Challenge 9 - My favorite yet!

Learning how to make a video and edit various clips was the most interesting and useful challenge of the Ispace challenge. I have previously taken films of my students for use in viewing technique, assessing and filming class content. Although iMovie took some time to learn and develop a quality piece of footage, it was well worth the time invested in the project.

I made three films; one to practice and two that are submitted.
The first details how to hit a smash in badminton, with demonstrations, technique cues and film of my grade 6 class trying it for the first time. Alternating slides with conceptual knowledge and actual footage of students playing gave more precise information to the presentation and allowed for a variety of different learning styles to benefit from the video. Additionally, being able to slow a clip down provided an excellent tool for breaking the technique down. I filmed myself (as the expert in racket sports) in slow motion to show students the start, middle and end of the shot; Sideways on, pointing to the birdie and follow through. I learned how to edit out parts, such as time between shots or players waiting to play, which makes the video more concise and interesting.

The second video is an overall 3-minute presentation of the ASP PE department, using slides to detail our program and sections of videos of students in action. It could be used to promote our department, explain what we do overall and provide those interesting with a sneak preview of what we do in PE.
I included clips of students learning lifelong skills (such as falling without risking injury), different types of activities offered, fitness training and clips of our happy, well rounded PE students.
This video could be displayed on youtube to promote our department or shown at open house to give parents an idea of what we do. The music used in the video attempts to be inspirational and give an overall feel-good vibe to our department.

Website Uses - Challenge 6

Having a teacher website is commonplace and can be used for a variety of excellent reasons.
Firstly, class news can be easily conveyed to a large number of students who already spend adequate time on the internet. It would be the most efficient and effective way to communicate important information around the clock, to any PE student.

The website could also inform students where classes are and exactly what we are doing instead of the constant questions of 'what are we doing and where?' Our classroom settings often change depending on the weather, use of the gym for other purposes and the specific units we teach. A calendar online of each class, change in location and activity would be highly beneficial to the students.

Pictures, videos and photos relevant to the class could also be posted, demonstrating pertinent information such as tactics, high-level performance and techniques. Since we film a lot in PE classes, the website could be a useful place to show the students what was recorded and highlight areas if required.

Lastly, useful resources can be shared using the website. Students can get to know a little about my background, and importantly, parents can too. Links to government recommendations for exercise, health and activity can be shared with students. Similarly, links to local french clubs and governing bodies can help families to find the appropriate sporting clubs in Ile-de-France.

Presentation Prezi

I used Prezi to organize my presentation and to provide a more aesthetically pleasing experience for students who are used to seeing various types of power points.
Prezi has been touted as one of the best educational sites for creating power points and I used it to create a short presentation on the benefits of exercise. Due to limited class time and technology in our PE settings, the students have little knowledge behind the benefits and reasons behind exercising. The short presentation on Prezi gives a global vision of why being active is so important.

I used an art gallery theme to capture students attention and titled it 'Getting in the groove to move' since my audience would be middle school students. The different set ups of the presentation allowed me to focus in on certain aspects of what I wanted to to explain and use a mix of pre-made set ups to highlight the important information.

For future use in PE classes, our department could connect such presentations to a screen in the PTC for view before class starts, explaining the rational and theories behind many of the concepts in PE.
Prezi could also be used for presenting rules with visuals, to students rather than explaining them verbally (on indeed to reinforce concepts already learned). Finally, these presentations could be shared on google drive for homework or to make up any work missed.

Challenge 8 - Socrative and Google Forms

Socrative can be used in a variety of ways during PE classes, providing there is access to a computer.
I created two quizzes to use for my middle school badminton unit. The first quiz was to enable students to reflect on their effort, focus and class preparation, which are items they are graded on throughout the year.
The quiz was designed to target areas that I believe still need to be improved by a number of students and allows some quiet time during class, to reflect on their achievement.
Since students do not bring computers to class, I set up the quiz on my computer and select certain students to sit on the bleachers and complete the quiz. There are several advantages to using this method in a 40-minute PE class:

• It gives students a break from physical activity yet maximizes class time by allowing them to still focus on the unit
• It can be used to allow any students who are off-task to regroup their effort and focus
• It provides students with the opportunity to immediately reflect critically on their performance in class
• For activities (such as badminton) that involve even numbers of students for singles and doubles play, and sometimes involve a short wait time due to space constrictions, it allows students waiting to reflect on their performance instead of going to a fitness station. Essentially, it gives more options in class
• My students often told me that they don't like using the pencil and paper format for class quizzes. The ease of use and interactive dimension of socrative makes it more appealing to them.

