Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Marvel and Slideshare

Both very interesting sites. Marvel was very in depth and I can see how much of a benefit it would be to all of us including my own kids with their homework and projects. The data base is so large and continues to grow. Plus the many links and other jump offs that can take you all over in search of content that you require.

Slideshare reminds me of Delicious which allows me to bookmark all of my favorites from work to personal sites. Right now I use my Delicious account a few times each week and continue to add to it as I come across any new sites that I may want to go back to at some point. Will I use Slideshare - only time will tell as I continue to expand my options yet stay in control.

Thanks

The Count Down

I have enjoyed the course but ready to be finished up. Between the school day and home life - things are far too busy. We are also in the process of getting 1st quarter progress reports out. This task has taken a very long time since there were some hang ups with the "canned" comments along with now keeping up with our grading weekly on I-Campus. I am finding that it does take time to work out the bugs and become familiar with the new system. Yes technology is great - but at times I do feel that it does create more work initially especially in the set up phase of something new.

Last of all - it would be great to see any and all Mahoney communication all online. This would save paper, allow all of us to get caught up with what all teams are doing, and provide us with an ongoing record of all team's notes.

Thanks

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Wiki Day

As we learn about Wiki's today we did post on the group wiki on "what went well and what didn't" up to this point. At this time the school year is about one month old. We seem to be off to a great start so far. What has gone well: I would say the increased effort on building relationships with more students. We want students to come down to phys ed class and be relaxed so they can enjoy themselves yet learn at the same time. What has not gone well: I feel that there is a break in the communication between teams at this time. I do think that many of us may feel over extended and with the NECAP testing coming up soon - we are multi-tasking in every way possible. But I do feel this should pass as we mover further into the school year and we become much more comfortable with our day to day activities and tasks.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Mid-September Reflections

Well it is mid September already and classes are under way. As I sat here at the end of August I had all sorts of ideas to intro to some of my 7th and 8th grade classes. But now as we are now working through the final few fitness assessments - it is becoming more of a challenge as to how and when I introduce some of my ideas. A few issues:
  1. Time - This is limited to 40minutes per day every other day
  2. The students need to move and exercise as much as possible
  3. It goes against my personal beliefs to have them do seat time instead of physical activity
  4. Getting students to buy into technology in phys ed
Just a few stumbling blocks that do present a challenge for me. I will slowly work through as the year progresses though.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Day 4 Thoughts and Goals

So day 4 and I finally have some goals in mind(narrowing down of my long list). I am going to set up google accounts for the remaining RA team members. The hope is that we use google docs to record our minutes from team meetings. Then to develop a blog for the team that we all own. Then each day every teacher takes 3-5 minutes to post an update on how the day went. This allows us to communicate with the other teachers, students and parents as well. Right now I still go back and forth as to what program to use: either Blogger or Wordpress Blogger is easier but Wordpress offers much more in terms of tools and functions.

So now to set up accounts!!!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Social Bookmarks

So after some time setting up some of my favorites on Delicious it is really great now to have an online data base to access when ever and where ever. I also like the ability to make it private or public. A great way to share with students and/or colleges all or just some of your favorites.

Also just set up a new blog on wordpress that will be for our Related Arts Team. I am hoping that each teacher will take 2-5 minutes each day to post on how the day went. We are often wondering what other teams/teachers are doing. This should help communicate that aspect of our day. We can also set up links to any individual teacher's site/blog or even start posting student homework as well.

The sky is the limit in terms of what and how far we can go with taking technology into more areas of our teaching.

Day 3 Update

Well day 3 of 4 days this week. I have really liked the flexibility to work on a variety of task yet in our own direction so we can build up resources for the school year ahead. For today:
  1. Continue to develop more web tools that could possibly help me as a teacher
  2. Start to work more on my new school laptop today
  3. Contemplate starting a related arts blog with the goal of short daily updates from each teacher - lofty maybe, but attainable for sure.
  4. Start to update my Wordpress blog for Mahoney PE

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Update!!!

So at this point I see myself updating the Mahoney PE site and then linking that to my school gmail account. Plus setting up my RSS with the site as well. My next step will be how do I then apply this in my classes(start with maybe the 8th grade). Our classes are limited in terms of time since they are only 40 minutes each and we meet every other day. Do I allow class time or assign a few tasks as homework? Not sure on this one - any thoughts from from my colleges?

Building My RSS

As I build my RSS with related sites/blogs for teaching, I am finding how easy it will be to use the sites in class or share with students. A great tool when dealing with multiple users and/or computers. Then seeing how I can set up specific topic folders will just continue making it so much easier and efficient to access information.

Day 2

As I worked on my laptop last night I found myself using a very different mind set from how and what I usually did when either working or just surfing the web. After yesterday's first class I ended up discussing with my wife and son how the internet can be used ideally to benefit our students. My wife suggested that ideally students can become higher level critical thinkers as they learn how to weave in, out and around the vast amount of information that is available to us. My son said that when he finds a science site that he will compare what he finds to other sites that he knows are valid. It actually ended up being a great discussion with a 13 year old who most of the time dislikes school yet who is so motivated to search our science projects that are well beyond his grade level.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Mahoney Phys Ed Blog/Site

This address below is one that I started last year but fell behind in keeping up from day to day. Taking this class along with the start of the school year will provide me with the motivation to get started again. Please feel free to check out my site and send me some feedback.

http://mahoneype.wordpress.com/

Initial Blog Hunt

As I dug through the infinite number of educational blogs I found myself within the first 60seconds either staying at the site or closing it out and moving on to another site. What made me stay or move away? It was usually the title and content. I find myself looking for the types of blogs that are "outside the box" or what I like to refer to as a "paradigm shift" in education. My feeling after 20years in teaching is that we tend to be losing kids who have some incredible talents yet go through school not being able to find and develop those talents. My 13 year son being one of them. He has an IQ of 135, very athletic yet is falling through the cracks of the school due to boredom. This situation has lead me to try new and different things to prevent that here with my phys ed classes.

A few interesting blogs that I found:

http://research.aboutkidshealth.ca/teachadhd/abc/

http://wanderingink.wordpress.com/2007/05/23/how-to-prevent-another-leonardo-da-vinci/