Family Interative ideas:

-On Open School Night give a mini participation class to parents who come.
Conclude your dance and gymnastics units with a Gym Show, involving most of the kids in a way that makes them and their parents proud.
-Hold an endurance activity that includes parents and kids. Give access to measurement tools and statistical charts.
-Share current information with your classes, at least once a week, that illustrates the health values of being active. Ask the kids to share the info with their parents.
-Inform boards, administrators, and parents of the general fitness and health issues afflicting the student population.
-Make yourself and your program a model of professionalism and humanism.

Fitness Motivation Quotes

"Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but least envied." -Charles Caleb Colton

"No rest is worth anything exept the rest that is earned."- Jean Paul

"Old people have fewer diseases than the young, but their diseases never leave them." -Hippocrates

"Older people shouldn't eat health food, they need all the preservatives they can get." -Ropert Orben

"Rest is a good thing, but boredom is its brother." -Voltaire

"Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest." Ashleigh Brilliant

"Tactics, fitness, stroke ability, adaptability, experience, and sportsmanship are all necessary for winning." -Fred Perry

"Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity." Goethe

Smart Board and Teaching

With proper planning, prepartion, ad training, the smart board is a powerful instruction tool, which can be adapted for use with a wide range of subjects and ages. Interactive Smart Boards are a great tool for educators who want to involve their studens in tearning and tecnology. In a study done by Dr. Mary Ann Bell on teachers.net, she found statistically a significant improvement in student attitudes when teachers used both computers in instruction and when they used interativeboards.

I found some information as to why teacher's like interactive whiteboards on smarttech:
1. The interactive electronic whiteboard is great for demonstrations....
2. The interactive electronic whiteboard is a colorful tool. Research indicates that students respond to displays where color is employed...
3. The board can accommodate different learning styles...
4. All ages of students respond favorably to board use...
5. Distance learning is an excellent setting for interactive whiteboard use...
6. One-computer classrooms can maximize the use of limited computer access...
7. The interactive whiteboard is an excellent tool for the constructivist educator...
8. The boards are clean and attractive tools...
9. Students with limited motor skills can enjoy board use...
10. It is interactive...
11. It can interface well with other peripherals....
12. The board is great for meetings are lessons where the participants need printed copies...
13. It is a kid magnet! ...

Anecdotal evidence of the impart of electronic whiteboards found on ferl.becta.org:
-Learners show increased motivation and enjoy the interaction the technology offers
-It makes the subject come alive
-It captures the attention of learners
-It encourages the involvement of learners in the subject
-It enables tutors to use multimedia resources and the internet with a whole class

Atherley School in Southampton, England describes how electronic whiteboards can benefit teaching and learning:
1. The teacher at the front of the class and the whole class engaged together...
2. It gives the teacher instant access to a vast array of electronic resources...
3. It enables seamless links to be made between the technology and the subject material...
4. Teachers are rethinking their approach to teaching...
5. The flexibility and the scope for imaginative lesson planning is huge...
6. Pages can automatically be saved and can be printed, emailed or even pasted into a website...
7. The flipchart files can be updated or merged with other Windows applications...

Technology in Liberty's P.E. department

So today I was talking to my cooperating teacher and we were talking about the all the technology tools that they had which included pedometers, heart rate monitors, and a digital camera. To my surprise she told me that they never use any of these tools. I told her about my idea of having a classroom blog and having the students write about fitness goals, miscellaneous topics, and achievements on their blog. She liked the idea but at the same time she said they have had their same curriculum for years.
This made me excited to be in this class and know how easy it would be for me to incorporate these tools into the classroom. Being in this class has also allowed me to see how much the studnets gain from these tools. To me the gain my students will get from these tools far out ways the comfort zone that teachers will be leaving in order to incorporate these tools into the classroom.

How I will help student learn to use productivity software!

In order to help students learn to use productivity software I first have to have the software available to them. In the physical education class I could use a graphics productivity software.. For example,-he registered version of ACDsee will convert graphic type,s, rotate images, and make great slide shows. I could use this software to have the kids take pictures and create a slide show for the proper shooting form, baseball swing, swim stroke, etc. I could also help students learn productivity software by using print shop and have students use the graphics to personalize a fly er that promotes a fitness plan that they have created. I could also incorporate excel as a productivity software when I go into Maximal Heart Rate calculations, BMI calculations, and when I do fitness evaluations.

What are the Internet Issues For Students?

I think the biggest Internet issue my students will face will be computer and Internet access. You may think that every student has a computer to go home too with an Internet connection, but in reality this is not the case. As a teacher we have to understand that not every child in our classroom will have a computer at home and the assignments that we give our students must be formatted in a way that every child with our without a computer can complete. This may mean that the child may have to use the library to use the computer. It is our job as a teacher to give all our students the opportunity to complete the assignment. Even if that means the child staying after class to use classroom computer , you must cater to that need.
Another issue that is raised when using the Internet is security. As a teacher we have to give our students the tools to avoid inappropriate websites. I know in personally on more that a few occasions I have googled a topic and had pron pop up but if we can teach and monitor students properly this shouldn't be an issue.
Also, I think before any Internet use in the classroom ages k-12 we need to tell our students to never give out personal information. I feel it is important to use the scare tactic to get into students heads that there are a lot of crazies out there who are not nice people, all while emphasizing the importance to do the classroom research but not disclose any information about them selves.

K12 Online Conference

The conference that I went to was "Sustaining Blogging in the Classroom," by Lani Hall. I choose to go this conference because I would like to incorporate a fitness blog into my Physical Education Classroom. Through this conference I learned that there is a difference between having a blog in the classroom and using it as a learning tool and embedding it into your teaching. In order to have the most successful classroom blog it needs to become a daily routine. Often times teachers will have a blog and see the powerful tool that it withholds but then the tool get tried, tested, and then put off just like paperwork in the classroom.
So when developing a classroom Blog it is important to make sure that your focus is that the Blog needs to be a conversation. Meaning that it needs to be a two way communication system using web 2.o, where you have to both speak and listen, or read and write. The presentation noted that in order to sustain blogging in the classroom you have to allow this conversation to take place. So you as the teacher have to give your students time to read and write. Only after students are engaged in the conversation process can true blogging take place (because blogging as a verb means conversation).
I also learned that at the beginning of the blogging process it is important that you guide the conversation of the blog. For example, I could give the students a fitness topic of the week for them to blog about to help them start conversation and encourage them to continue the conversation by writing on their own blog.
The lecture also said that just like in normal conversations we can answer blog statements with a short reassuring "a ha" and longer responses. Another important aspect of that I learned about blogging just as it is in conversations is to be a good listner or reader. Just like in real conversations listening before speaking is a good skill. Also, it is important to teach students how to respond appropriately when they are writing on their blogs. This can be done by modeling the proper responses to students blogs.
Sense blogging is a conversation how do you turn that conversation into something that you can Grade. The conference gave some good examples on how you as a teacher an access students blogs. Here is an example of a rubric that one could use although I can already for see myself adding in a section that has to do with blogging about fitness goals, achievements, and struggles .
All in all I learned a lot from this conference but the most important thing that I learned is if you are going to incorporate blogging into the classroom don't just have it but actually use it so the students will learn from it.