The results help me to gage student's self-perception of their effort and focus. So far, the results have been somewhat surprising and in some cases, show a discrepancy between their perception and my perception of their effort. On occasions, the students who I believe to consistently give their best have responded that they could have tried a lot harder! 

A second use for Socrative has been to combat an ongoing problem, particularly in grade 8, of class preparedness; being on time and with correct PE kit. For any students that come in late or without PE kit, I ask them to fill out the 8 question class preparation quiz. It hold them accountable for coming to class unprepared, prompts them to think about why it happened and suggest corrective measures for future success in that area. 

Room number: 351742

I used google forms in a slightly different way. Firstly, I used it to create make-up quizzes for students absent for the pen and paper assessment quiz. This allows them to create the quiz in their own time, from a computer and have the results send directly to me, rather than worrying about finding the piece of paper and bringing it in! I ensure that the answers provoke thought and opinion so that they can't look up the answer or ask someone else. 

Lastly, because this is a very long post, we used google forms at the end of last year to compile a student survey for the PE department. This gave us critical feedback to our program, the student's opinion and suggested areas for improvement. The results we very easy to read and allow for different types of sorting for optimal analysis. 

A great smash

http://farm9.static.flickr.com/8431/7758882852_9bac433cfb_m.jpg

By Antony Stanley (Flickr: Prepare To Smash!) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Lesson Plan finally uploaded

I didn't ever upload my lesson plan to my blog, so here it is:

How to be a super searcher!

Grade 9 Lesson Plan

Become a Super Searcher

Essential Question	Activity	Time
How has google grown over the past 10 years?	1.Introduction & Class Discussion - Google has grown in power over the last ten years, so much so that google has officially become a verb in the dictionary. Google it. 2. Discuss in groups of 2-3, what exactly you can do on google search. Eg search for word definitions.   3. Make a list on the board of class responses. Any surprising?	10 minutes
How can you save time when searching on the internet by using google?	1.     Open up google.com and search for the following items. A. The weather today in Paris, France. B. a picture of your principal, Mark Ulfers. C. How many dollars equals 100 euros. D. The definition of 'idiosyncrasy' e. what does 'suche ist genial' mean? What language is it?    How many of you clicked on a website to get the information? Did you know that you can modify your search to get the information right up there.	20 minutes
Is google efficient?	1.     Explore the various functions of google. a) Google scholar - show the class how to get to it. Find research article on 'students learning' and cite them b) Google translate: show how. Ask your partner to translate a phrase. The other partner must find out what language it is and what it means. However, is it accurate? Lets translate a well known French phrase 'le monde appartient à ceux qui se lèvent tôt. Look at the English translation!! c) Refining our research. If we want to find news articles on the political situation in France, how do we know what type of articles to search?  You can limit your search by adding : to filter results. To give an example, we only want french pages. The country code is . Fr. So we type Francois hollande:.fr and see what comes up. Try a different country. The same goes for images and videos.	20 minutes
Are you a good google-searcher?	End cumulative activity and assessment. You are going on holiday to England on a British airways flight Paris to London, number 319. a) Use google to find out what time your flight lands (or landed) and what terminal. b) Find out how many pounds 100 euros will get you presuming you won't be charged any fees! c) Find out the weather in London, England d) You are staying with a welsh person who speaks no English. Find out how to say ' I thought welsh people spoke better English? I had to translate using google!' e). look up a current news article from England using the country code (if you don't know it, search for it) end with questions f) Submit to rrankin@asparis.fr on a word document	20 minutes

PLN has opened my eyes!

Before the challenged started, I knew very little about personalized learning networks, other than them being something to do with technology! It was news to me that the ever-famous twitter was one of them. I knew more or less how twitter worked, but I didn't know you could follow anyone, let alone unknown people who may have the same lines of profession. Following other PE teachers worldwide, is something that will be invaluable to me for future professional development. I had always thought that Twitter served mostly social and entertainment purposes, and have learned that it can be valuable in education too.

