Emerging Technologies

Teacher Tube

TeacherTube provides an online community for sharing instructional videos. They seek to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners. It is a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill.

With TeacherTube, community members can:
-Upload, tag and share videos worldwide.
-Upload Support Files to attach your educational Actvities, Assessments, Lesson, Plans, Notes, and Other file formats to your video.
-Browse hundreds of videos uploaded by community members.
-Find, join and create video groups to connect with people who have similar interests.
-Customize the experience by subscribing to member videos, saving favorites, and creating playlists.
-Integrate TeacherTube videos on websites using video embeds or APIs.
-Make videos public or private - users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with those they invite.

Most importantly, TeacherTube community members are a major part of the evolution of the site. Members are encouraged to not only upload educationally relevant videos, but also to make constructive comments and use the rating system to show appreciation for videos of value to one as an educator or learner. Users also have the ability to preserve the integrity of the site by flagging inappropriate videos. TeacherTube staff review flagged sites and will remove any inappropriate posts. With more collegial commentary and discussion through messaging and responses, the quality of this resource will only increase.

The service is free for everyone. They always encourage their users to contact them with thoughts, suggestions, or other feedback. They do have a vision for TeacherTube to truly be a better alternative to other video storage sites. With the community's help, it can become more interactive and engaging for all teachers and learners. I have used TeacherTube in the past to help my substitute teachers take up time in class when I could not be there. This is a great resource to use when substitute teachers do not have a background in your particular subject.


Wii Fit

Wii Fit is a video game developed by Nintendo for the Wii console. It is an exercise game consisting of activities utilizing the Wii Balance Board peripheral. The balance board measures a suser’s body mass index when told of his or her height. The game has roughly 40 different activities, including yoga poses, pushups, and other exercises. Furthermore, Wii Fit allows its players to compare their fitness by using Wii Fit’s own channel on the Wii Menu. The game tracks a user’s “Wii Fitness Age” through a body test basing the result on the user’s current age, weight, and balance. Like the rest of the Wii Series, WiI Fit integrates Wiis into its presentation and gameplay.

As a physical educator I have found that using the Wii Fit to get kids involved with exercise is a great tool. I work with students from Northwest High School as a personal trainer. One of the biggest challenges I face is getting kids into the weight room. The school already has a Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) that they use during gym class. After speaking to one of the Physical Education teachers about DDR I thought it might be a good idea to have a dance off to get students interested in coming to the weight room. I found the money to purchase a Wii DDR Super Group Fitness Pack, which includes:
2 - DDR “Energy” metal dance pads for Wii™ with recessed arrow buttons that accurately
recreate the look and feel of an arcade platform
6 - Practice pads without cables
8 – DDR game digital pedometers

With the new group fitness pack we can have a dance off with 2 students dancing and the winner moves to the next round. To make use of the practice pads we have the students that are competing next warm up and/or practice on the practice pads. You can have up to 6 students practicing at once and you can use the pedometers to determine how much movement each student has completed during your gym class. DDR not only gets kids interested in gym class it makes them physically active and elevates their heart rate increasing the amount of healthy activity they participate in. The kids love it and they are starting to stay after school to participate in our weekly DDR weekly dance off. While using the DDR during gym class it is hard to keep everyone busy that is not participating. You can only have 8 students participating at once and most of the classes at Northwest have an average of 25 students. So to keep everyone active during class you can split the class into three groups letting one group use the DDR, and the other two groups can have different activities to keep them physically active until it is their turn to use the DDR.



NASPE's Teacher Toolbox



NASPE’s Teacher Toolbox shares ideas for promoting your quality physical education, physical activity, or youth sports program. Every month will feature activity ideas that meet the national standards, elementary and secondary fitness calendars for you to send home with your students, bulletin board ideas, puzzles and games, information about the nation’s health observances, and the newest resource materials.


This could easily be implemented into my classroom setting. The first important aspect of this tool is the activities listed for physical education that are updated regularly. There are ideas that can be used in your lesson plans and ideas that the students can take home to their parents to get them involved as well. One good piece of information to take home is the Early Childhood Physical Activity Calendar. This calendar can be taken home with the students and shared with the family to help keep them physically active. It also helps stress the fact that physical activity is important to a healthy lifestyle.

Module 3: Critical Thinking

Teachers and Technology: English with an Edge

The main idea behind this article is to use technology to get students to challenge the status quo. Today students are so caught up in using technology in everything they do. As a Graduate Assistant in the Physical Education department at IUPUI I have come to realize that students in higher education cannot function without technology. If I lecture without using PowerPoint the students act like they are lost. They want notes prepared for them so they only have to jot down a few important parts of the lecture. Because the students rely on technology so much I decided to make their final project a creative technological assignment. I did not go as far as making all the students create a short film but I am giving them the option to use YouTube as a means of getting their point across to their classmates.

