Zach Hall
Haleigh Ingle
Jessica Upton
Austin Vaningen
Dr. Andre Denham
CAT 200-911
17 July 2018
As a future physical educator and current personal trainer, I have always said I was going to use as little technology as possible in my classroom. I see kids every day in the gym I work at on their phones and not paying any attention to what they are doing. Half the time these kids are so tuned into what they are doing on their phones that they do not even notice that they are using the machine wrong and doing the exercise completely incorrect. Thus, they are getting nothing out of what they are doing and it puts them at risk of hurting themselves. After thinking a little bit about what technology I would use in my classroom in an elementary school to help my students, I have came to the conclusion of many little things that most would not think about using in a physical education classroom. Something that I would like to try and bring into my class that would most likely require a grant is if I could bring in a form of a fitness tracker for each student to wear. Unicef has a children’s activity tracker that would benefit my students, but also deliver food to malnourished children. The plan I have is for each child to have a fitness tracker and track how many steps they are getting each day and to make a challenge out of it. I want this program to be something similar to what schools are doing now with track clubs and having the students run so many laps or miles to enter a certain mile club. I’d like to make it a grade level challenge though to see which grade could get the most steps and reward them with something like a field day or trip, but something healthy and good for them and nothing like a pizza party that most schools do now. Another piece of technology I would like to bring in is a nicer sound system and some “party lights.” This might seem like a crazy idea but as a former DJ’s assistant I have done many school dances for elementary school age children and seeing how active these kids are with music and party lights has inspired me to have “Fun Friday” where we are in our gymnasium basically having a dance party so the kids are having fun, but are also being active in their own fun way. Another idea I had was to get some inexpensive GPS’s so that my students could do something like geocaching around school and find prizes while being active. I would also like to possibly do something like a projector screen and either a laptop, iPad, or Apple TV so that we could watch fitness videos on rainy days and do workouts. All three devices (laptop, iPad, and Apple TV) would be able to access YouTube to get videos, so long as we had access to the internet. Through this technology different activities and exercises could be demonstrated where all my students could see and they would not have to move around just so they could see me at least attempt to demonstrate what I want them to do.
As mentioned above, I would also like to include the use of a sound system and projection system in the gymnasium as a future physical educator. Having a music minor background and after sitting in on different teaching styles, I would like to set aside a day for the students to have to be expressive in dance depending on what music is being played. I also find it important for students to be very cultured in music. So, for different activities, I may have a different genera of music being played to help motivate a certain feeling, or expression I am trying to get across in the activity. I would also like to be able to play or sing music to my students or provide opportunities for my students to sing or play their own songs for talent shows or other events. I would also incorporate a projector screen for target games. Playing games like dodgeball and others teach students to use other people as targets, if we use the projector to put different targets on a screen or wall, then the field of play would be safer since the students would be throwing at targets on the wall instead of each other. The projector could also provide as a necessity for teacher meetings, activity instructions, parent meetings, or event if the community needed to use the gym for a gathering, it could be used then. Another item that I would use in my gym would be television monitors and have them connected to google chrome bluetooth devices so that I could stream items from an iPad, laptop, or phone and have them in multiple locations to provide students with announcements, videos, and task information. By doing this, it will allow for students to find out basic information that they may have forgot about during the activity and give myself more time to provide performance and motivational feedback to the students instead of answering questions during the activity.
After shadowing many classrooms, and as a future elementary education teacher, I would like to expose children to as much technology as possible since we are living in a technology based world. In my ideal classroom, I would love to have iPads for the younger grades and chromebooks for the older grades. Throughout every grade I would love to have either a Promethean board or a Smart board. I believe that music is a big learning tool for smaller children. I think it would be great for the children to use the apps on their iPads to engage in music. iPads are also an amazing way for children to learn how to count and read on their own. To be as productive as possible, it would be ideal for the teacher to have different stations and every so many minutes the children change stations. At one station the kids would work with the teacher and at the other stations they would use their iPads to guide them through an activity. Chromebooks are very useful. Not only would they allow the children to work on collaborative assignments at the same time, but would also be a very cool way to do an online dissection if it was not possible to do in the classroom. I am a firm believer and reading, so, if it were possible for the library to somehow electronically have their books uploaded to the schools website I would love to do ten minutes of reading to start off every day. Not only could they upload books in the library, but also the classroom books. This way you do not have to carry books with you to and from class and you are able to access the book almost any time and have no chance of losing it. Promethean/Smart boards are a great way to engage students of all ages. Whether you are using it for kahoot to help review for a test, or are bringing out your little kiddos artistice side, I believe it is a must have learning tool for the classroom.
I am not an education major, but if I had to decide whether or not to have technology in the classroom I would definitely choose to have technology in my classroom. The high school that I attended provided us with Mac Air laptops and this greatly improved my computer skills. Having a personal laptop allows a portion of each class to be online such as quizzes, online instructional videos, and even tests. Online instructional videos are also much easier to follow along than having a teacher stand in front of you and give a presentation because you always have access to rewatch the video as much as your students need. Another important aspect of having a personal laptop or iPad is that you can constantly have access to all documents and it makes the organization of assignments for different classes more efficient. As my other group members mentioned, SmartBoards and projectors were also available and allowed for student interaction by allowing the students to work problems on the SmartBoard, especially in math. All of the following technologies would be in my ideal classroom to help with interaction between students as well as adding a different aspect of learning that will soon be the future of classrooms.
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