I recently experienced my first "Hour of Code", and for a guy who still has a flip phone, it was a lot of fun! At first I was skeptical because technology and I don't always get along, but after I got into it, I learned that it was fun and much easier than I had pictured. I used Kahn Academy, and could have spent far more than an hour exploring how to make shapes and learning how to write code.
As a future teacher, I can see this being used in the classroom all across the different ages. The teacher of an elementary classroom could go over shapes, make basic animals, and more by asking the students what to make, then projecting the process and/or final product on a screen. In upper middle school and high school, students could use coding to familiarize themselves with technology and create group projects. As a future theater teacher, I could have my students create a character, come up with a back story for that character, then have all the students use their characters to interact and work on their improvisational skills. I look forward to finding out more that I can do with coding in the classroom. I can connect with other educators and discover ideas through social media like FaceBook and Twitter.
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Being connected in this technologically advanced age is easier than ever. But beyond being a connected individual, being a connected educator is even more important. Social media platforms like Twitter are an incredible way to get connected to other educators! Many educators have set up professional, public accounts on social media platforms for the sole purpose of teachers sharing ideas with other teachers. Lesson plans, approaches at curriculum, and much more can all be shared through the use of modern technology.
Teachers sharing ideas is such an important concept for the students in many ways. A Spanish teacher of a classroom here in the US can set up video chats with a teacher from Mexico, to help his or her students get immersed in the language! This is also important for younger grades to get an idea of human diversity. If a school that happens to be mostly white can set up a video chat with an Asian or African American school (or vise versa), they can get more of a glimpse of the world outside their classroom! If a particularly difficult question comes up in a class, they can contact a local professor or higher level teacher in the same subject area to ask for help. When I was in high school, my chemistry teacher set up a video chat with a professor at a nearby college who helped answer any questions we had about us going into college in the next year or two. I have recently set up a Twitter account and I plan to use it as a connecting tool as an educator. I am also on Facebook, and am constantly looking for articles related to my subject areas (PE and Theater). I am excited to set up professional connections, as one of the most impressionable things I learned from my time in Scouts is that, "It's not WHAT you know, but WHO you know." You don't have to know everything, but if you know others who know what you need to know, it'll be that much easier to figure out. I made a short video explaining an app I found called Educreations. It's a nice little app that lets you record a video of your screen accompanied by your voice an anything else you do on screen. This app would be a good tool in education anywhere from upper elementary through high school. This could be effectively used to create slide shows to present topics to a class. You can write or draw on the screen like drawing on a whiteboard, put text on the screen, add and edit images, record voice, and more. It is professional enough for a teacher to use it, but also simple enough for the students to use it, too!
Students could certainly use this to create their own slide shows, or make a presentation showing what they have learned. There are so many possibilities here! Digital storytelling is a great way to deliver many kinds of content to many different audiences. You can narrate a story of your trip or adventures over a break from school to younger students through an automated slideshow with background music. You can present a historically accurate story of someone in a unit you may be covering in your class to middle and high school level students. Digital storytelling could even be used for new teachers to get to know one another and the rest of the school staff at the beginning of the school year. Here is a fun little video I made of one of my close friends to give you an idea... As a future high school teacher, I plan to use digital storytelling in my classroom. I may not be able to use it as often in my PE class, but I will certainly be able to use it to a great extent in my theater class.
In my PE class, I could use digital storytelling at the start of each semester to help the students get to know each other better. I could use it to help explain how to perform particular exercises, or what the rules of a certain game are. Movies and TV shows are the epitome of digital storytelling, so I could do so much in my theater class with digital storytelling. If they were working on producing a play, the students could record each step they took while working on the production: memorizing lines, working on their physical movements on stage (blocking), working on showing the different emotions their characters go through throughout the entire play (characterization), and when they put it all together, the final production. I could have several groups all do the same short skit, but apart from each other, record their interpretation of the script, and share with the class to see how it can be seen differently through different perspectives. The students could even help each other work on memorizing lines by recording themselves saying their own lines and sending it to the other cast members to play out loud so they can hear the cues for their lines. If there were set groups in the class room working on different plays throughout the year, each group could show a digital story of each play they put together. The class could even do that as a whole to show others what they accomplished. What is TPAC (sometimes TPACK)? It stands for Technology, Pedagogy, And Content (Knowledge). It refers to the relationship between the three in how a teacher teaches in his or her own classroom. See another website on TPACK here.
