Welcome to my blog...but who am I?

 Welcome to my educational issues blog! 

I am a recent graduate from teachers college at Brock University where I earned the ability to teach health and physical education and history at the intermediate/senior level. I am a personal trainer and a strength and conditioning specialist who final made the decision to go back to school to do complete my teachers college certificate that I was initially going to complete when I graduated university the first time in 2011.

As someone who is passionate about health and fitness, and have had my own successful body transformation as a bikini competitor, I am quite active on social media and communicating through the internet and am well aware of the need to discover the different ways in which we can incorporate the internet and our students cell phones into the course content, as they are going to be on them so I believe that it is best to work with our students rather then being in a constant battle with them.

I also firmly believe that because of the reliance of our students on social media sites, there is quite an impact on their mental health as they place quite an emphasis on how much their social media presence relates to their level of popularity or who they are as an individual. Therefore, I believe that as an educators, especially a future phys ed teacher, that I can help my students to become more aware of how best to navigate through the online world and allow themselves to use their social media presence as an extension of who they rather then allowing it to impact who they are.

Miss Tober's Grade 8 Online Class Newsletter

Infographic and Design Tools

 

I personally love using canva! I use it all the time especially when creating assignment outlines for the students. I have attached a few of the assignment outlines that I have created using Canva during my practicum placements. 

Slides carnival is another website that I use for creating of slideshow presentations. I find that google slides and even powerpoint are rather limited in their template designs so this is a great resource that provides quite a few different background templates to choose from.

Infographic Resource Wakelet

I think that the use of infographics can be used as both an assistive technology device as well as to assist those students who are less tech savvy as it is a great tool that combines both the a visual representation of what you are teaching/expecting as well as written words so that there are two ways for students to grasp the material. Also, once created you can download the creation into either a pdf of a document and if you wanted to you can add a voice over it as well in order to verbalize what is written in the infographic to provide another level of understanding for the students. Plus we live in a society now that is inundated with social media and pictures that are used as a means to spread a message so the infographic is a very common aspect of our students lives that we would just be adapting in order to help them to understand the material that we are teaching them

Examples of Canva Assignments

Post Secondary Readiness Assignment

Workout Routine Assignment

Collaborative Learning and Digital Literacy

 

Living in an increasingly digital world, I believe that it is important for us as educators to teach our students the importance of how to navigate the online environment as well as how they can use it to their advantage. Through the use of social media sites such as blogs, video or picture posts on sites like Instagram, and video challenges on Tick Tok our students are online way more then we ever were (or that I ever was when I was in high school). However...with the increasing use of the internet comes the inherent dangers along with it. Dangers such as mental health concerns due to the pressures to be perfect and get a certain amount of likes or followers, the dangers of falling victim to scams or predators or even losing the ability to be able to converse one on one with someone. 

I have included a quick video for your viewing pleasure on the importance of teaching our students to become digital citizens and why digital literacy is so important in todays society

I have also linked to this post, the Requirements for Remote Learning as per Policy/Program Memorandum No. 164 from the Ontario Ministry of Education 

The use of the internet and online learning is not something that can be ignored or disregarded at all! Our students are going to be online and as educators we have the abilities to teach them how to properly use the online world to their advantages. For example, using forums such as blogs with our students and having them post regularly can teach the importance of accountability, and time management. It can show them how to look inside themselves and understand who they are as individuals. It can help guide them on pathways to discovery. There are so many advantages that can come out of having our students using the online world as part of their learning process. 

Even by creating a classroom blog that the teacher and all the students in the class has access to can teach teamwork and bring students together who might not choose to work together to being with. By the teacher participating in the idea of blogging or using social media it allows the students to buy into what they are teaching to them and the construct that they are 'walking the walk' themselves so that when we want to provide a lesson based around how to properly use a search engine or the safety and dangers of using public blogs the students know that we are coming at them from a place of being genuine rather then just a place of lecturing at them.

We are all learning how to navigate through the ever evolving and changing online world and communities and it is important that as educators we are changing and evolving in order to grow with the changing world of our students. The more authentic and genuine we can be the better prepared we can make our students to become digital and productive citizens when they leave us and enter into the world.

