Educational Chats on Twitter

I have to say, I was kind of disappointed on my experience with the chat rooms of twitter.  That opinion I can say is pretty biased too though.  I never had a chance to use the chat rooms while they were in their 'scheduled' meetings because of my work schedule conflicting with the chat rooms I was interested in.  As a result I tried to use them outside of their regular meeting times.  The one I ventured into during the semester was #edchat, simply because it was a general education chat room.  The scheduled Tuesday night meetings were not the only time people used the hash tag.  On any given morning I would log on, begin to browse people's postings and constantly keep getting pushed back because Twitter was loading sometimes 20 more tweets at a time on the chat room hash tag.  So I knew people were present on the link and I tried to make contact with them.  Usually I saved a plethora of links they would be sending out to review, but with things moving through so quickly I took the information, but rarely kept on a conversation.  I took the news articles or general information, but none of it was P.E. and a lot of it could not be used in the P.E. setting I have here at my internship.  The information presented was not always to my benefit so instead I began to tweet my own questions to the group to see if I could get a biter.  I never got a response.  This could be because I did this "after hours" but there were plenty of other conversations happening.  There was one question I may have posted two or three times before I gave up on non responses.  It was looking for behavior management strategies in P.E., and if someone could send my a link to a site or a shout out for a good book.  I never did get a reply and stopped trying.  A little disappointing, but what are you going to do.  What I am really bummed out this whole educational chat business is the lack of involvement in Physical Education.  When I first came on to Twitter and began finding all these small avenues of physical education I was really excited, I had finally found my link to my future co-workers!  When I searched for P.E. chats, nothing came up.  I searched everywhere, and no P.E. chats have been established yet.  I was super bummed!  Is this something I might be able to establish myself in the future?  I would love those bragging rights and might take the time to endulge someday.  But for now I have to say that my education twitter chat room experience was not all that great and I am pretty disappointed over the whole ordeal.  When I get a Tuesday night off I will tune into #edchat, and hopefully I can get some different results!!!     

Reflections- Voice Amplifier Addition

Voice Amplifier

So I have a disability.  About a year ago I have developed nodules on my vocal folds.  Bad enough that surgery will always be looming in the background and it has been suggested by doctors and rehab specialists I document myself as a disabled incase I have issues with employment over my voice in the future.  That is a lot to take in, especially since I want to become a teacher.  That is very scary.  The idea of labeling myself as a disabled is very discomforting as well.  I don’t feel disabled; I just sound like a chain smoker, big deal.  But it is a big deal.  I have been fortunate to try new forms of rehabilitation that has gotten myself to the point where I can speak most days without pain, but teaching has proven to be very difficult, and calling across space?  Forget about it. 

For those of you who are not familiar with nodules, nodules are calluses on my vocal folds.  The are fluid filled sacs on the delicate skin issue used to articulate sound.  When you develop these calluses, the skin folds are no longer able to make proper vibrations and are no longer able to make a seal against each other.  As a result, on a bad day I sound like a cross between a 13 year old boy with ranging hormones and a 70 year old chain smoker.  On a good day I sound like a jazz singer with no talent in singing.  The sound is not the only problem.  The volume of my voice has dropped dramatically and when inflamed or stressed it becomes physically painful to speak at all.  Whoopie.

How on earth to I combat this issue while trying to become a teacher?  Well I can tell you that ignoring it certainly didn’t work.  Once I finally got over being stubborn and reluctant, I bought myself an MR2100 AKER (warning- all directions are in Chinese).  What is that?  It is a delightful voice amplifier that allows me to whisper but still be heard 150m away at the poor old chap that was trying to sneak off behind the storage bin during the morning run.  I was timid about it at first, I did not like to carry equipment to help me.  It solidified the fact that I am a “disabled” and darn it, I carry enough equipment on my person during P.E. class as it is.  Receiving dislike from my students was honestly a slight problem for me as well.  I did not know how students were going to react with it.  Well met me tell you.  I finally bought it, and I will never teach a class again without it.  The kids LOVE it.  The first day I walked out to role, every student looked wide eyed at my shiny new toy with its hip speaker and snazzy head set microphone.  Playing it off like to was no big deal students received their lesson that day in the form of touring the Amazon of the middle school’s grass field, complete with the classic “please keep all arms and legs inside the vehicle until you have come to a complete stop” routine.  Students can hear me now, I can call across space to the farthest reaches of my class with no problem at all.  If a piece of instruction was forgotten to be mentioned in class, just freeze them with the whistle, announce it to the field, and have everyone resume without having to call the class in.  I love it!  The best part is, I go home at the end of the day feeling like a normal person and not like I had someone run sandpaper down my throat.  It gives me piece of mind that a “disability” such as this will not hinder what I have set out to do- teach.   

