New Online Resources for PE

afPE has launched the new PE zone website the blurb states

The association for Physical Education has just launched a BETA version of the PE Zone – http://www.pezone.co.uk This site is a compilation of resources along with a PE social network and project management tool. With enough collaboration and networking this website will become the one stop site for all Physical Education teachers needs.

 There are also free PE resources available  at the free teaching resources website.

PEAI Dublin October 08

I was invited to speak about using Dartfish at the PE Association of Ireland conference with Kevin Smith from Anderson High School in Shetland. Really enjoyed it as you can see from the photos below

| View Show | Create Your Own

For those of you that attended our presentation click on these previous posts about dartfish and ICT in PE for further information about Dartfish. You just have to work your way through the posts to pick up the information there is a lot of it I know. If you have any questions just leave a comment on the blog.

A couple of the other things I mentioned were Youtube for getting video content and using Zamzar to save the clips to your computer. I also mentioned the resources on my previous schools PE Wiki.

afPE Conference

I am currently just outside Chester attending the afPE conference “Hitting the targets missing the point”. I am attending both as a delegate and a presenter. Happy to report that our workshop went well. I was presenting as part of a team from Glasgow University and the work they are doing with the PG Primary PE course. My input centred on what is happening nationally with PE in Scotland in terms of Curriculum for Excellence and the opportunities this presents to educators. Secondly how Glow can facilitate CPD, collaboration, sharing practice, learning and debate between educators. Providing a portal for teachers who have completed the PG Primary PE course to continue their engagement and professional reflection.

It was also great to meet Brian Greg who was also part of the presenting team. I have exchanged emails and Blog comments with but not actually met him in person. Brian has recently been appointed as the Head Teacher at Muck school. It was interesting talking to Brian who like myself has a healthy interest in both PE and ICT. He is really excited about the potential for using Glow but has some interesting challenges to deal with. The satellite broadband connection for one which affords little more speed and bandwidth than a dial up connection. The intermittent power to the Island 5 hours of electricity per day. All of which leads to a rather frustrating Glow experience for him. However undeterred he has started a new blog from Muck which he has at times had to save posts on  a flash drive and post to his friend on the mainland to upload as it would take too long to upload from the island.

Tom Wylie’s former Chief Executive of the National Youth Agency from 1996 and retired in August 2007 keynote raised some interesting points and questions. 60% of Children are doing well at school 40% are not doing so well. That 40% can be further subdivided into the disappointed (getting by but not enjoying it), the disaffected and the disappeared (getting nowhere).

Very few young people do not learn a skill for its own sake they learn a skill because it will take them somewhere. This comes from their perception of their identity how they see themselves and where they are heading. Learning has to connect with the real world as young people want to be viewed as adults they want to engage in the real world.

Averaged out young people spend only “9 minutes” of every waking hour at school. What do we know about what they are doing off campus the other “51 minutes”. What do we know about the informal learning world beyond the school and how can we engage with it?

We don’t deliver a curriculum that conveys a prepackaged off the shelf inflexible model. We should develop the curriculum in partnership with the learners so it best meets their needs.

Margaret Talbot Chief Executive of afPE delivered her keynote “Physical education: exercising the entitlement” after a slight delay. One of my colleagues who shall remain nameless (as Margaret is not a woman you want to upset!) accidentally lifted Margaret’s presentation notes whilst retrieving her own from our workshop.

As usual Margaret was not backward at coming forward and voicing her concerns about what is happening around PE and sport in England. One of her points that strikes particular resonance with me is the issue of measuring the time allocated to PE but not actually measuring the quality of that PE. I have raised this before in relation to Scotland what is the point in meeting the target if what you are offering is not high quality.

 

Dartfish Users Conference Engaging The Video Generation

I was invited to present at the Dartfish users conference at Bedford University. I had 2 inputs to the day and was able to attend some of the other sharing practice sessions. Yet again I picked up some more tips, short cuts and uses of some of the more advanced features. You can view my first presentation via slideshare below

After my presentation I attended a couple of sessions led by Neil Melville which were excellent the first was about sharing analyser projects and the second was about using the measurement and data tools. You can learn more about using the measurement tools and data tables in this online tutorial. There are some more online tutorials on some of the other Dartfish features available here.

My second presentation was all about extending learning beyond the classroom through the use of online spaces and tools. I promised the delegates that they would not have to take any notes (other than the address of this blog) as I would write about my presentation and post links to everything I made reference to through the blog. I deliberately set out not to use a PowerPoint presentation as I wanted to demonstrate that you can deliver your content through other vehicles. I also wanted the delegates to return to my blog to experience for themselves what I was trying to get across i.e. you can extend the learning and the engagement with your learners beyond the restrictions of the actual lesson/presentation. By coming back to the blog the delegates have the opportunity to: read this post and reflect, click on the links to learn more and do further research or post comments to me thus extending the impact of the conference and this is exactly what our pupils doing in a number of schools. If you are a conference delegate welcome back if not read on anyway you might find something that engages you.