Online Resources

 Please see my wakelet on Equity in Health and Physical Education. Feel free to add an additional resources that you feel are beneficial to it.

While looking through a few of the bookmarking websites there were a few that stuck out to me through my time in the classroom that I think can be used beneficially to both engage our students more in the content of what we are teaching, and to also increase there levels of digital literacy.

In terms of teaching health and phys ed I think that the integration of Tick Tok would be beneficial. There are different physical challenges as well as healthy cooking options that can be searched for and have the students try either in class or at home. As it is something that they enjoy doing right now we can get them to have fun while practicing their movement skills without knowing that is what we are doing. We can also use it in terms of collecting and bookmarking to a class account and we can build on videos that can be useful in the health units of personal safety and substance abuse with the videos that they can find on there.

Another really beneficial site that can be utilized in a health and phys ed class, especially a fitness class, is Pinterest. There are several different food and workout collections that can be located on there. We can collaborate through the website to create workouts that can be completed either in a weight room or at home without equipment and we can upload different videos of workout ideas using different at home items for people who don't have access to workout equipment. 

I also think that by incorporating websites like these that are a little more social media based will help the students to increase their levels of self esteem because it will be teaching them how to use them properly and to not put as much influence on their thoughts and feelings as they otherwise might be. We can teach them what they are good for and how they can be manipulated so that they are not wanting to achieve the unachievable with their bodies or want to alter things that shouldn't be altered. 

Online Health and Physical Education Curriculum

 After looking through the health and physical education curriculum document (grades 9-12), the use of technology and technological constructs was discussed a few times. There is even specific expectations within the grade 9 Healthy Living Strand C curriculum, under personal safety and injury prevention on the use of technology and understanding the benefits and risks of it. I personally believe, that most of what we are teaching as physical education instructors is on teaching our students how to be able to navigate the use of social media and how to protect their mental health as well as their personal safety when it comes to the use of sexting, cyberbullying or potential online predators. 

The one nice thing that technology does bring us in the PE department is the use of programs that help us to monitor our heart rate while being active, or stop motion photography to break down the different skills that we are trying to teach. Technology has also help to increase our ability to be more inclusive by allowing students with disabilities who other wise may not have been able to participate be able to participate, they may just need a slight difference in the way that they move or their own set of specific skills but at least it allows for an equitable share of experiences from the whole class. 

What is missing from the curriculum, which I will admit I am not overly surprised about but can foresee being added in due to recent circumstances is the use of online instruction for a PE class. The different databases and resources that are available in order to be able to run an effective and proper PE class so that we can actually grade and see their physical progressions and movement competences 

The following is a link to an online cross-curricular online resource that I helped to create. 

Evolution of Sport in Canada

My Experiences With Online Learning

 

Experiences using an L.M.S

• As a Learner
  • As a learner I have used both blackboard and Sakai
  • I haven't used blackboard since I was in college in 2011-2013 so I can't overly remember much about it however I do remember that I did not use it to its fullest capabilities as it was the paramedic program that was completed in person at the time and nothing for it was done online
  • As for Sakai I had the opportunity to be using it more online this past school year and I did find it a bit confusing to navigate as there are several places to find the same information however I got all my assignment in on time so I guess I was able to navigate it...I was much more confident with all the different areas to look in by the end of the school year after having some time to look through it
  • I do think that because this was a new concept for most of my teachers that there was a learning curve and the sites could have been organized better/been more clean in order to navigate but I also believe that several of my teachers don't have the training behind them to be comfortable with the online learning environment 
• As a Teacher
  • While working through my placements at the DSBN I was using D2L in order to provide a blended experience and then with my last two weeks a fully online experience for the students
  • I will admit that as a Phys Ed teacher I was not using D2L for its fullest capabilities as there are quite a few hardships that I need to play around with in order to figure out the logistics of gym online but I did become quite comfortable to be able to navigate my way around the site by the end of my placements and found it to be quite user friendly once I understood the processes

How to include all learners?

• By providing expanding understandings of the LMS that we are already comfortable with or have had experiences with
• By showing us ways in which we can expand out abilities with the LMS we know
• Listening to the participants and providing answers that relate to and cause us to think critically about how we can improve our online classrooms