Week 9

Field Experience

When I went to my practicum this week the students went to physical education in the afternoon. They didn’t go outside to play in the jungle gym due to the dreadful weather. Instead the students stayed inside the gymnasium and to my surprise, played video games. These weren’t any normal games where the children were sitting down. They had the “move” systems where they were moving around while playing the game. This is the new technology that video games recently came out with. They had the Wii and xbox360 systems which are fairly new. There were 5 different stations so students weren’t sitting around and watching. They were always engaged and playing a different game while being active. I was surprised they had this in the school because it definitely costs a lot of money and most often the budget for schools will go to the main subjects such as ELA or math. It was really enjoyable watching the children use technology in their physical education class because it looked like they were enjoying it!

Technical Skills

A new technical skill that I recently learned was how to create my own QR code. I went to http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ and it allowed me to create my own code. This is great because it can be integrated into teaching to show the concept of how scanning and codes are. I created a code for my blog. This is good because the parents of the students will have access to any future information about the class and will be able to prep their child.

Weekly Reading

The article I read came from eschoolnews.com and it was about iPads being used in physical education classes in Honolulu. Students would do active things such as tumbling and moving around. While half the class was doing this, the other half was filming their partner with the iPads. The students then reverse roles so everyone has the opportunity to use the iPads. They believe it keeps the children more on task. It’s great because iPads are like portable computers and Pc’s aren’t mobile like iPads are. The videos can be sent to the computer through email very easily. All students will have access to their video on a computer after it is sent.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/10/25/school-fires-up-ipads-to-fine-tune-phys-ed-skills/2/?