PD session on Technology for Practical Subjects

Ken Forde (@KenForde) from WAB and I met at the PE Geeks workshop in Yokohama last year.  It was clear after our meeting and chats that we are both like minded PE teachers, and so with this in mind, we discussed how we could share our love of education and learning as well as the tech revolution that is changing PE as we know it, with other teachers.  We designed a workshop to present this March at the PE strand of the EARCOS conference, and it was accepted (so you can see it there if you like!).  Unfortunately I am not able to attend due to school issues and my desire for other PD opportunities, but it meant that Ken and I have both needed to present this workshop to others and in doing so, we have had valuable feedback for Ken in order to tweek our workshop for March.

Today I shared the presentation with a handful of our PE teachers, and it was really great to get down and talk about tech and PE and also about how tech works within UNIS and Hanoi, Vietnam.  It was a very useful and positive discussion, and refreshing to hear new perspectives and to see other people embrace some of the ideas and work that I (and others) have been working on for 12 months now.  It is also a good reminder to me that the trials and work that have come before today are worth while, even if they do take time and effort from other areas, and even if they aren’t always successful first time around.  Keep going and keep trying new things, but keep what works and hone it – don’t always extend for the latest or newest straight away, what you have and the time you spent working it out can be priceless and will work for you now.

So, I introduced QR codes and QR code generators, and we watched some juggling videos and my participants got to juggle at various levels while we created a rubric of what we were looking for in our own work based on the video example/s we had – we built the skills required from the participants and then we could refer back to this as we progressed with our own learning.  Then we used Coaches Eye to video and analyse their work and then how we could use our list of rubric ideas in Easy Assessment to assess as teachers and as students from the video analysis we ended up with.  We discussed using DropBox to send the videos either to your drop box or to look at how we could have student drop boxes (could I make myself more MB on my account if I asked all my students to sign up?) and we then looked at other PE apps including Easy Assessment; Easy Portfolio, SprintTimer, Interval trainer, Easy Tag, Collusion and how and where we could use these apps in our school from Discovery aged kids to Grade 12.  Some super wonderful conversations and some new questions about how we can get information from devices to students and how we can use student assessment and reflection on video instead of always using paper or computers to type up ideas.

Lots more to come, but a great days work.  Special thanks to Ken and also to Clint (@chamada) for their input and assistance.  Thanks also to the UNIS tech department for their problem solving under tight time pressure.