently transliterate to pull it off. It makes me wonder about what is offered in NVUSD – Do we have video production classes for or students in high school? (I genuinely don’t know, but I can tell you we did not at my old school.)
I was a video production/media studies major in college (back when I was still trying to find my path in this world), but I think the skills I cultivated then contribute to my teaching and my general technical abilities today. That’s because making videos helped me become more transliterate! I hope for NVUSD students who are passionate about video production, we can provide them with this ever-so-important opportunity in education.
I just completed a flipped lesson plan and rarely have I been prouder of a professional creation of mine. I began exploring with Edpuzzle and was shocked at how few good PE videos I could find. I ended up finding a perfect 2:20 heart rate video on YouTube and created my own Edpuzzle by adding in five multiple choice questions. Then it was time to check out Nearpod. Again… could find very little useful stuff on there for PE. I began creating my flipped heart rate lesson slide show and after a few minutes, I was getting in the Nearpod groove. I was not in love with not being able to embed links within a slide with text. I also did not love not being able to italicize, bold, underline or change any fonts within my slides with text. Maybe one is able to —but these functions at least were not cooperating on my Mac desktop. I embedded my Edpuzzle Heart Rate video at the beginning of the Nearpod slide deck, as it serves as a perfect intro/hook. I utilized the Mac screen capture (command/shift/4) very much throughout this creation. I embedded a screenshot of portion of a google spreadsheet table. The last part of the lesson is an embedded a google form as a means of assessment and data collection.
So I had my flipped lesson, but now it was time to create my screencast. I thought of this screencast as a sort of “accompaniment” to the Nearpod slide deck. In other words, while students could probably successfully execute this lesson with just the slide deck, I wanted the screencast to be a tool to help support students’ understanding of the content and assignment. After creating my first screencastomatic, I wasn’t totally in love with my “script” and the flow. I exported the video file, dropped it into iMovie and started made a bunch of small edits there (and added background music, hopefully it’s not too distracting!). Elementary teacher Eric Sheninger offers a variety of “blended learning” options and makes the claim that students can ultimately learn in ways with technology that they simply couldn’t without it. Makes me wonder if I should be utilizing the flipped classroom more. Could my students learn more effectively from this lesson than a more traditional worksheet, pen and paper heart rate lesson? To recap, for this flipped lesson creation I used the following tech tools: Edpuzzle (first time) Nearpod (first time) Screenshots Screencastomatic (first time) Google Sheets Google Forms iMovie Can you tell I am proud of myself? I never really utilized Google Forms in my practice until we transitioned to distance learning in April, although I do have decent experience with it from my credential program and various professional development courses.
During distance learning, Silverado students were given a list of bodyweight workout YouTube videos, choosing one workout to complete Monday-Thursday; at the end of the week, they completed the SMS PE Survey in which they checked off the box(es) for the workout(s) they did each day. The survey ends with these three short answer questions: What other physical activities (if any) have you done this past week? Which is your favorite workout? Any other comments, questions, or concerns? This Google Form essentially served as an assessment tool for me, while holding students accountable and giving them an opportunity for reflection and satisfaction. But what I was pleasantly surprised by was how amazing of a tool it is for collecting data. I was pretty blown away by the response summary pie charts, bar graphs, lists, and conversion to Spreadsheet. While reading up on Forms and its add-ons this week, I was able to envision a few more potential uses for Forms and my teaching. In the past, I’ve done pen and paper sign-ups for intramural sports, activity periods, tournaments, and other various activities/events at Silverado. I plan to transition to having students sign up for things like this with Google Forms, as well as for checking in and out equipment. Choice Eliminator and CheckitOut seem like useful add-ons for these purposes. Choice Eliminator makes it so choices on the form are removed after someone chooses them, and CheckitOut can move choices from “Checked in” to “Checked out” and back when equipment is checked out… “Create a ‘Name’ short-answer question and you can see the paper trail of who checked equipment in and out and at what time in the spreadsheet of results.” Student activity logs can be another great use of google forms in PE: “Create a form with the student’s name and all the information he/she needs to submit. Each time he/she submits, it’s logged into a spreadsheet where students can review that data and submit it to you” (Ditch That Textbook). Finally, I can ultimately see myself using forms as a data collection tool for my action research/capstone project. I still have a way to go in figuring out exactly what my action research will look like, but at this time I think my end users are other PE teachers and coaches, and I’ll want to do research around them. I think I can use Forms to create a survey which will ultimately be shared with my end users and gauges:
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About Dustin Green:High School PE Teacher Archives
March 2021
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