May was quite busy mont. A Voxer book chat of the Innovator's Mindset led to my first EdCamp, which required quite a road trip, and my first EdCampPE experience. I loved every bit of it and will come back soon to finish this post. Too many exams to grade and need to prepare that senior failure list by tomorrow. Will be back soon to finish this post!
THIS IS SOME US SHARING OUR NEW POLAR PROGRAM WITH THE COMMUNITY ON STEAM NIGHT! SOME ADDITIONAL PICTURES OF THE GRAPHS & REPORTS FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS ARE BELOW! We were fortunate enough at William Penn this year to acquire a classroom set of 32 Polar H7 heart rate monitors. I read and heard about them on Twitter and Voxer for over a year, mostly from Jarrod Robinson, "The PE GEEK." (Thanks Jarrod!) At the same time, our Math Analytics Club advisor, Mr. McNulty had expressed an interest in acquiring a team set of heart rate monitors to use for a research study about player contributions and fitness levels. Luckily, my PE order from our bid list, accidentally was lost before placing, and we were able to order this program instead! I cannot tell you how pleased and eager I was to get the program up and running, too eager... and I made some critical mistakes along the way that cost me time. Knowing what I know now, I felt the need to share out with so many that are interested in the program, but aren’t exactly sure what to do. I will attempt to share the "Dos and Don’ts" here to help others make informed decisions! DOs: 1. Do: Consider if you need an entire classroom set. With a partial order of heart rate monitors (HRMs), and the free apps provided there is a wealth of data to collect and analyze. The "big ideas" are still apparent. I love having a full classroom set, but the additional cost of the site license at PolarGoFit.com and the straps is something to consider. It might be a good idea to start small and add to the program v. getting it all at once and not being able to afford or manage the program. Note: Polar provides extra batteries with the classroom set, and after a month and a half use are still near 100% full. You can monitor them from the Polar Beat Apps (more for the individual user). More about the apps later. 2. Do: Budget in enough money for additional straps. I have just the basic number that comes with the classroom set, and I find myself doing wash every night by hand. If you can absorb the cost by requiring students to buy their own, that would be ideal. Possibly make that as part of the school uniform. If not, the teacher would appreciate the additional straps to avoid the extra laundry. Polar recommends that you wash the straps by hand, but may machine wash occasionally. I have washed the Polar straps by hand over 25 times, and they are holding up well. The last idea would be to buy enough for every student, make it their responsibility to wash daily and return at the end of the term. I'm afraid to do this for fear of not being able to afford to replace the lost or ruined straps. 3. Do: Find out the cost of the addition tech support and training. When a district purchases the program, there is an additional fee for tech support. I will have to say the Polar Company was fantastic to me as I was a single purchaser and kudos to them for helping me with this process!! My rep was amazingly helpful and patient getting me through a few of the rough spots, but tech support and help with the initial set-up would have been fabulous. 4. Do: Check to see if there are any allergies students may have to soaps that clean the straps or to materials that make-up the strap. I did have one young lady that was allergic to Tide. 5. Do: Know that my visually impaired students have apps that can read the printed heart rate graphs that Polar allows us to print out and that all students can view their digital charts and information about their exercise sessions right within the program. Each student gets a login and username. 6. Do: Know that three different Polar Apps work with the program. The PolarGoFit is the paid app comes with the site license. The Polar Team App that coaches and teachers could use. The last app is the Polar Beat App that an individual can use if they purchase the product on their own which also allows a social aspect of connecting through the app with other users. Team App and Polar Beat Apps are free and provide plenty of data. The Site License is filled with all the bells and whistles and has a yearly cost of $350.00 (I will double check this figure when I get to school tomorrow & make change if need be). 7. Do: Involve other content areas for cross-curricular activities. Don'ts 1. Don't: Rush through and think your way would be best! Lol! Read the manual and listen to the reps. I decided to go against my rep's suggestion of importing from the spreadsheets. I ended up doing the same process twice. Once it was evident my way of hand adding each student by hand wasn't going to work, I had to re-enter the info via a spreadsheet! (I did this to avoid dealing with excel and the importing process in fear of it not working). Just fight through it or see if you tech support person at your school can assist. 2. Don't: Buy cheap replacement straps on Amazon. I did this in hopes to avoid doing laundry as often, but these replacement straps only lasted two washes before the plastic transmission piece began to peel away from the strap. Extremely disappointing, but eye opening as to how well the Polar products are! 3. Don't: Import class lists too soon in a new semester. Wait until your class lists are firmed up and semi-accurate. Since my data and reports are my own and not connected to the district, I was able to create adapted names for new students and not mess up the assigned sensor numbers. Even with the assignments remaining the same, so often, students forget their numbers or grab the incorrect sensor which leads to incorrect data. 4. Don't: Allow the students to leave the gym area before collecting all the heart rate monitors. Every time I get comfortable that we have the system down someone will walk off to their next period class wearing a heart rate monitor. Most often it's accidental, but none the less a hassle. 5. Don't: Create an entire Standards Based Unit around a standard without a genuine understanding of that standard. I will save that for a new blog post! The images above are those provided by the Polar Program, and the images below are some that were generated by our Math Analytics Club. More to come I'm sure!!
