Asham Classroom

 On Monday we had the pleasure of hearing from the ever fantastic Dean Shareski.  Before we begin I will link his blog & twitter below!  https://ideasandthoughts.org/  &  https://twitter.com/shareski  👇 If you have not already checked his stuff out I highly suggest doing so! (After you read my blog first 😊) Dean radiated with energy and had me drawn in from beginning to end. He clearly has a passion for teaching and for children and it showed with the cameo made by his grandson.  Dean preached joy and delight and ensuring that as educators we always ring our A game to our classroom. Students can tell when we care and if we don't care they won't care either, it's that simple.  I like the above quote because it is so true. We do it because we care BUT teaching takes long hours and patience. Some days we are going to have to put on a brave face and take it 1 hour at a time but as long as we don't let our bad days shine through into our clas...

 For this task we were asked to follow a blog. I chose to follow Dean Shareski's blog linked here --->  ideasandthoughts.org Dean was our final guest speaker for the course and boy was he a "delight".  He inspired me to check out his blog and I went down a rabbit hole of his posts. I now follow him on twitter and had a quick twitter exchange with him about his chat with our class. I was lucky enough he even followed me back! You can follow his twitter here ---->  https://twitter.com/shareski?lang=en   I most recently read his post titled "From Despair to Hope" and really enjoyed it. He writes about joyful learning and how it is more important then ever to bring that to our classrooms or virtual classrooms as in 2020-21 school year it feels like there hasn't been much joy. He has inspired me to be the happy teacher and always bring "joy" and "delight" to my classroom and lessons. 

 As a teacher being connected has never been so relevant then it is today. The 2020-21 school year proved that if you weren't connected or willing to get connected digitally then you would fall behind.  Covid-19 forced teachers and students to a virtual classroom, and for many forced them to teach multiple grades and subjects all online. This was a major change for many people, however if you were digitally connected it made this transition much more manageable.   See the images below to get a visual on just how much the role of a teacher has changed in this digital age.  As you can see, teachers are now responsible for far more then in the past. This is just a sign of the times. I foresee this trend to continue even after Covid and virtual teaching is over because well, our students are all SO connected to the internet and their devices this is how they will want to learn. It is their language now, students no longer want to write something on paper they want t...

 This past week our guest speakers in class were Shannon Magee and Chris Fredrickson. The opic covered was the different areas of online teaching and learning. The topic that most interested me was gamification of classrooms. This topic stuck out to me because last year in Mikes class I read the book on gamification so I have prior experience researching this area.  When Shannon and Chris talked about gamification they weren't necessarily talking about video games like the previous weeks speaker Matteo DiMuro, however turning regular classroom activities and tasks into "games". Ways in doing this would to simply add a point system for completing classroom tasks or to lessons. Somewhat of a token system. Or for test review you can do a trivia game with teams, the students will have fun and not even realize that they are studying and reviewing hat has been learned.   The classic application to use for this would be the ever popular Kahoot. Kahoot is great for review an...

 Using info graphics can be extremely useful in the classroom. Many students are visual learners and can benefit greatly from seeing rather then listening to instructions. As a physical educator I have seen my CT's and personally used info graphics many times, they have been useful in many situations such as learning a new skill for early years  or working out in the weight room for the senior years.  An example which I will post below is an info graphic I made in anticipation for teaching overhand throwing in my upcoming placement. I will post this on the wall so students can understand the steps when learning this new skill and can refer back to the poster when they have questions or need a refresher on how to perform the skill.  See image through link below:  Overhand Throwing

Due to internet issues over the weekend I am uploading a day late, my apologies! Last week we had  DiMuro speak to our class. Mr. DiMuro is the ICT specialist for the Brandon School Division & taught previously at Vincent Massey High School. At Vincent Massey he was blessed to have such awesome students including 15 year old me! Mr. DiMuro spoke about several topics however the topic that stood out to me and interested me the most was the use of video games in the classroom. I think gaming can be a fantastic tool for getting students engaged and promote creativity in the classroom. It is 2021 and video games and technology are extremely prevalent in today's society.  Although it might be difficult to get parents on board with using video games in the classroom, it is easier to understand the benefits of using technology and video games in 2021 then in previous years. As a physical educator I have had to use technology in my placements much more then I initially would have ...

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    I had previously used Twitter for many years before this class, however I had never used it in an education fashion. I would use it to follow sporting news and news related to my job in the curling world.  I was & continue to be pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed using the Twitter platform for educational and professional development purposes. I found it very useful that Mike created a list for us to all collaborate on and follow each other. I have enjoyed reading my classmates tweets and learning from educators around the world simply by opening up Twitter on my phone.  I will certainly continue to use Twitter as a begin my teaching career and may even utilise a new Twitter account yearly for a classroom account so parents can follow along. This is relevant in a global pandemic when parents are cut off from visiting their children's classrooms and meeting their teachers, having a class Twitter will allow my students parents feel like they are include...

  Podcast - Playing with Research in Health and Physical Education  Episode - #20 Social media as professional development with Dr. Doug Gleddie  I absolutely was thrilled to listen to this podcast and how important and why it's important to implement social media and use social media for professional development. This podcast came out in January 2019 so it was well before the corona virus pandemic but I feel it is now more relevant then ever.  Now many people use social media to enhance their professional development. Mainly because it is the only way to do it during this global pandemic. I was particularly intrigued on how the guest Dr. Doug Gleddie is a professor at the University of Alberta here in Canada and they focused on how Joey Feith does it. (See my tech task regarding him).  Anyone interested in Physical Education and social media should most definitely check out this podcast!  10/10 from me! 

 As a physical educator, I LOVE this resource. Joey Feith has consistent uploads, themed uploads, and grade appropriate uploads.  The resource is the YouTube channel Joey Feith - The Physical Educator.  This resource is a great place to watch detailed Low Organised Games with visuals that describe the game perfectly. You can use this individually or you can show your class the video explaining the game to save confusion.  Check it out fellow Physical Educators!  ----------------->    The Physical Educator

 Taking a look at my digital footprint, I googled myself.  What did I find? Well I found pretty much exactly what I expect, I found all my old baseball articles. Becoming a teacher I basically wiped myself off the search engines associated with my social media.  As a physical education student and future teacher I think that my digital imprint is beneficial because it highlights all of my career accomplishments and showcases my athletic and coaching ability.   I feel it is important to monitor your online identity as we live in an online age. Whenever I want to know anything about someone I simply just look them up on Google or social media and for some people that have a large identity you can learn a lot about someone both good and bad by a simple search.  I think as educators it is extremely important to teach our students about being careful with what they put online and how they portray themselves. As I said above when people want to learn stuff about ...