Feedly has helped me to consolidate my reading lists and keep it all in the same place, rather than searching via several pieces of software online and on my smart phone. I have learned what RSS is, thanks to the challenge, and now realize that I have been using RSS's for a long time despite really knowing the concept behind it!

The concept of Diigo is an excellent one, although the interface is difficult for those of us who aren't very computer savvy. As educators, we use a variety of sources online that are often hard to find again. Being able to have all of this information in one place, and a toolbar to ease navigation, is most advantageous. Furthermore, we can even add sticky notes and highlight areas of interest!

Copyright Licenses

Below is a brief description of each of the six licenses available for copyrighting material:

1) Attribution SharedAlike

This license allows other people to edit the original work, as long as they credit the original author and have exactly the same license terms. It gives the author greater power in creating the exact licensing terms they would like, yet allowing changes to be made which could very well benefit the document.
Wikipedia uses this type of license and clearly helps to convey an abundance of information from many different sources around the world.

2) Attribution Non-Commerical
The license allows other people to edit the original work, however they must always acknowledge the author and are unavailable for commercial purposes. However, unlike the SharedAlike terms, the license does not have to be exactly the same or match the terms of the original work.

3) Attribution Non-Commerical No Derivs
This license allows work to be downloaded only with no room for modifications or sharing without crediting the original author. It is therefore the most restrictive of all six licenses. These such documents cannot be used for commercial purposes or edited in any way.

4) Attribution Non-Commerical ShareAlike
This license has the advantage of the work being modifiable but not for commercial purposes. Other people can change or build on the piece of work but it must be under the same terms of the original author and credit them when submitting the new modification.

5) Attribution No-Derivs
This license allows for the work to be freely distributed and used commercially. It must however, be exchanged in it's full original form (unchanged) and credit the author.

6) Attribution
This license is the most lenient and accommodating of all licenses. It can be used for commercially, can be modified providing the original author is credited, and added to. The attribution license is recommended for work that should be shared and made known to a wide range of people. Licensed pieces of work are a good example of this.

Copyright - two facts I have learned from the challenge

Firstly, I didn't know that free licenses existed until starting the challenge. I had always presumed that you had to apply and pay for them.

Secondly, I was surprised to find out that you could modify the parameters of your documents to be copyrighted. For example, you can share photos with friends or family yet make them unavailable for commercial purposes. This could be particularly useful for lesson plans, using the 'human readable' option instead of machine readable.

Class 1-6 Search notes

Some of the interesting things I have learned in this very useful unit are:

1. I had no idea that you could use color filtering by color, let alone what purpose it serves.
- Click similar
- Modify colors and query

1.3 - How Search Works
- How many outside links point and how important they are = Page Rank

1.4 Effective Key Words

1.5 Word Order
- Certain special characters make a difference $ sign in front searches for price, @ searches for addresses and social networking, % searches amount

1.6 Finding Text on a Web Page
- Control/command + f = find something on a page. Enter to look for more entries on same word.

Class 2 Searching
2.1 - summary on right.
2.2 - 'define a word' and hear it's sound. Gives more info & ability to translate on left
2.3 - Best answer often in images
2.4 - rollover preview (two arrows on right) to see quick information
URL - Title - Snippet - Links
2.5 - Look at More: blogs, discussions, recipes, patents.
2.6 - google translate top right under more. 3D options and models.

Class 3

3.1 operator [bugs site: stanford.edu] limits search to just bugs at stanford.edu. You can use GOV codes or country codes, e.g. .co.uk, .fr, .be.   site:.gov workplace accident rates. will find government pages on accidents.

3.2 Filetypes
- ppt, kml, docx, pdf etc.
- helps to even further define your search. Works the same of operator to limit search

3.3
- use minus filter to exclude from results. e.g. 'bug - pod'. Can do multiple ones too.
- no space between minus time and term! Can do multiple minuses
3.4
- quotations marks to search for lyrics/phrase, "shake it like a salt shaker"
OR adds searches together "Take your time OR "shake it"

3.5 Intext
intext:bug - that word has to be in text of your query.
- advanced search, using gear menu after query
- Gives form to fill out to define more

Class 4
4.1 - search by image.