I was conscious that my workshop had a slant towards PE and not every delegate was from a PE or sports background, but all that I talked to could be replicated for any subject. I started by visiting the Learning and Teaching Scotland PE website and directed the group towards this case study about using blogs and wikis as there are links to videos and tutorials on how to set up a blog and information about wikis. 

I then introduced the wonderful free  web tool delicious to create online book marks for sites that you find interesting and useful it can then be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. For a simple guide watch the video below (You probably will be unable to view the video in school as it is hosted on YouTube). You may find my PE bookmarks  useful. You may want to consider setting this up for your course or in a department to tag interesting sites or share frequently visited sites with pupils and or staff. This can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection.

 

I moved on to talk about Blogs for those of you who want to know a bit more about blogging I previously posted this video explaining blogging in simple terms . If you want to give blogging a go check out this set of tutorials for using wordpress the provider I use for this blog. If you look on the “links” section on the left hand side near the top of the page I have links to several PE blogs that you may find interesting.

The main point I was trying to establish is that blogs can provide a fantastic conduit for communication and collaboration with your learners. You can extend the learning beyond the confines of the lesson. Your learners can communicate with you leave you questions or work to look over etc and you can deal with these communications wherever you can get online. At this point I  spoke about RSS feeds and aggregators. You may find this video on using RSS feeds useful. The aggregator I demonstrated was netvibes a great bit of software to keep track of all blogs and websites that have content which is regularly updated. I find netvibes very useful as there are loads of plug ins that you can add and you can personalise it to your own needs and the best bit is that it is web based so if you sign up for your own account you can access it form any computer with an Internet connection. Ideal for use at home and school. Here is a video  about netvibes 

The next part of the presentation focused on wikis the following video (also on YouTube) will help you understand a little more about what a wiki is.

I used the Banchory H/Int2 wiki and explained that the content was there for people to download and use and share as long as they were willing to reciprocate and acknowledge the source. Yet again I was trying to demonstrate how we can use an online tool to extend the learning experience and provide additional support.  Wikis can also offer real scope for collaboration between teachers for resource development and between teachers and pupils for learning. I explained that teachers can sign up for free wikis that are advert free at wikispaces. Wikispaces also has video tutorials to help get you started within their help section.

When I was discussing the wikis I highlighted using Youtube to incorporate inspirational and interesting videos. There is actually a lot of very good content on Youtube and other video hosting sites such as google video. We use the videos as a hook for the pupils and also to make the wiki more attractive and lastly to engage the children though adopting a piece of their own culture. Our pupils are creating their own environments outside school with video, audio text and many other applications in sites such as bebo and myspace and facebook and we want our wiki to reflect some of that cool. I also demonstrated  Youtube annotation showing how value can be added to your you tube videos. This is the direction that Dartfish are moving through the Dartfish Moves platform where you can upload and annotate videos. I was gutted that I had to leave early and could not see the presentation on Datfish moves. Something else for you to check out is the Dartfish channel on YouTube.

I punctuated my first presentation in the morning with videos I had saved to my computer from YouTube using Zamzar. This is a very useful tool as most schools block video sharing sites or you may want to play a video on a laptop in an area with no access to an Internet connection. This article form Wired explains explains some other ways of saving videos to your computer. I like Zamzar as you can save videos to your computer in different formats and you can convert videos to different formats, it can also be used to convert many different types of files and documents from one type to another.

I hope you find this a useful summary of the day and i hope it continues your learning beyond my presentation. Please feel free to post comments about the day or ask further questions for clarification.

Scoptland Performs a New Government website

The Scottish Government have launched a new website Scotland Performs 

“The website will allow people to find out whether the Scottish nation is becoming wealthier, safer, healthier, greener and smarter. Visitors to the Scotland Performs website will be presented with highly visual and easy to understand pages. They will have quick access to information about the quality of life in Scotland, and where thing are getting better and where things are getting worse.”

Read the full article here

Sports Entrepreneurs SQA on-line Football Store Game

This is an on-line business game based on how to successfully run a ‘virtual’ sports store, concentrating mainly on the season-long fortunes of Scotland’s senior football clubs. The Scottish version, backed by clubs including Aberdeen, Celtic, Dundee United, Hearts, Motherwell, Rangers and Partick Thistle, is based on the pioneering work of The Small Business Company (TSBC) in New Zealand.  TSBC are involved in the trailblazing Scottish game, the first new version to be developed anywhere outside New Zealand.

Over 11,000 pupils from some 280 schools across Scotland have already signed up for this exciting game that aims to teach business and enterprise skills.  By running the sports store, students can learn what works in business and what doesn’t; experiment with different tactics to see the impact of their decisions; and learn what it is like to run a small business.  Given the support of Scotland’s clubs, students can also choose to have their ‘virtual’ store decked out in the colours of their favourite team.

Today in sport 07/08…

Some facts from history on this day in sport courtesy of the sports network, on this day.com and Today in sport

1965 – Britain’s Jim Clark won his fifth consecutive Grand Prix.

1984 – Japan beats US for olympic gold medal in baseball

No Pain No Gain

Physical activity is good for your body it keeps you fit and healthy!!