I randomly modified an activity in class the other day to get students to post their answers into a google spreadsheet that all students could simultaneously access and modify. (I have posted a live view of a brief section of the students adding their data). This was initially going to be completed as a table in their workbooks.

The task involved students researching a certain food and looking for both positive and negative information about the specific food. They then had to express their opinion on what place that food should take in a balanced diet.

I thought overall the activity was worthwhile and provided some interesting moments. The students overall seemed to enjoy sharing their information in this way and were very engaged throughout. They researched swiftly to be able to enter something into the spreadsheet and found it useful not to have to write it all out but to be able to read the other area that people had completed.

Then came the fun and games – one student posted a question ‘what is soy?’ to try and clarify what soy actually is, and this seemed to open the flood gates into random postings. This question in itself was great and it was good that a students was able to ask a question in this forum to be clarified. A few short minutes later though students were posting all sorts of random comments into the spreadsheet and I ended up locking them out as it stopped being productive and we had enough information to being with our next task. 

Did the random postings begin because they had finished their work and were passing time or is this the way they are used to using such technologies and forums?? I am keen to try something similar again to see the way the activity develops and see if the tool proves a benefit or distraction and look at some ways to ensure learning remains the focus of the activity.

took this screenshot with jing – great little screen capturing tool!

I came across this winning video from tropfest today and it really stopped me in my tracks and made me think. Worth watching all the way through.

The verdict: works well and plenty of potential with this one!!!

I finally got around to having a go at setting up interactive whiteboard using a nintendo wii controller and a homemade infrared light. I stumbled across a presentation on TED talks by Johnny Lee who developed a program to enable the wiimote to interact with the light source and projection of the computer screen to effectively create a very cheap interactive whiteboard. When I noticed that fellow PDHPE teacher Ben Jones had done this it got me into gear to have a go.

Not being handy at all I followed these directions to create the infrared pen and managed to get it all up and running. If I could solder it would have halved the time it took me but a good hour or so and I was done!!

Then I just downloaded the program to read the wiimote on the macbook and I was away. I had the kids playing a few games on the wiggles website which they loved and had a little play around myself. I Will play around with this some more in the near future and hopefully get back with some ways I have integrated this into the classroom.

There is loads of information out there on the wiimote intereactive whiteboard and a great starting site is www.wiimoteproject.com. Ben Jones’s video is also a great insight into potential uses.

I have been enjoying my journey on the web 2.0 path, but have really looked forward to finding other teachers using the technologies in meaningful and relevant ways in the PDHPE learning area. I was very excited to come across Ben Jones’s work, who is leading the way in how to implement these technologies for both personal professional development and also in the classroom to enhance student learning. Check out this great video Ben created about using a wii remote to create an intereactive whiteboard at a cost of $55.

I am sure there are lots of other PDHPE Teachers doing great work also but my searching has not uncovered them as yet. I am sure I will come across more and more teachers utilising these tools over the next few years and then I think the real benefits of web 2.0 will come through with a larger range of teachers with common goals using and sharing with one another. Exciting times ahead!!

Our ICT coordinator, John Coppola came into our class the other day and put me on the spot to talk about what we were doing with our class blog and the video is below. I wrote an entry just the other day about this so here is the class in action!!

I’m not all that comfortable being on camera and don’t really like publishing it on here but the purpose of me blogging is for reflection and sharing so I have to get over my own issues and put it out there. I also like the idea of an open classroom where we share what we do in our classrooms and open it up for discussion so I am trying to back that up in practice.  

As always the words don’t seem to come out just as I would like and it is all much clearer in my head but articulating what I do and think is something I definitely need to work on so this is a start. The key element I missed talking about was the students being able to collaborate and use each others work to develop their own understanding which is very useful in a competency based course like sport coaching. 

I am currently in the very early stages of having a few of my classes creating their own blogs. Some early lessons and initial reactions are as follows. Check out the Sport Coaching blog as an example.

1. It is worth spending a lesson or two purely on the technical side of things to get the students skilled up in how to set up and manage their own blog. Initially it seemed quite cumbersome to get students to use their blogs and they found them difficult to use. In a very short space of time, and after some brief technical guidance they have picked them up and enjoy using them a lot more now. We did a little technical work to get them set up but I would spend a little more time next time around to ensure they had the basics covered.

2. Articulate the purpose of using the blog – often we have reasons for wanting to use certain techniques or tools and if students are aware of those reasons it can become more meaningful to them. Explaining to the students why we are using this method (to share our ideas and work with each other and to archive our learning and create a useful learning resource) made sense to them and seemed to help them focus and put energy into it. 

3. It gets much easier after the initial set up period – It was quite frustrating initially for myself as I had expected students to pick it up much easier, and frustrating for the students because I clearly had not given them enough guidance. Even so we managed to work through it and it has become much easier now that they have learnt how to use their blogs more effectively.

4. Digital natives?? – while this generation is regularly referred to as digital natives who operate seemlessly in this environment, I have found this to be a gross generalisation. A lot of students have very few skills and with technology and very limited experience and while they are generally eager and open to learn don’t assume that they are all just going to pick it up quickly and are naturals with technology. Clear, explicit instructions and guidance is required.

5. Train up/utilise student helpers – Trying to teach and answer every students questions is ineffective and will waste a lot of time. Once students had completed each part of the set up they were recruited as helpers and went around to help other students that had questions or were having difficulty. Gave me a lot more time to keep on top of everything and keep everyone involved. 