#slowchathealth Blog Never Disappoints!
Although I don't always have the time to engage with #slowchathealth,com (a Blog that comes out on the weekend, and a Twitter conversation where you respond to five questions, one each day of the week) it's a blog that I always read. This week Andy Milne's blog spoke to me and I found it to be brilliant. While searching for it on Twitter I found many Tweets about the best blogs in 2015, or blogs that one should follow in 2016, and every time I wanted to let them know they forgot to add Andy's #slowchathealth to the list. This blog is insightful, informative, thought provoking and fun! It's for Health teachers, but should all teachers incorporate some Health lessons into their teachings?
Instead of my blogging this month I'm going to add his for you to enjoy! Feel free to respond in the Twitter chats all week. Just use the A1: (A) for answer and (1) for Monday, A2: (2) Tuesday, etc... Often I have to answer multiple days in one Tweet, but I don't think he minds!! Enjoy and thanks again Andy!!
P.S. - OF COURSE I GOT THE APP AND WILL BE TRYING IT THIS WEEK!!!!!!
This blog was almost a goner! Not something I looked forward to doing, but felt obligated to post! Blogging was highly recommended by many in my district and PLN. I agonized over every word and considered ending my blog after just 3 posts!
Then - along came #Edcamp Voxer I joined two different chats about blogging - just to be sure I wanted to end mine! After 100's of voxes ... finally the one I have been waiting for from Jon Harper. He is the creator of #Edcamp blogging chat, assistant principal, and blogger! On the 2nd to last day he commented about the "no rules" blog! The message I took away from that 3 minute Vox was that I can share however I want to share, and write how I want to write! Twitter style would be most preferred as you're allowed to abbreviate and shorten all that you want to share! Thanks to Jon ... my blog will live to see another day! Just that tiny connection (he doesn't even know who I am), but a few words from him completely changed my mind-set in regards to blogging! Thank you Jon Harper & to the organizers of #Edcampvoxer for making it all possible! #Edcampvoxer 2015 Organizers ... Sarah Thomas - Twitter: @sarahdateechur & Voxer: @sarahdateechur Nicol Howard - Twitter: @nicolrhoward & Voxer: @nicolrhoward Rachelle Wooten - Twitter: @rwootenits & Voxer: @rwoote203 Carla Jefferson - Twitter: @mrsjeff2u & Voxer: @mrsjeff2u Shana White - Twitter: @ShanaVWhite & Voxer: @svwhite Sometimes all we need is a little push, a phrase, an idea to move forward in trying to make our worlds a little better! Push forward in all that you do!!! Jon Harper also shared through a sidevox, unsplash.com where one can get a boatload of free images to use. Enjoy as it's a great site and safe to use for photos! When visiting his site, I also found a Podcast that he was featured on. My newest endeavor is listening to education podcasts & this was a bonus find for sure! EduAllStars Look forward to listening in the New Year! Being just a semi-connected certainly paid off in a big way this week. Great way to start the new year!! Note: The picture is from one of Jon's presentation, and created by: Photo by deep warren "There are times I think I'm doing thing on principle, but most I just do what feels good. But that's a principle too." ~ Brian Andreas Note:
Assignment Discussion for iEducator2, and also promised to my Voxer PLN for them to use as they see fit for their “Getting Connected” Presentations! Next month's blog /reflection will center around what types of resources a connected educator may find as a result of being connected! It was fall of 2011, and the first day of health classes of which I had three sections. Facing me were 32 students in every section. I had no student textbooks, no access to computers, and no real teaching materials to pull from. I was a part-time health teacher since Physical Education was my main content area. WP had a strict policy in which neither students nor teachers could access their phones at any time. My iPhone3 stayed in my desk drawer. Also, PLC’s didn’t exist, and I had no idea what a PLN was. I will have to say this was one of my least favorite teaching years. Observations were not a pleasant experience, and after much reflection I came to the conclusion that nothing could be done! Like Mr. Sullivan, from Teacher as an Architect, classes were based upon reading text, answering questions, reviewing, and test taking. My failure rate was entirely too high! Fast-forward to 2012 – The Introduction to Red/Zone - Green/Zone for phone usage at WP! Talk