Gamification is the process of adding game-like elements to something in order to encourage participation. I believe that game-based learning is just that - adding fun, yet challenging game like qualities to a traditional learning environment in order to increase participation, collaboration, and problem solving skills.
Being a physical education teacher I already utilize the game-based learning technique, but in a different way. Instead of using online games I use physical games. Games that get my students up and moving, but still games that encourage collaboration, problem solving, and participation. For example we play a game called Lava and in this game you and your team has to move through the gym together only using the provided equipment and they all must make it in order to get the reward at the end. Throughout this game students are working together and collaborating on how to solve the problem of making it across the lava, and it is fun they don't even realize how hard they are working until the end. Now even though I obviously lean toward using physical games over computer based games I do think there is a place for online games in my classroom. Utilizing a game to learn about nutrition, anatomy or even mental health would make a difference in their learning. I love the idea of Jane McGonigal presented about creating a game about an oil shortage, and I wonder if a fitness and health related game could be created to help "fix" our growing obesity problem. I'm excited to tryout some of the new learning tools and truly incorporate game-based learning into my teaching practices.
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I attempted to use both EdPuzzle and Adobe Spark for my flipped lesson plan. I also explored Jing, flipgrid and iMovie; all of which I would like to attempt to use in the future. EdPuzzle I liked because you could easily find videos to use in a classroom setting, you could record your own voice into the video, and I especially liked that you are able to embed quizzes into the video to ensure your students are not only understanding the information but also paying attention. I want to play more with it and with it's ability to link to google classroom. One thing that did not work for me about EdPuzzle was not being able to add slides or text to the videos. That made it a little more difficult to potentially give instruction for a flipped class, but when using this in another context I think it would be very useful.
I ended up using Adobe Spark for my flipped lesson because it was so user friendly. The directions on how to create the video were easy to follow and I especially like how it gives you reminders to keep you audio short. I also really liked how, unlike tools like screencastify, you could break up our up your audio into slides. That way if I messed up I didn't have to record the entire presentation over again, but just a small portion. The music options were great, as well as the easy access to images different themes. And, lastly, it was easy to download the video and create a link. The only complaint I had about Adobe Spark was that it did not let you embed a video or a website link. I will definitely utilize this tool more in both a flipped class and traditional class. I took some time to look through a couple #iste18 posts on twitter and there were a couple things that stood out to me. First was the digital citizenship poster posted by Wanda Terral - personally, I thought it was a good visual aide with a lot of simplified information. I think it would be a good poster to have in a classroom for students to look at.
The second thing that caught my attention was something that Katie Martin's post that said "A lot of time teachers want to give you a blueprint that we follow step by step but my best teachers gave me tools and support to create meaningful change." -- Marely Rosario said that during a student panel. I have to say well said Ms. Rosario. I think as we grow as and develop as educators students can be our best teachers. I especially like that she said teachers gave me tools and support - this is important to do in a classroom, as you are giving your student's life-long skills. When they get into the "real world" they aren't going to have everything laid our for them they are going to need problem solving tools and support from those around them to get the job done. The conference looks really engaging and I will continue to watch throughout the week. I honestly hope that one day I might have the opportunity to attend. Google Forms are a fantastic resource to use in the classroom and for coaching. It like that you can make the the form password protected so that say only first period could access the first period form. It makes it easy to not only collect information, such as names and emails, but it is an easy way to do a progress check or quiz. You can design your form to ask multiple types of questions from short answer, to liner scale, to multiple choice. I do use them mostly as a quick progress check or exit ticket to see if there is something I need to review in the following class or if i need to target a specific student so they do not fall behind.
Usually I do performance assessments, but they are all teacher observations. So in the future I'm also thinking of utilizing google forms as a way for my students to do a self-assessment on a skill or technique that we learned about in class. That ways I can use both set of information/data to give the student a final grade. Studies also show that is beneficial for athletes, or in this case students, to reflect upon their performance of a specific skill and pick out what they can improve on, so a self-assessment would also work as a great learning tool. Google Forms is an extremely easy tool to use and I love that it provides you with data after the form is submitted. I foresee myself utilizing this tool a lot more. I used google forms as a pretest and post-test during my action research and I think that it was really beneficial to see if my student learned anything from using the fitness app. That might be the best use for my particular situation as well. It might also be useful as a get-to-know you survey or even a "needs" survey. I looked through multiple twitter chats and settled on #pechat. It was great look through so many different PE ideas from so many different people. I learned about a couple different rainy day activities and different projects that would be good learning tools. I liked that everyone was so willing to share and learn from each other. I think I could find some great information to help me with my capstone project.
Social media is a very useful tool for professional growth, development, and teacher collaboration. Teacher collaboration is a great use of social media as well. I think it's fantastic that you can develop a professional relationship with teachers from another state and have the ability to converse and collaborate on ideas.
