Jesse+R.'s+Page

=Week 4 Competency= = = = = For week 4, I used [|rubistar]to make a rubric for an assessment in physical education. Rubi star promotes itself as "a free tool to help teachers create quality rubrics." You'll notice that this catch phrase says nothing about ease of use or quality of the program itself. For me, rubistar was a bit chunky and ugly. The program wont let you wrap text or use other tools to make your rubric look unique or easy to read. In fact, I think it is easier just to use the table function in any word processing program. My rubric itself describes levels of achievement on a written assessment conducted at the end of my five components of physical fitness unit.

Here it is:

[|Five Components of Fitness] = = =Week 4 Resources=

As we get closer and closer to being real teachers, I get more concerned about classroom management. So, this week I decided to focus in on resources that help in this area.

I found these two to be quite helpful:

[|712educators.about.com/od/discipline/Classroom_Discipline_Resources.htm] Has dozens, if not hundreds, of very short articles on classroom management. Many of them mirror each other, but I saw this as ok - I many teachers all say the same thing, I am guessing it works.

[|Adhsolutions.com] You can get a free book with solutions for working with tough to manage students. I am a big believer in not reinventing the wheel, so I always like to read what works for others. Unfortunately, the book is aimed at classroom teachers, without much for physical education, and IMO it was aimed at the K-8 crowd. I think in some locations high school teachers might be able to use some of his techniques, but I can picture older students felling pretty patronized by some of the approaches.

=Week 3 Competency=

This week, I made a prezi for my competency. You can make one too at [|prezi.com]. A prezi is a fancy British word for a power point presentation, only not. I have been using power point for a while, and it has gotten sort of stale... a bit linear and well, drab. Reminds me of air conditioned conference rooms and coffee stained carpet. Anyways, prezis are another take on the same process, and they are a bit more dynamic. The function/layout sort of reminds of the tool Tom Cruise used in Minority report. You can use them to make a quick instructional video for students or, and I think this is more exciting, the students could use them to make projects. Anyways, I made a prezi on combo routes in football. What is a combo route you ask? Check out my prezi:

http://prezi.com/zt6e2lmlp-ik/combo-routes/

=Week 3 Resources=

My guess is, most of us will come to a point our career where we want additional materials for the classroom, but do not have the funding for them, To that end, this week for resources, I decided to check out alternate funding sources for teachers. I found two that I want to learn more about:

[|Donor's Choice] DonorsChoose.org is an online charity where public school teachers can post a request for funding. Then, people from all over can donate money to make the project into a reality. Once a project reaches its funding goal, Donor's choice deliver the materials to the school.

[|iloveschools.com] iloveschools seems to work on a similar model: teachers make a request, the request gets published to a community of donors, I can't vouch for either of these sites, but I am interested in them for sure... anyone else have suggestions?


 * Week 2 Competency**

[|How to Conduct Virtual Field Trips]

Joey's post on virtual field trips inspired my to learn more about this exciting idea. In essence, a virtual field trip takes students, via the internet, to places they could not otherwise go. Many virtual field trips "go" to museums so students can see amazing works of art like the Mona Lisa or to other countries so students can see new places such as the Sphinx or Angkor Wat. Joey had a great idea - using the technology to "take" his class to see ensembles around the world to expose them to new music.

One way I would use this technology in my classroom would be to give students and parents to preview of a trip we would actually take. This would give the viewers an ability to see what sort of experience they would have, what type of equipment the would need to take, etc. For example, if I were going to take students on a ski trip, I would post a website showing: the ski resort, the lodging, and of people learning to ski.

I think this use of the virtual field trip would reduce some anxiety among students and parents and would scaffold some of the learning experiences. For example, if students saw the ski lesson first, they would have some idea of what to expect.

As to the competency itself, this website explains a lot about why virtual field trips are a good idea, but it does not give much instruction on the "nuts and bolts" of actually __creating__ a virtual field trip. If anyone has a good resource for that, please let me know.


 * Week 2 Resources**

[|Awesome Library] and [|PEcentral] are the two resources I checked out this week. I am always looking for new lesson plans. When I am unfamiliar with an activity, a new lesson plan can give me ideas about the fundamental skills and when I am familiar, a new lesson plan can help me be more creative or fill in the gaps in my own knowledge. Both awesome library and PEcentral have some great lesson plans and some not so great ones. I guess this is to be expected given the amount of information out there. One thing I wish there were more of were whole unit plans with lesson plans. In other words, I do my design by first choosing the unit, the standards to be addressed in the unit, and the learning goals of the unit. Then I design individual lessons to lead to these goals and address these PEC standards. When I am done I have a unit portfolio. I wish I could find more of these online for PE.


 * Week 1 Competency**

[|Wikis in plain English]

Prior to last Saturday, I was completely ignorant of the "wiki" phenomenon, aside from wikipedia. So, this week I decided to familiarize myself via the Wiki's in plain English web-video. If you are also unfamiliar with the idea of wikis, I recommend checking this out. Its very straight forward and not for advanced users, but it gave me a better understanding of at least one use for wikis - in a way, they are like an online dry erase board. You can use them to collaboratively write down information.

One way I would use the wiki in my classroom, is as an assessment aide. In physical education, I like to use the "check list" form of assessment, e.g. in basketball I might provide students a check list with several tasks, e.g. play a game of 3 v. 3; run the 3 person weave for 10 passes without dropping the ball; demonstrate the proper form for a free throw; execute two types of passes, etc.

Usually, the students to this by hand on pencil and paper, and they each have a checklist. But, I could use a wiki as a class wide checklist, and make each student responsible for "checking off" one item. The students would have to submit media - video, photos, a written document, etc, as proof. Using the example above, for Steve Nash to prove he completed the item "demonstrate the proper form for a free throw, he could post this video:media type="youtube" key="Pf0lAO21AZk" width="425" height="350"


 * Week 1 Resources**

The resources I used this week were [|youtube] (I found the Steve Nash video on youtube) and [|edutopia] On edutopia, I found a [|video] on "authentic assessment" at the School of the Future in NY, NY. This video inspired me to reflect on whether my assessment for PE are authentic - I determined that the checklist described above is, as it has students track their skill development, much as a athletes do when attempting to improve.