TeachTechPlay Episode 4.5
Who are your mentors? heroes? who inspires you in your field? I have about 10 #physed people who are on my go-to list and whom I follow avidly on Twitter and regularly email or text with in many different forums. I was delighted to be invited to take part on a special PE episode of Teach Tech Play hosted by Michael Ha and Eleni Kyritsis. The premise of this Google Hangout is to share a tool you use in your classes in 4 minutes. Each presenter shares their tech go-to tool and then there are a few questions to clarify or extend your knowledge and then after each presenter has shared, there is a vote open to the general public and a winner is announced a few days later.
Tonight I was lucky to be in the company of #physed royalty and this is what they shared for this amazing PhysEd Hangout:
Ashlea Mills (@ashleamills) – Webscorer – is a mobile app that is designed to make your next race day (cross Country, Athletics) simple to manage. You can sign up for a Pro account ($12/week for that event week then stop your subscription) which enables you to then pre-prepare student race lists. Choose options to enter Bib # or Names and there are other fancy additions allowing you to add students in later etc. An easy way to have live results on the Web. If you are interested in more, tweet Ashlea!
Jo Bailey (@LovePhyEd) – Digital Badges – Jo braved a 3am time difference and shared two different digital badges websites with us and discussed how she uses these in her HS classes. It seems that every HS student benefits from similar gamification and fun that our ES kids do and Jo uses badges alongside rubrics to draw a road map of learning for her students. These badges can be digitally shared on student blogs or digital back packs to show-off their work to others. There are lots of websites that do this – Jo shared Forallrubrics which allows rubric sharing with badges and Classbadges.com. I suggested that nounproject.com might also be a way to find icons for your badges. I have also purchased icons from envato as a stock pile for other uses, but this may be another way to share too.
Ross Halliday (@FizzicalEd) – Remind – Ross is a great presenter (who doesn’t drool over a Scottish accent) and he discussed the Web 2.0 tool (and app) Remind. Remind is a way for teachers to communicate with students in a private app setting. The Teacher sets up a class and the students subscribe to it, and from here you can send them reminders, photos, ideas or locations of the next class etc. Ross is using this to share with parents of his students so that they can receive live updates on class work and see what is going on and this has been a big hit. Jo told us that her students blame her if she doesn’t remind them of something in class via Remind, on that day!
Jarrod Robinson (@mrrobbo) aka Mr PE Geek – Vidalyze – Jarrod doesn’t need an introduction if you are online and see him on Twitter or in many other places. Jarrod has developed a new tool called Vidalyze. This program is like Coach’s Eye or other tools that allow you to screen cast and compare videos but it works specfiically for schools. You can set up student accounts via Google Drive or DropBox and then you can have students complete their video analysis online (not on an app) and save their work. Teachers can direct classes and then as a student graduates from one year to another the teachers can move videos around to keep an electronic sportfolio of their work. You can screencast or type messages – you can analyse a video as a class etc. Currently in Beta mode but bound to be a big hit, it was fun to see it in motion.
sadly Andy Vasily (@andyvasily) wasn’t able to be there… but maybe next time?
Me? I shared screencasting as a tool for giving feedback to students. I have blogged about this before and am passionate about how great this tool is for your students in PE (and not in PE). I like using QuickCast and a viewer has also suggested TechSmith’s Snagit (which I haven’t tried yet) for extra features not offered by others. But to be honest, QuickCast is my fave at the moment – simple, free and I am done in 3 minutes – and can share with my students and check if they watched it!
If you are interested in PD in an hour with 4 or 5 teachers – I recommend you check out the monthly episodes of Teach Tech Play – I have a lot of new things to play with after tonight (and know who to tweet for more information) and have caught up on previous episodes in the week. You can watch the video above to see more on any of these tools.