Thinking "Outside the Field"

I was so excited and honored when Patrick Higgins invited me to be an author on Tech Dossier. I have just recently begun to explore the world of Web 2.0, and the reason this has occurred is because Patrick has been so willing to introduce this world to me and our district. Another huge excitement and positive push to become more involved with technology has been the program for the Tablet PC's. Having my own Tablet PC has really given me the freedom to explore new avenues as an educator.

I am a Health and Physical Education teacher at the high school and I have really been trying to move my thoughts and discipline into this fast-moving computer age. My field is extremely health and wellness oriented. Health is something that is changing everyday, and it is difficult to keep up with. Just this past week the "MRSA" virus has taken over the media, and our high school has had to create a plan of action to avoid this virus from entering our school. Wellness is an area that my colleagues and I have to really work at to get students involved. Getting our students, and our nation to understand the importance of keeping our bodies in good physical condition can really be a challenge.

In this day and age, students are more sedentary than ever. It is difficult to motivate the majority of our nations' student population to step away from our electronic world and step into a world that will strengthen their hearts. There is significant empirical evidence that students' sedentary lifestyle and poor eating habits are dramatically affecting their quality of life.

Barry Bachenheimer is an adjunct professor at Montclair State University. One of his students, who's name was not given, created this video below. I wanted people to see it because I think it demonstrates the empirical data well, and puts our nations' health issues into perspective.





It is important to keep our students' on a healthy track in life, so that they can meet their potential in all the other important aspects of life. We as educators have a captured audience. I would like to try to bring technology into my "field", and get the most out of that captured audience. I am hoping, by getting my thoughts out there, people will see the importance of my discipline, and help contribute to making it more of a priority.

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Fitness Friday

Our department has come up with the idea of having every Friday be a "Fitness Friday". Each Friday we take all our PE classes to the track, and the students run the half-mile. Their goal is to be consistent or improve their times. Their times are based on the first time they ran it, which was for the Presidential test. They are allowed to be within 30 seconds of this time. It can be 30 seconds slower, or 30 seconds faster, but it must be within this time frame in order for them to maintain their effort and participation grade. Fitness Friday is run during first marking period, and during fourth marking period.

I teach freshman, and I am pleasantly surprised at their level of motivation and effort to try to be consistent or improve their times. It is refreshing to see them work so hard and see their level of excitement when they lower their time!

I record the students' results each time we do complete the event. I have a lot of empirical data that could really be used to mark the level of improvement or decline for each student. I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to where or what I can do with all of this data? Should I be entering it into a computer program that generates a graph for each student? Should the information be sent to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for their statistical analysis? If anyone has any information on this matter, I would greatly appreciate some direction or suggestions.



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Half-Mile in the Fall

Here are my students preparing to run the half-mile. They run the half-mile every Friday. It was particularly beautiful with the fall foliage in the backdrop.

Is PE important?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBfJeO_dGu0



This video gives us a glimpse into the importance of Physical Education and Health. We need to get everyone "on board" and to help people understand the impact that this educational discipline could have on all of our lives.

Sketchcast Message

Patrick Higgins introduced this new website, Sketchcast, during our in-service yesterday, so I thought I would play around with it. Here is what I came up with.



It seems like this can be a way to get a point across with a drawing and you can add voice to it. I did not get as far as adding voice to it yet, but will work on that aspect.

Directions

Earlier this year many faculty members were able to sign up and receive a Tablet PC. It has been a gift to my education process, and in turn, has helped me become a more innovative and creative teacher.

The direction that our PE program would like to head is one that involves all of our students in an activity that they enjoy doing AND are working their cardiovascular endurance. Today, while working with Patrick Higgins, he showed me a link to a video that shows a PE class involved in an activity. It is exactly the direction I would love to see our PE program head in.
Below is the link to the video clip that Patrick sent me. Take a look at it to see where PE programs of the present are:

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6995365.stm

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After viewing this clip, you can see that it involves many students, creates a cardiovascular workout, AND they are enjoying what they are doing. It is wonderful to see this type of activity occurring. Obviously, this system is very expensive.

We have no problem investing needed money into the academic portion of our students, wouldn't it be nice if we were to invest this type of money into our students' physical health.