Many subject areas offer students numerous avenues to use technology daily. PowerPoint’s, laptop computers, interactive white boards, podcasts, and flip cameras are some examples of the technology that has become part of a student’s school experience. With the creation of blogs available on the web, I am now able to incorporate this form of technology into my ninth grade health and physical education classes as well.
Our county along with many others take advantage of a web based software portal, or Edline, that allows teachers to communicate with students and parents about grades, assignments, test/quiz dates, project guidelines, and classroom announcements, etc. I can use Edline to introduce blogging into my classroom by creating a blog and attaching the link to the class portal. In our school would actually have to create a wiki space with the other health and physical education teachers since weblogs are blocked from our county’s network service.
An idea for blogging in my health classes would be to a place where students can reflect on an article that I posted on the web to pertain to our current topic. My classes currently turn in current event articles after each unit of health, this way we can focus on one sub-topic and create a discussion about it, a great way to encourage more reading and writing. Blogging can also be used for discussion topics or even be set up where students are anonymous and can ask questions they were too embarrassed to ask in class. The topics in health can be very personal so they can use this portal to seek support and communicate with their peers. Of course in order to promote participation, the students would need to be anonymous.
In Will Richardson’s book, Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms, I was introduced to another great idea for the use of an RSS aggregator in my own class. For the same assignment on current events, they are able to plug in topics where the RSS feed will bring the information to them. This can also be used for research projects where they add a site from google that will bring the research to them regarding a specific disease, like Avian Flu, as Richardson used as an example in his book (p.78).
I am currently looking for ways to incorporate the use of blogs in my PE classes. Richardson’s example from his book was to have student’s “log their workouts or diets” (p.32). This is one option but could see an issue where students may be embarrassed to post that information.
I look forward to incorporating a form of blogging, whether it is through a wiki, into my courses next semester.
Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand oaks, California: Corwin Press.
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These are all very good ideas.
ReplyDeleteI have an app on my phone where I can record workouts and what I eat. Maybe if only you had access to their diet journals, but were recorded and sent on Edline.
I guess one problem you might have with the assignment would depend on how liberal your school district is, many parents where I live would not want their students asking personal questions at school. What would you do if students ask a question about drugs or sex? If you do not know who the students are, could they abuse this privilege? I think it is a great idea as long as the teacher knows who the students are.
Charlene,
ReplyDeleteHave you spoken with your fellow health and physical education teachers about your wiki idea? I believe your ideas could be very beneficial if you could get your peers to agree. I know I would have a difficult time selling this to some of my peers. Unfortunately, not all educators wish to use technology in this manner.
I was also curious about the time required teaching your students how to use the wiki site, as well as the RSS aggregator. Would the training required conflict with meeting your curriculum requirements?
Please do not take my comments as confrontational. I am just bringing up potential challenges that I see.
I would like to close by commenting on your page. I truly enjoy the layout. I cannot explain why, but it reminds me of energy in motion.
Ken Bedwell
Your ideas are great. I wondered about adding a PE component where they respond to a challenge. Our district passes out pedometers to the kids that want them from a community sponsored health organization. You could have a space where students write ideas for adding "steps" to their pedometers. I know that all schools don't have access to pedometers, but you could change it to yards, feet, etc. whatever would be applicable. It could make walking/moving appealing for some.
ReplyDeleteKen,
ReplyDeleteThe other physical educators in my school are very negative regarding new technology and often refuse to try new things. Our faculty is currently experimenting with a wiki space that seems to be picking up interest. Hopefully it will open doors and minds up to this technology.