Before you further read my
post this week, you must watch this video first!
Most people will have heard of TED-Talks before, but have you heard
of TED-Ed? TED-Ed (ed.ted.com) is a website
through TED company that allows you to engage in or create dynamic lessons
around the hundreds of thousands of educational videos on YouTube. The features
explored include the ability to add multiple choice questions, open answer
questions, "dig deeper" materials, and custom discussion topics to
any video on YouTube. After watching this video, you would see how simple this
website has made it for teachers to incorporate videos and technology into
their lessons.
How would a teacher use this innovative and creative
technological-integrated lesson plan? Well, how many of you remember the long
list of readings, photocopied chapters, questions, and overheads that were used
when your teacher was absent for a class period? If a teacher was planning to be
away for a class, they could incorporate watching a specific video from
YouTube, with answering a variety of selected response and constructed response
testing items (Multiple Choice, Short Answer, etc.), as well as deeper thinking
questions that students may answer as a group, or incorporate other 21st
century learning skills, like Character Education, Critical Thinking, etc.
Before I obtain full time employment as a teacher I know the bumpy road of
supply teaching is ahead of me. If teachers used this instead of handing me
(the supply teacher) a booklet of overhead notes to put up for students to copy
that would make my job much easier, as well as much more purposeful (supply
teachers are not just there to babysit your students for the day!).
As a Physical Educator I wanted to see if this website
offered options or sample lessons that were directed towards the HPE program.
Although this website is directed towards the ‘formal classroom’ setting, it
could easily be incorporated into the Health content of the HPE curriculum
(something that is most often considered boring, therefore ignored and tends to
be unpopular with the students…and many teachers!) Here is a sample lesson for
the importance of Exercise, something that can be used within a teacher’s
Physical Fitness lessons, or Healthy Living strand of the curriculum, called 23 and 1/2 Hours.
In my last blog post I left you
with the promise that I would find ways technology could be incorporated into
the gymnasium of the school – the Physical Education classroom! One of the
blogs I follow for this course is called The PE Geek and recently the creator of this site posted a video podcast of “10 Ways You Can Use A Large Screen Display in PE”.
In this video a large screen (and iPad!) can be used in the PE classroom and be
used as a scoreboard (useful for school games too!), using fitness videos (no
more an old VCR tape of aerobic dancing!), and using apps like Polar Team,
Coach Notes, and Ubersense Coach that he promotes incorporating into the PE
learning and lessons. This amazing website has an ongoing blog, podcasts and
global workshops offered all on how to integrate technology and PE together! A
site that I will be using in my future career of a Health and Physical
Education teacher!