I firmly believe that I will always need to learn and grow as a teacher and that their is always room for improvement. Health and fitness are forever changing and developing and social media is a great place to attain new ideas and projects for students. One does need to be aware that not all the information out there is accurate and a project may not work with your group of students, but creatively altering it to fit your population is half the fun. As a coach I have come across and been shown, by other concerned athletes, inappropriate posts made by a student-athletes outside of the school. My response to the post would depend on the severity of the post, but I would do the same thing as both coach and teacher. So depending on the severity of the post, I would either have a private discussion with the student much like the one described in the article. I would describe even though your social media is a way of self-expression it is still public, so first if you wouldn't say it to someone's face it should be posted and think of not only how your post might effect someone, but would you want a future college coach or employer to see that. What first impression does that post leave you with? I would want to help them understand the consequences a few little words can have and how public social media really is. If the post was more sever, hurtful, or recurring I would involve parents and the necessary administration. I do like that when Patrick Larkin was a principle he brought together all of the juniors and seniors and school-wide discussion about the negative effects social media can have. I think this conversation is important to have with young people. Google Forms
We might have briefly discussed google forms in a prior class, but i used them for the first time as both a short summative assessment and as an quick exit ticket or formative assessment. This tool is a fantastic tool especially when used as a formative assessment tool as it averages and compares a classes results so that at a quick glance you as the teacher would be able to see if and what you need to re-teach OR if only one or two students needed extra help making sense of the content. How to Use:
It only took me about an hour over-all playing with the tool to become proficient. This is a great tool, but I do see it's weakness being that it would be easy for students to potentially google the answers as they filled it out. Other than that I see more strengths than weaknesses in this tool. After reviewing the Common sense Media and the KQED resources I am relieved at how many resources are out there. Everyone understands that given the large amount of curriculum we teach throughout the year it is difficult to entertain the idea of adding another content piece, but it is necessary to teach both digital literacy and digital citizenship. Digital literacy and digital citizenship go hand in hand and incorporating them into one's teaching practice is almost essential.
Digital Literacy is seems to boil down to using technology to discover, research, evaluate, create, and communicate learned skills. Common Sense Media had a lot of simple resources to help kids spot fake news and decide weather or not an article is credible. This is important to teach in health and physical education; there is a lot of information about there about both. How to get skinny 101, best way to build those muscle, how to get that summer bod in 2 weeks - these are just some of the titles of articles out there that are probably not credible but easily accessible and teaching my students how to spot the facts vs myths is important. As I stated earlier incorporating digital literacy is essential. I think the best way to begin teaching it is in the beginning of the year when we are establishing classroom expectations and guidelines. Once these are established practices within my classroom is will become easy to re-teach the expectations every six weeks when we get new students (side note: being a continuation/credit recovery school we have class changes, graduations, and new students every grading period, which is about every six weeks). According to Common Sense Education the average teen, 10-12th grade, spends on average NINE hours using digital media either to read, listen to music, play games, watch videos, and practicing digital citizenship. Digital Citizenship is the ability to think critically, behave safely, and participate responsibly in the digital world. A task that is hard to do while your frontal lobe, meaning the area in the brain where decision making takes place, is still developing.
I am a teacher at a continuation high school where kids are working time to graduate either early, on time, or if they needed a tad more time even a little late. These young adults are usually already working, but want to move up or have dreams of the "next chapter", weather that be starting college or starting a career most don't understand how or why their digital citizenship can effect that. The New York Times article, "How to Keep your College Admissions Offer: Start with Digital Literacy", sums it up perfectly when it describes how a young man was hired over another equally qualified candidate simply because his online profile was cleaner. My students might really relate to this story as do begin to move into that next chapter of their lives. I think my students would also relate to how the Nine P's explained digital citizenship. Young adults are always on social media posting photographs, stories, and opinions; it's an easy way for them express themselves and to assert their independence. What they might not think about is private information getting out through a photo just because you can see a street sign or that private doesn't mean that it's actually private. They are creating a personal brand that will follow them throughout adulthood. Digital Citizenship is very important should be intertwined in all 21st century learning, especially when technology is learned, but i have to knowledge the difficulty of creating and implementing separate lessons to address it. It's already difficult to meet standards and move through the content; instructional minutes are precious. Though it might be difficult to implement this within my physical education and health class we do have an class we call Advisory: Career and College Readiness (CCR). This class allows us to check in with our students both personally and academically this would be the perfect place to introduce and teach about digital citizenship. The school councilor and I have already disgusted utilizing the lessons from Google's Be Internet Awesome and incorporating it with the other career and college readiness lesson we have in place. The The idea of competency-based learning is great! Students would be to personalize their learning and be able to move through the education as they master the skills rather than allowing them to fall behind because you need to move on for the rest of the class. There are many educational tech tools which can support competency-based learning; for example a teacher could utilize screen castify to create a short workshop to teach the skill. Students would be able to take notes and complete the skill/task at their own pace. Others tools could include preze, google classroom, workshops, and excel, ext.
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