of BYOD, and a partial set of textbooks arrives. Although we now want to Ditch That Textbook, I will have to say that to have the structure of the textbook, and big ideas to draw from has been extremely helpful! The occasional use of the phone for a lesson was new, refreshing, and intriguing to say the least. The majority of lessons still consisted of reading text, answering questions, reviewing, and test taking, but there was a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel! And then it all truly began, June 2013, my first iEducator2 professional development day with Tom Gavin and John Kuglin. Mind Blowing - a game changer regarding my teaching, and how my students would now learn! It was an amazing experience to learn with those that would soon become part #Techcsd as it’s inception was August 2013. The scramble for a laptop cart to use in the gym was on, as I didn’t want my Physical Education students to miss out of all the great tech tools to improve their fitness levels and understandings of fitness. Signing out the computer lab for health as often as possible was part of my weekly routine! Oh – and the rest of the textbooks arrive!! Fast-forward again to Fall 2015, and the first day of Health classes of which I had 4 sections, the most ever. A senior girl that had failed my health class in 2012 was assigned to me again and sat in the front row. We’re meeting in a computer lab, a student textbook for everyone, (but used only for vocabulary and as an underlying resource). I have an entire professional learning network to draw on, and a learning management system, a.k.a Schoology that assists me in taking the students anywhere that I want them to go! Class referrals are down significantly from 2011. During a recent observation 100% engagement was reported while working on a digital project, and using the concept of giving students the creative choice to produce something to share with our community, and beyond about violence prevention. By the way, that girl that had failed in 2012 was now completely engaged and thriving in health class! I am now happy to get up and get to WP by 6:00 a.m.! The workday includes listening to my PLN for advice, tips, and suggestions on Voxer every day. As much time as possible is spent skimming over Twitter as closely as time will allow, and putting finishing touches on Schoology assignments. I am always looking for ways to incorporate tools that can help struggling learners, and for content that I can engage the accelerated student. Sometimes printing, or attaching awesome resources to use immediately to supplement my lesson plans. Finding and using the Genius Hour concept for the first time has helped make the class more engaging for the accelerated learner. I’m hoping that I can learn and manage groups within Schoology for 180 students to ensure the struggling students benefit as well. I feel as if I have followed a similar path to Mr. Sullivan and cannot wait to complete a semester’s worth of beginner lesson plans. At this point, I can begin tweaking them to make the lessons rich with content and geared them to meet the needs of each learner at their level. Thank you ieducator2, #Techcsd, and my PE/Health PLN as you have been steady, and ever-present force that has kept me going each and every day. I will have to say your efforts have touched close to 500 students over the course of my iEducator2 training, which was the point that I became truly connected. The feedback, thank you cards, verbal comments of appreciation from students, and Voxes I receive from other teachers in my PLN are so positive, are greater in number, and a direct reflection of your digital leadership! Being a connected educator has allowed me to learn from people all over the world, funny how it doesn’t seem so big anymore! Connected is the only way to go! Thank you all! --- end --- Author Paul Solarz shares ways to create a student-led classroom. I will have to say it's overwhelming at a glance, but is the direction I must travel with my classes. This book has totally transformed my thinking! I will use this resource as a guide to help me prepare my students for a lifetime of self-led learning as he has done with his classes! A big thanks has to go out to him for his willingness to share what he does, and his experiences empowering his students to collaborate, lead, and succeed. This may carry over into my Physical Education classes as well. I will make sure to share my progress on Twitter, and on my health class website blog! |
Ms. MinkaTeacher at William Penn High School New Castle Delaware Archives
May 2016
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