My new best friend!!

   

Reflections Week Five

It’s a delicate balance, class organization versus optimum OTRs in the classroom.  I think the largest problem with all of it the fact that my class size this year have ranged from 52 to 62 students.  In high school it was a little simpler to get students up and going, they were a little more quick to figure stuff out.  Middle school on the other hand I am learning needs a lot more repetition, time for instruction/demonstrations, and a whole lot of organization.  A lot of time is lost in between all these matters.  If you are on a campus that requires a lot of transitions or moving across campus; I am so sorry because you have to take a big chunk for that now too.  So here is my frustration.  If the class is not very organized you have issues with negligence, and all the fun included with that.  If you try to not organize as much, try to get students to organize themselves, you have larger transition times and a whole lot more fires to put out, calling across space becomes desists rather than more corrective/positive feedback.  I thought I was doing an okay balance.  My Masters teacher explaining that I am okay but I still need more organization, my university supervisor is telling me I have way to much organization and no were near enough OTRs.  Now I’m just frustrated.  What is a girl to do? 

The Idea Frightens Me...

I am having a little bit of an issue.  This is a touchy topic because it brings up the madder of race.  O dear.  Everyone’s blood pressure just went up a little bit… 

My over all control of my classes is decent.  I certainly have things to improve on, but I was also not the teacher setting the standards at the beginning of the year so it is a little difficult to gauge exactly how much of this “control” is from the previous teacher’s work, or my own when I stepped in.  Regardless, talking to Chris the other day I realized something very interesting.  My “problem” students, the ones that are slow to respond, push the limits, don’t put effort in, or try to reek chaos at any opportunity, with the exception of one student, are all Latino males.  Back up, what?!  What am I missing, what am I doing wrong?  How can this be?  I’m a racist because Latino males in my class don’t LIKE me! 

I joke to lighten the mood, but this is serious.  What is going on?  What am I lacking?  How do I approach this?   I ask this sincerely, because I am quite frankly very upset to see this correlation with my struggling students.  Is it really my small frame, white, blonde self running around with my little head-set giving directions to go here and there throughout class?  What is causing this issue?  Is it my own persona I am sending out to the crowd?  Is it a lack of connection?  Is it because most of these students are already up for expulsion or close to it?  Is it because I am a white female?  

Reflections Week Four

A quick reflection 

As we come to a close on week four, I am learning more than ever.  Today’s point of focus is how organization and routine is saving me.  The classes are huge, and to give them a different procedure every day is difficult, students don’t always understand at first and with being in an open environment, rounding them up to try again is far from an easy task.  When I first started I was agitated by the transition times.  So much time was spent on organizing students, a lot of movement time was lost.  A lot.  But when I tried to shorten, skip steps, or make things go a little faster, students became confused and it took more time to reel them in than the transitions did in the first place.  Opps.  Now, whether this is because of how the classes were established at the beginning of the year, or this is just how it is for this age group will be something for me to determine as I gain more experience.  Regardless, if it wasn’t for the ridged warm ups at the beginning of every class to a ridged procedure in forming up for activities not a lot would be accomplished with these kids.  “Free range children” I call it.  

Ipads in the Classroom

My thoughts on IPADS in Physical Education

I am sorry, I am not a professional video blogger and this was my first video.  It was harder than I thought!  Please leave comments on what you think about the IPAD in Physical Education or my blog, I appreciate the feedback!

