PE Tech Integration Ideas with Steve Babcock

Hope this sunny Monday finds you happy and healthy! First, a shout out to the current CMS Fitbit champions, Kara and Terri (each busting 100,000 steps last week!). Thanks for keeping us all motivated to hit the pavement and get those extra steps. While we still don't have the budget to buy every student at CMS a Fitbit, today's blog post examines other ways that technology can be integrated into PE instruction.

Our fitness guru Steve Babcock completed his master's thesis on providing high-quality physical education in low income settings. When it comes to technology integration, Babcock realized that not all students will have the same access to technology, and designed his lessons accordingly. He shared with me details on how he uses simple video for performance assessment with sports skills.

Integration Idea
Babcock shared a lesson that he created for his class which incorporates skills instruction, technology, and formative assessment. Ready for the best part? Math is included in the performance tasks, which makes this lesson extra STEAMy!

If your class doesn't have access to devices that will travel well to the outdoors (i.e. iPods or iPads with very sturdy cases), then there is no harm in allowing students to use their own personal devices for this lesson.

How to...

• Create station cards for the stations that the students will travel to using the samples in the images below (each station includes a hint the students view first which directs them to a performance task). 
• Have students work in pairs or teams to video each other during each performance task.
• At the end of the tasks, students will report to you to show you the video from the tasks they completed. 
• Reteach skills and have students revisit the stations (taking new video for assessment) as needed. 
• Have students respond to (or blog about!) the final hint.

Ready for the next level with tech?

• Have students upload their videos to Google Drive to share with you (or submit through Google Classroom by sharing the link to their video).
• Share exemplary demonstration of skills with students by projecting on Apple TV. 
• Start a discussion in Google Classroom on what they learned from watching exemplary videos. 
• Have students use fitness apps such as myfitnesspal to analyze their nutritional intake. 
• Use step counting apps such as runtastic to track distance and steps.
• Allow students to maintain fitness blogs on Google Sites, Kidblog, or Weebly where they can track their progress with PE skills, distance accomplishments, and nutritional analysis. 

Do you have other great ideas for integrating technology into PE? Please share them in the comments below! *Contest alert* A special techie prize goes to the first teacher to try a technology integrated PE lesson and share their experience!

Lesson Materials:

 

Student Web Design with Weebly

Happy techie Thursday! I hope this post finds you "spinwheel of death" free. At the beginning of the year, our entire staff was trained in web design with Weebly when we created our classroom websites. Did you know that you can have up to 40 free student accounts with Weebly? Students can use this easy website creation tool to design a password protected website of their own!

Integration Idea
There are so many curriculum integration possibilities with Weebly sites. Any work that you want your students to showcase or publish can be hosted on a site. You can have the students create digital portfolios to host their work. Teams can design websites to host projects. Below is a screenshot of a student website used to organize information for a math unit culminating project. Click here to see the direction sheet for this project.

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Click on the image for a larger view

What do the students think?

"Building websites is very exciting. I like how your imagination is your limit."
-Hiram, 6th grade CMS student

"Designing websites is good because you get to show your talent and how good you are at creating."
-Ilse, 6th grade CMS student

How to...

Set up student accounts

• Convert your Weebly account to a Weebly for Education account (free) at https://education.weebly.com
• Click on "My Students" to begin building your class (see image below).
• Click on "Add a class" to create a class.
• Click on "Add a student" to add students to the class. Tip: To keep username/password use consistent, it is helpful to create the students' accounts using their Google login information (just copy/paste from the Powerschool report). 

• Students will log in on the page students.weebly.com
• You can create a unique access password for all of your students' websites by selecting "Class Settings" and entering a class password.

Up for a challenge?

• Have your students use Embed Code to insert a Padlet or a Thinglink on their sites! Ask me how to do this... it's WAY easier than you would think.

Let me know if you want support in getting your students started with Weebly web design.  If you already have experience with this, please share your experience in the comments below!

Margot Parker Uses Newsela

I hope your Monday was full of "Aha" moments and strong internet connections. I am happy to bring you our first teacher highlight. It was my pleasure to cross paths with Margot today and to hear her genuine excitement about how her students have been responding to her new favorite tech tool, Newsela.