I am hoping the project will give the students that are bored with writing research papers the chance to expand their thoughts and help them come up with creative ways to get their point across. Quoting the article, Teachers and Technology: English with an Edge, “I recall a young man who was amazingly intelligent but so bored with school that his grades were average and below.” I feel that this is a problem when it comes to students in higher education as well. I have extremely intelligent students that challenge the information from their assigned book during lecture but when it comes time to turn in an article review or some other written assignment their grades are way below the rest of the class.

If I can get these students interested in some type of assignment that makes them expand their thoughts maybe they would not be so bored with the homework and earn better grades. “Many educators use the term educational technology very broadly. Educational technology for those educators includes any media that can be used for instruction” (Lever-Duffy, McDonald, 2003). I want my students to be able to use educational technology to complete their final projects. I believe this will give them the chance to be creative in the way they complete homework and teach classes in the future.

Another aspect from the article that caught my attention was the fact that the teacher was nervous that an administrator might happened into her room while students were presenting their short satire film. I have had the same feeling when using the Weefit in a classroom setting. To an administrator it may look like we are just playing games when in fact we are being physically active while we are learning different types of exercises that can be used to stay in shape. My biggest question however, is what to do for the students that do not have access to computers at home. Just like in the article, how would the students that don’t have access to a video camera or a computer at home finish the assignment? Here at IUPUI I would expect them to find time to complete the assignment using one of our computer labs. When it comes to high school and middle school students it would be hard to expect them to have the time to get to the computer lab. This could be one of the biggest challenges to using educational technology for students to complete their assignments.

Technology: Toward a New Model of High-Tech Schoolrooms

This was an interesting article. The main idea was that there should be high-tech schoolrooms instead of high-tech schools. I had always thought that having a school updated to a high-tech school was a great idea. This would give students the opportunity to expand their knowledge of computers used for educational purposes. My kids have gone through school in Perry Township and every since elementary school they have had the classroom set up just like the room mentioned in the article. Each room had four computers and one on the teacher’s desk. I asked my kids if they ever used the computers in their classes. They both said that they did not get to use the computers very often and when they did they did not get enough time finish all of the assignment. This did not seem like a big deal to me because we have a computer for the kids at home. Again my question is how do I help the students that do not have computer access at home? If I give them more time in class to finish their computer assignments they will fall behind in other areas of the class. One way to fix the problem could be to split the class into sections giving each student ample time to complete all computer assignments in class. The problem with this is that it would be hard for the teacher to have the time to help different sections within one class. Teachers would have to have an assistant to help them keep things in order. This is a problem because of the lack of funds that schools have to pay a teacher assistant.


High-tech schoolrooms sound like a great idea. My biggest concern is how to pay for them. The author of this article seems to think it would be easier to afford the high-tech classroom if you did one room at a time. However; it seems to me that the classroom would have to have replacement computers just like a high-tech school would need them. With a high-tech school room you have up to 30 computers in one room causing a big expense when it comes time to upgrade. One idea that I like about the high-tech schoolroom is the fact that you can match the class room set up to the subject being taught.

A quote that I found interesting was “one computer used four hours is equal to four computers used for one hour a day”. As far as the expense of using a computer for four hours a day compared to the expense of using four computers for an hour a day they might be the same. However; it seems to me that a teacher would be able to make better use of four computers in their classroom than they would one computer for the whole class to share. Again by splitting the class into sections they students could have one or two days a piece to use the computers. I am teaching an exercise science class this semester and we split our class into three sections on Wednesday: section 1 goes to the computer lab to do case studies, section 2 goes to group fitness class led by a professional trainer and section 3 goes to the gym to lead a group fitness class. We rotate the sections so that each section to go to the computer lab every third week. This works out well for our situation however; I can see how it would not work in a high school setting.

The article also mentions a 1 on 1 set up. In this scenario each student gets a lap top computer to take home with them every day. This would be beneficial for the teachers and the students. However; it raises a concern of the student’s family or friends using the computer for personal use. My nephew went to a charter school for 3rd-5th grade. He was given a lap top to take home and bring to class every day. I personally witnessed his mom’s boyfriend looking at pornography on his computer. His mother also used it as her personal computer keeping my nephew from doing his homework. I know from experience that you can block access to many sites which would help with some of this problem. However; when the student gets home the computer can still be used by family and friends and the student may have no control over who is using it because ultimately they have to do as their parents say. It would also be a very costly expense for schools to supply lap tops for all students.

Reference

Lever-Duffy, Judy, McDonald, Jean B., (2003). Teaching and Learning with Technology 3rd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson.