LAST BLOG POST

Its hard to believe that I will be student teaching in just a months time.   I have waited so long for this to finally come and now that it is here I am scared to death.  I think one of the hardest things to do will be to remember everything i have learned and apply it to my teaching.  This class has helped a lot to generate more ideas of things that I can use in my teaching.
I think one thing that I really learned from this class is to take into account the diversity of your students.  Especially students who might be poor and not able to meet all of my dress requirements.  I dont yet have a solid solution, but this class has made me think about the problem and try to come up with ideas which I think is important.  Also I think that its important to include students who might have physical or mental disabilities and how I am going to accommodate them since Physical Education should be a big part of their curriculum as well.  I think its important to include students to the fullest and modify activities so that they are never sitting out and are able to participate as much as the other students.
I think digital literacy is a huge part of our society today and that it should almost be a requirement to incorporate it into your classroom.  Whether it is having students use it in the classroom or simply telling them programs or apps to try out on their own.  And in physical education it is becoming more common for classes to get heart rate monitors or pedometers.  I think that it is important for students to have these as a form of feedback besides what the teacher is seeing.  They are continuous resources for feedback and students can monitor their own activity.
I will likely have different literary sources that are on hand that I can recommend for students to read for motivation or for enjoyment.  I dont think that I will have it as an assignment since P.E. generally is about movement and not book reports.  But I think it is important for my students to know that if they are curious about different activities or sports that there are a number of resources that they can check out and learn more about.
I will use a lot more ideas from class if I teach health since it is more textbook and vocabulary related.   I think that health is a little harder to keep the attention of the students and  I will need to have a lot of stories that relate as well as hands on activities to build background knowledge.

SELF SELECTED PROJECT

I chose to do the digital text project.  Going into this project I had several different ideas of what to do to represent digital text.  As I started, I realized how hard it might be to use some of these awesome programs in your class.  Some you have to have downloaded on the computers (which some kids might not even have computers at home, or might not be allowed to download stuff onto their computers), and even if you had a computer lab with the programs already downloaded many of these programs demand a lot of time for the learning curve as well as time invested in downloading content for your project.  I came across a program called Prezi.  Prezi is pretty  much a power point presentation with a little more zing to it.  Probably one of the coolest things that I have ever come across.  I forgot about my students for awhile and thought of all the different ways and possibilities that I could use it in my presentations and teaching.  It does not cost anything and requires no downloading which is fantastic.  You are able to insert pictures and videos easily without any trouble and you don't even need to leave the website to access them.

With students I think that they would respond very well to Prezi.  I think that they would have a lot of fun with the program.  I think it would be a good idea to reserve the computer lab for two days and have the students work on their own presentations.  You could assign out topics that you had gone over for the entire semester, or break it into smaller topics that maybe you had just covered in the unit.  Also it might be a good way to generate some background knowledge if you are going into a unit and want the students to gain some knowledge on their own before you start on a unit.  I was remembering that there are often restrictions on school computers that block a lot of websites, and I figured that if that was the case students could simply use their text books for information and if it is a background knowledge activity then students could have complete presentations on what they think the topic is and their ideas and questions about it.  The best part about Prezi is that it is saved on the internet and you dont have to be on the same computer you made it on to view it.  They could make their presentations in the computer lab and present it in class on the class computer.

Some problems that I can see happening with Prezi is students not understanding how to work it.  I think that if I had two class days that students could get the hang of it and put together a basic presentation.  Another problem (which is a problem with most digital texts) is that its not 100% proof that it is going to work.  So many things can go wrong such as it not being saved, it not transferring, etc. and you have to be prepared to be a little relaxed on deadlines with students when things like that happen.  But I think that Prezi makes things pretty much 99% proof because it saves everything for you and again, you can access it from anywhere!  It would be very easy to use this often since I do not think that students would get bored with it.  It is a good way to get information across in a creative way.