As mentioned earlier, technology in the classroom is on the rise and will not be slowing down any time soon. When used to further teaching (and not just using technology for the sake of technology) it is an incredibly important part of a teacher's toolbox. There are so many different, positive ways to use technology, many of which we are only beginning to uncover. When combined with content knowledge and pedagogy it becomes an unstoppable force. Pedagogy, for those who don't know, is how a teacher chooses to teach. For example, does he or she lecture? Use a flipped classroom where the content is given to the students outside of class ahead of time? Use some sort of slide show to present the information? Use fill-in-the-blank notes? Use group discussion and debate? Many times, technology is already used in some way in a teacher's pedagogy, such as in a slide show lecture. Content knowledge is obviously the "what" that the teacher is trying to teach. Art, Music, Science, PE, Math... How well a teacher teaches their students what they need to learn depends on the teacher's pedagogy and, if they choose to incorporate technology, how well they do so. Technology, pedagogy and the content all need to work together for a teacher to teach students well. If a teacher wants to use a lecture format in their teaching, it wouldn't make much sense to give all the students iPads or laptops in class to work with. The technology would only be distracting and get in the way. However, those items would be very useful if the teacher was using a flipped classroom where they gave their students the information ahead of time and instructed them to make a presentation in class about what they learned. Like I said before, each aspect of TPACK needs to work together. Virtual reality, augmented reality, and virtual field trips all have many uses within the classroom.
Virtual reality and going on a virtual field trip allow students to study a subject that is hard to teach in a classroom. For example, a teacher could show the class how sea life works by immersing them in a virtual ocean. In stead of just pictures, the students could see how the animals all interact with each other. It would also be a much more engaging way to teach a specific topic. Students would be much more interested and excited to learn about something they get to look at and manipulate on their phones instead of read about in a text book. Augmented reality would allow students to discover things all around their classroom. The teacher could come up with an augmented reality scavenger hunt for the students to find the topics they will be learning about. This would also let the students have a chance at being creative. The students could each come up with their own realities and everyone could make their own little world inside the classroom. Virtual tools allow the teacher to meet the students where they are at. Children now-a-days are growing up with this technology. They will be using it in the future and need to learn how to use it now. Before, kids would play outside and socialize face to face. Now, kids can do crazy things with computers, phones, tablets, and more. Simply put, they are growing up in a different world, and we as future teachers, need to prepare them for it the best we can. I am preparing to become a high school PE and theater teacher, so the idea of technology in the classroom is interesting to me. In general, the use of technology in a high school classroom cannot be underestimated or understated. Students of this day and age are growing up with technology the way the last generation grew up with balls and outside play things. It's just another part of their everyday lives. So technology in the classroom is one way to meet the students at their level. It is also what we are predicting the future to be based on. While we are in a self proclaimed Technology Age, it does not look like the production of new technology or use of modern technology will be slowing down any time soon.
In terms of my preferred PE position, there is much less I can do in terms of integrating technology into my classroom. My main goal is to get students moving, get them to learn the importance of lifetime activity and health, and to be motivated to engage in physical activity on their own and outside of the classroom/PE gym. With technology in the PE classroom I could have them looking up new and exciting games that they want to play, the rules and history to games they had never heard of before, and maybe even physical fitness feats they want to challenge their classmates to. In a health classroom I could have them put together slide shows on important health related topics, taking notes, writing reports, and even just doing general health related research. In my theater classroom technology could be of a little more use. There is also already a great deal of technology in producing a staged performance, so initially I could teach the students about that. Students could research plays and information on play writes, write and submit scripts to their own plays, record videos of them acting out plays to be shown to the class (especially if anyone has major stage fright). The students could record others performing plays for reference and critique the other students' work with voice overs or other notes. I could record (or use a recording of) a short bit of dialogue between characters and have the students act out the dialogue before and after seeing it acted out. On the other hand, I could switch that around and have the students record appropriate vocals to a silenced scene before seeing it acted out with sound. Both of these would give the students a chance to see how the same scenes and dialogue can be played differently and it could give them tips on how how they can improve their acting. Hi! My name is Ian Hendrickson and I am a junior at Concordia University, NE. I am in the education program studying to be a high school PE and Theater teacher. Yes! it is a very interesting combination; they just happen to be two of my biggest passions. When I was in high school I was inspired by one of my PE teachers. He helped me push myself, physically, to be the best I could be. Back then I had asthma that was aggravated by physical activity, specifically, running. I also had to have my second open-heart surgery at the end of my junior year, and this teacher helped me get through and overcome both! You can check out some pictures of me during my latest surgery here! I also did drama all four years in high school and I continue in it to this day. I often get asked if I will also coach in addition to being a PE teacher, but the truth is that I will probably be very busy with drama and theater activities after school. My ideal teaching position would be to teach two or three PE classes and one or two theater classes, while also being a general strength and conditioning coach.
Other interesting facts about me include... I am an Eagle Scout and a member of Scouting's Order of the Arrow. I am a skilled craftsman in the art of duct tape. And finally, I am a huge movie nerd! Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Princess Bride, Monty Python, Marvel movies, and more. You will often find quotes from these movies in my everyday vocabulary and dialogue. |
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