Response to 'Why K-12 schools are failing by not teaching search'

The video highlighted the very real fact that our ability to provide children with the appropriate search skills, is lacking.

I had underestimated the significance of searching for information for students. Admittedly, as a teacher who uses technology frequently both in and outside of school, I am not as competent as I should be when searching. In fact, the students often understand more about how to search for information than I do!

It is therefore no wonder that we are doing our children a disservice by not teaching them how to effectively search! This will be my motivation to learn how to effectively search for everything online!

Flag Football Positions & Lineup

7 vs 7 Flag Football Lineup



Football Position Explained

Quarterback. In flag football, the quarterback will start off with the ball in his hands or have the ball snapped to him by the center. It is the job of the quarterback to decide whether or not to throw the ball to a wide receiver, toss the ball to a running back, or run with the ball himself. The quarterback identifies the start of a play by yelling "Hike!"

The Center is the innermost lineman of the offensive line on a football team'soffense. The center is also the player who passes (or "snaps") the ball between his legs to the quarterback at the start of each play.

Running Back. In most cases, the running back will stand behind the quarterback. The quarterback may hand the ball over to the running back via a toss or a pitch. If a pass play has been called, the running back may run down the field as a receiver or stay with the quarterback to help block for him.

Wide Receiver. Depending on how many people are playing, there will always be at least one wide receiver on the field in flag football. It is the job of the wide receiver to run down the field and catch the ball that is thrown to him. It takes speed and skill to be a wide receiver because the wide receiver needs to be able to catch the ball while being chased by a defensive back.

Offensive Linemen. In flag football, the offensive linemen consist of the center and possibly other linemen, depending on how many people are playing. It is the job of the center to snap the ball to the quarterback. Offensive linemen are used to block for the quarterback to prevent him from being rushed or sacked by the defensive lineman.

Defensive Linemen. The job of the defensive linemen is the exact opposite of the job of the offensive linemen. Defensive linemen are one of the most important flag football positions because they are required to line up across from the quarterback and attempt to sack the quarterback by pulling his flag and cause him to fumble the football. In the event of a running play, defensive linemen should chase after the running back and attempt to pull his flag.

Defensive Backs. Defensive backs line up across from wide receivers. Defensive backs are assigned to a specific wide receiver and are instructed to chase after the wide receiver in an attempt to intercept the football or pull the wide receivers flag as quickly as possible.

Read more: http://www.mademan.com/mm/flag-football-positions.html#ixzz2Tm4ROSF9

Flag Football Field Dimensions

Flag Football Rules

Basic Flag Football Rules

1.     You must score by catching or running the ball into the end zone

a.     6 points for a touchdown

b.     9 points for a girls touchdown

c.      For the extra point conversion you can choose

                                               i.     3 yards away = 1 point

                                              ii.     10 yards away = 2 points

2.     You have 4 chances to get the ball over the 10 yard markers (cones)

a.     These are called Downs

b.     The QB cannot throw once he crosses the line of scrimmage

c.      The QB can run with the ball

d.     Once the ball is caught or run, the player cannot throw it again

3.     Wherever the flag is pulled off is the marker for the next ball placement

4.     If a throw is dropped or incomplete, the ball is placed at the spot where the QB threw the ball

Defending

1.     The goal of the defensive team = to prevent the other team from advancing 10 yards in their 4 downs

a.     Prevent a pass by blocking a catch

b.     Intercept a catch

c.      Pull the flag off from the person carrying the ball

2.     There is absolutely no contact to be made

a.     You can block with your body

b.     You can only grab a flag from the player who has the ball

Penalty = 5 yard loss

3.     You must wait 5 seconds and count 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, 4 Mississippi, 5 Mississippi,…before taking the QB flag.

a.     However if the QB starts running with the ball past the line of scrimmage, you can take their flag

Punting

1.     You punt to start the game off

a.     The receiving team catches the ball and runs it as far as possible down the field

b.     If the catch is dropped, the ball is placed on the spot where the ball dropped on the ground