I did a Prezi on Illegal Drugs and I had a blast doing it.  Seriously is one of the coolest things I have had as a teaching tool and I am super excited to use it.  This is the URL to view it.


http://prezi.com/user/mp-eptrq4yrf/

POST 5

So for another class we were assigned to mess around with the program Picasa.  I had heard of the program before but while playing around with it I discovered how awesome it is.  Within  ten minutes I had a mash up of photos I had taken throughout a span of a couple of years.  I thought that this would be a really cool program to use with your students in class.  It would be a super easy way for them to make posters or something topic related that you assigned in class.  It also would be a super fun assignment and would allow for a lot of creativity.  Also to go along with the assignment for this other class we were to post our creations on our blogs as well as a google picture website.  Its part of your gmail or google account and you can post pictures and stuff that you want and list the people you want specifically to see it or even make it available to the public.  I thought this would be a fantastic and easy way to assign something and have students post it on their goolge account or blog for you to grade.  This would reduce paper and printing hassles as well as lots of papers for you to grade as a teacher.  You would simply just sign on and check it out and give a grade.  Of course you would probably have to give the students computer lab time at school since not everyone has access to computer and the internet.  I think digital literacy is a super awesome thing and that as teachers we should make ourselves aware of all the possibilities it brings.  I think most lessons should be enhanced with some sort of digital literacy.

PICASA ASSIGNMENT

 I love fishing and the biggest fish in Utah are at Strawberry Lake

 Went to Yellowstone this summer and saw my first grizzly bear

Went to Moab for fall break and biked it up

POST 4

     I wouldnt classify myself as an awesome reader.  I think that on a scale from one to ten I am about a 7.  I think most of this is because usually what I am forced to read does not interest me and therefore I read it very slowly and cannot concentrate on the content because my brain is thinking the entire time, "no one talks like this, so why are they writing like this."  Generally its textbook or a journal I am force feeding myself for a class assignment.
      I dont remember enjoying reading stories as a kid as much as I liked the competition of how many pages I could read compared to the other kids in class.   Sophomore year of high school however ignited my interest in some of the more classical books.  I enjoyed having discussion of deeper meaning and symbolism in class guided by the teacher.  I enjoyed trying to find the alternate meaning behind the words of the author.  This was brought to an abrupt halt when I started my Jr year of high school and the book "heart of darkness".  I am pretty sure that I am one out of two people in the class that actually read the book and not the spark notes including the teacher.  I lost interest trying to discern meaning on my own, followed the crowd, and did excellent on my books exams thanks to spark notes.  It wasnt until college that I found a true appreciation for reading.  I had sprained my ankle badly and was unable to run on it and had to use the elliptical machine.  I found this machine to be extremely boring.  To fight off my boredom I grabbed the first book I could find and it was "The Good Earth".   It was not the most exciting book but it definitely kept my interest and I found that I wasnt reading so I could work out, I was working out so I could read.  Now that my ankle is healed I moved back to the treadmill but have still continued to read on my own for enjoyment.  Now that I am at the end of this blog post I realize that was an awful long way to simply state that I use to not like reading but now I do.  Thanks.

BLOG POST 3

In class we have been talking a lot about writing, and it has reminded me how much I hate writing.  I have been trying to remember where my hatred started and I think it was 6th grade.  I had to write a paper on panda bears, and I thought the paper was kick A but when the teacher started to hand papers back she didnt have mine.  When I asked her where mine had gone she said, "oh I must have lost it." And then she gave me an A.  After that I think that I lost any interest in writing.  At least writing research papers.  I dont think that I had a problem with short stories that were purely creative writing, but after a certain grade teachers seem to think that the only effective writing is done with hours of research.  Anyway, I guess my advice to all the english majors becoming teachers out there is not to lose your students paper, and if you do, simply ask for another copy instead of giving the A (which I am sure I would have gotten anyway cause my paper rocked.).

SCED POST # 2

I have been thinking about literacy and how to implement it into a physical education class that is based on movement and activity.  There usually is no need for a text book and the only real literacy that will be transferred will be instruction from me to my students on cues how to do certain skills. I was trying to think of other ways of how literacy will be involved in my class and I came up with another.  I realized that a big part of physical education is enjoyment so that the students will continue to be physically active.  And if literacy can be anything that is transmitting information from one source to another, evaluating my students attitudes towards certain activities would serve as a form of literacy.  I will need to monitor and change my teaching strategies for each class that comes and the only way to successfully do that is to adjust to my students needs and interests.