I have posted previously about youtube videos and how I am a big fan of it as a resource. I noticed recently that a really good video has been taken off and this is one of the downfalls of this service – that the videos can be removed by those who originally post them. A way around this is to download the videos and keep them in case they are removed. Downloading can also be helpful if you plan to use the videos in class and the internet is down or unavailable. I have played around with lots of ways to download youtube videos so thought I would put a few of the easiest ways I have found.

2. Unplug - this one is a firefox add on and presents itself as a little fish that is on your toolbar. When you are on the page with the video you want you simply click on the fish and it shows you all the files on the page that can be downloaded. Only problem with this way (and most other ways I have come across) is that it will only download it as an .flv file which is not as versatile as .mp4 format. You need to have a program to run the .flv files. Which makes the process a little cluncky. SWF & FLV PLayer is the one I use to play these files.

3. Video Downloader - another firefox add on that will download the videos in .flv format. The link provided has a good explanation of how this one works but is essentially very similar to Unplug.

4. Video Download x – is a web-based downloader which means you do not have to download any software etc. I have found that the quality of the downloads is not quite as good as the other methods but still useful if the others are not workable for any reason.There are a lot more applications out there that do the same job. Let me know if you find any that should be on the list!!

As our school pushes forward with a 1:1 laptop program in 2008, i am rushing to get my head around the place of ICT in the area of PDHPE. The laptop program has huge potential for us to engage students in quality learning experiences that are relevant and meaningful to our students. It offers the opportunity to differentiate learning for students in ways that were previously unavailable and engage students who struggle to motivate themselves with traditional teaching strategies. It will enable us to continue to utilise the practices and strategies that have proven successful for us while providing scope for a whole a new range learning experiences that have only recently become available to us.

If all we do is use the laptops to do what we have previously done then we are doing a great disservice to what the laptops are capable of. For example, if we all we get students to do is type their answers rather than write them then we achieve nothing besides improving their typing skills at the expense of their writing skills. Quality teaching practise is vital in the success of this program.

PDHPE is a unique subject area in the sense that our focus on encouraging students to lead healthy active lifestyles requires interaction in the classroom and some may argue laptops may inhibit the environment required to learn a lot of the knowledge and skills required.

The obesity epidemic has largely been atributed to poor nutrition and a decrease in physical activity and part of this decrease in physical activity could be related to an increase in time students spend watching popular media and the use of computer related technologies. It is ironic that we shall be encouraging the use of this technology to develop their health literacy, possibly at the expense students enagaging in other activities that improve their social and physical health. This needs consideration, however i believe that the we can have the ‘best of both worlds’. Through quality education we can encourage a more active and healthy lifestyle while using the technology in a positive way to help educate students.

I am a big fan of the google applications and one that I am playing around with the moment is google forms. It is aligned with google spreadsheets (similar to excel) and basically allows you to create forms or surveys that can be completed online and the results are automatically entered into a spreadsheet. The surveys are very user friendly to create and they give you a variety of question styles that you can ask including multiple choice, check box, paragragh & drop down list. At the moment we are completing a physical activity and nutrition survey of our 7-10 students and also a survey of their thoughts and opinion of our pdhpe lessons.

When you are surveying 700+ students it is a huge time saver on data entry and gives us some great feedback. For those who prefer using excel you can copy and paste the data straight into excel which is a great function also.

I read an interesting blog post the other day that talked about some of the ramifications of our online presence – making kids googlable. It talks amongst other things about about employers searching online for information on potential employees and the need to make our students aware of this and to also build an online presence that may advantage them. There is scope to address this in our Year 10 Careers unit and I think students would gain a lot from focusing their attention on the issue and thinking through how this could affect them. Some thinking to do here on how best to address this but something I can see as being very worthwhile.

This is another cool mind mapping tool (mindomo, inspiration etc) that is probably the most simple of all to use. If you are after a program that takes next to no instruction time to use then this one is well worth considering!!! bubbl.us

I often have students check up on the meaning of words in class or for homework if we are unable to define the meaning in class. Next time this situation pops up I am going to show them this neat little tool which is basically a dictionary and thesaurus that presents information in a very visual form.The creators description of this tool: Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary — Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.  Great little tool for visual learners.

 Getting across complex ideas in a simple manner is a something good teachers always seem to be able to do and I just happened to stumble on some really good videos on youtube that do that with a few web 2.0 tools. The videos are made by lee lefever and the ones I found particularly useful were on blogs, RSS & social bookmarking (del.icio.us).  I think the videos will be beneficial when introducing students to these as they do a good job of explaining the uses and benefits of each tool over traditional ways of doing things.  (The RSS and Social bookmarking vidoes can be found in the sidebar after clicking on the above link- I have also included them in posts below).

 del.icio.us/bmcallis
This is a great site which has great potential for sharing information and resources and is designed to encourage networking and collaboration. It is basically an online bookmarking site where you can save all the internet links you have found useful and it allows you to apply ‘tags’ to help organise all the different links you find.The part I like best is that you are able to search for and view other people’s links and share links with them. You are able to add people to your network which gives you quick and easy access to their bookmarks by placing them in your sidebar.Over time, if you link up with a group of teachers from your subject area you can share resources in a really simple and effective way. I have stumbled on lots of great sits through checking what people in my network are looking at. Would be great to see lots more PDHPE teachers using this!!!  
 

This looks like a handy little application for catching footage of what you are doing on your screen and being able to export it as a movie file. This has lots of uses in creating tutorial style files for students and sharing hints and tips on the way to do things. Best thing is it is free and available to anyone with access to the internet.http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/