Videos with Ipads and P.E.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXy4TgfR3WA
-Descriptions of what you can do with the Ipad in P.E.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7myiU-E0lI&feature=related
-A small glimpse of video analysis in the classroom at a primary school
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1wEv81sFhI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZmK8DtcLAE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJwXEcDODzo
-Video analysis and documentation

General Classroom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV8M6P9st9Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnWAhFcDPrY&feature=related

Other Videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL-sSwubG00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3HRDlltncE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99GzHajNBhU

Reflection Week Three

Another week down and we are moving right along!  This has been a particularly crazy week, we had filming for the TPA before break, students going nuts over the prospect of a few days off, and fitness testing is finally coming to a close.  Students have been bouncing off the walls, I love the energy but it has been hard to channel into productive means.  I have to say though; my six period class went above and beyond their responsibility to help me out in my filming.  Students were aware that Tuesday was filming day, and that I had to film their class and sent in as one of my requirements to be a teacher.  That day I had so many student helpers I didn’t know what to do with all of them.  Students were jumping up to pass out sportfolios, and be student leaders.  I never once had to spend time looking for timers (shuttle run time testing) because they had come up to me already asking if they could time their peers (at really good times so not to interrupt me instructions too).  It was a tough class, I had to do state testing for the shuttle run.  This creates complications because the state only allows me to test three students at a time and I personally have to log the scores so not time changes occur in the documentation.  This takes all of my attention so there is unfortunately more down time than I like, and I don’t get to give feedback to my students to the level I like.  But my students were on it.  When I was focused on the testing no students were acting out of line in the background, everyone stayed on task, and everyone even included the written worksheet I assigned (that I know they were not happy about).  When one race was done and I was logging in times, the next group of students were already up, waiting, and ready to go.  I was so proud of how on top of everything this class was.  I had students coming up to remind me, not to forget to test the timers too!  I love it, I want them to help me remember all the little workings of the class.  I encourage them to do so, when the time is appropriate and they are really good at gauging that “time”.  I want them to be a part of how the class is run, it is their class too and they know they can help make it more fun.  My favorite part, at the end of class I forgot that equipment needed to be picked up.  Equipment is normally left out so I don’t have to set up every class, except for the end of the day after this class.  I had brought everyone in for closure, then realized I forgot about the equipment.  I do this often, and the students know it.  Sure enough when I turn around to see the damage, it was already picked up.  Every piece of equipment was already cleaned up neatly.  The students were still with me as I gaped at their actions.  Not once did I have to desist or bring attention back into focus.  They were there the whole class, ready to go.  I told them how thankful I was that this class was so on top of everything.   Reflecting back I want to capture the essence of how this class dynamic was created because I want it for all my classes.  Everyone is to kind to each other, helping out not just me but peers too.  I know the actions of today was not just because the camera was on the courts with us, because this is a daily routine for this class. They are amazing every day!  I truly hope anyone reading this has something similar to this, because it is truly a blessing to have such a great student body who has taken it upon themselves to help me become a teacher.  

EDSS 531 Reflective Paper

Reflective Paper for EDSS 531

                Looking back at my courses this semester I feel I gained the most learning from my introduction to the teacher collaboration that happens on the web.  We learned about ITUs and how to collaborate our lessons together, and create electronic representations of our hard work.  What excites me the most though is the fact that now someone else could stumble upon it on the web and be able to use it in their own practices, giving me the chance to reach out to students I will never even meet, but because of my website will have an impact on their learning as well.  In the past I knew of a few sites that had resources for physical education, which I used when I needed something, but rarely contributed my own thoughts.  I knew of forums and blogs, but never took the time to explore their potential.  This semester finally made me take that step into the educational digital world I needed.  With course schedule changes, all of a sudden I had free time to explore all the physical education venues I never before had time to browse through.  The best part was that I was provided with different venues that would lead me to find new material outside of Google.  Twitter, a site that was of great annoyance to me before, became a gateway for me to communicate with others about teaching and find resources about teaching.  The same with Diigo, Blogger, Pinterest, and Evernote.  These sites became more than just recreational use to me.  I learned how I could use these sites with a professional perspective.  Not only was all these new resources presented to me so that I can continue to utilize outside of my clinical practice, but I realized I could contribute to it as well.  In the past I used specific sites to better my own planning, but now, even as a new teacher, I find myself posting information that I want others to know.  I am becoming involved in a way that will not only benefit just my students but others as well by spreading ideas with their teachers.  The idea is so exciting!  The best part of all this is that it will not end on June 7^th when I finish my clinical practice.  This is a resource and a tool I can access at any point during my career and it will never be outdated but continually updated.