Teacher Highlight: Margot Parker
While Margot is the most full-time part-time counselor we've ever met (you read that right), she also wears many other hats, including a teacher hat! She always goes above and beyond (in typical CMS fashion). Margot teaches an academy FLEX, which is focused on improving reading skills aligned with CCSS. As we are all well aware, there is often a challenge in promoting active learning and engagement when students have not found themselves academically successful in the past. Margot recognized this with her FLEX students, and sought to include resources that would not only meet her students' academic needs, but that would promote engagement as well.

Newsela Integration Idea:
Margot uses Newsela to locate articles that she thinks her students will find engaging. Recent choices have included articles on Snap Chat, U.S. Border debates, and making middle school lunch rooms more friendly. She previews the article to make sure that it is socially relevant to her students. With topics around science, health, social sciences and more, Newsela is not just for ELA teachers. Margot then ensures that the lexile level is set so that the article will push her students just enough to build their reading skills. She assigns associated quizzes so the students can immediately see what they understood or misunderstood in the article.

How To...
Newsela is a tool you can use whether you have a class set of technology, or whether you only have a teacher computer.

• Go to newsela.com
• Click "sign up" to create a Newsela account.
• When viewing articles, you will see a navigation bar on the right-hand side where you can choose the lexile level.

• After you've chosen your desired lexile level, select the printer icon below the lexile list.

The article will appear in a printer-friendly view, and you can either print or export it as a PDF (see figure below) if you want to post it in Google Classroom or another digital space.

• You can try the Pro version for free for 30 days, which will allow you to track quizzes, annotate PDF's, and many other wonderful things. That being said, there are work-arounds if you use the good ol' free version, such as using Notability to annotate PDF's and Google Forms to assign quizzes. 

Pro Tools

*Contest alert* A prize will go to the first two teachers who email me, or post as a comment, 3-5 sentences on how they have used Newsela in their classroom! Let me know if you would like any support in using this tool. Margot certainly got me excited to explore it further!

CMS is a 21st Century School

Hello all!

As a tech coach, I aim to support the development of 21st Century skills for both students and teachers. I decided that it was time for my communication methods to take a 21st Century turn. Instead of continuing to publish our "What the Tech" newsletter, I will be keeping a blog to highlight new tech tools and to spotlight the technology integration that I see happening around campus. I am fortunate to work with so many amazing digital educators at CMS, and I am truly excited to have this opportunity to highlight the work you do so we can all grow from shared experience. Each post will focus on specific tech tools, integration ideas, and include a "how to".

Blog Features
On the right panel you will see a link to tools that we have already highlighted in previous newsletters and meetings. I will continue adding to this document as we continue sharing the new and exciting things we are doing with tech integration.

Have you tried QR codes yet? 

You may start to see some QR codes popping up around our school. These codes will direct students, parents, and other visitors to relevant websites. We are proud of the fact that at CMS almost every teacher maintains an up-to-date website to promote communication with students and families. If you have a website that is posted on our staff directory, then check in your box for your own QR code poster! Guests who scan this poster will be directed to your classroom website. Feel free to hang these on your doors or anywhere you would like them in your classroom.
*Contest Alert* A special prize will be given to the first teacher to email me and tell me where the QR code in the image directed them.

Integration Idea
QR codes can be used to direct students to any online content. For instructional purposes, they are great for sharing student work or organizing gallery walks (hint: everything in Google Drive can be shared with a link). The picture below shows a lesson where students created their own quizzes on real-world word problems with negative and positive integers in Google Forms, then used the link to generate a QR code which they pasted in their posters. The class then rotated around the room and took each others' quizzes to practice the concept.

QR Code Quiz Gallery Walk

How to...
Generate the QR code:

• Copy the URL of the website you want the QR code to link to.
• Go to an online QR code generator, such as https://www.the-qrcode-generator.com
• Paste in the URL and click save. The QR code should automatically go to your downloads.
• Drag the QR code into a Word document to print, or where you want it on the web.

Scan the QR code:

• Download a QR Code reader (QR Code Reader by Scan is one of the district apps and won't have adds).
• Open the reader and hover over the QR code, aligning it within the rectangular section on the reader.

Enjoy! As always, feel free to contact me with questions or if you would like support with any tech integration tool.

Lindsey

lblass@campbellusd.org