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WELCOME to the "Technology and Physical Education" section of PELinks4U. If you have any ideas or suggestions for topics that you would like to see covered in future editions, please let me know and I will do my best to research the area and share my findings with everyone. Or, if you have something to share with our colleagues, please send me your contributions.
Keep sending me your feedback! This page is designed to provide you with up- to-date useful information, so if we are, or are not, meeting that aim let us know. We'd love to hear all of your comments or suggestions.
Sincerely,
Ruth Morey Sorrentino
Section Editor
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Visit pesoftware.com news. Scroll down the page. Technology questions are answered in regard to "what are plug-ins?," printer differences, "what is an mp3 format?," Palm information, and browsers tricks. Lots of great information about using technology in the classroom. Also included is a PEP bill update, and their archives.
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If you have ideas, comments, letters to share, or questions about particular topics, please email one of the following Technology PE Section Editors:
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Help to support quality physical education and health education by contributing to this site.
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Using Hand Held Computers
Hand held computers can be used in a variety of ways to co-ordinate your lessons and collate student data.
Taking Attendance
School Palm has software specifically designed for taking attendance. Cutting Edge also makes a program that can download data to Excel. So, if you keep all your attendance in your desktop computer in Excel, you might decide to create your own attendance program in Cutting Edge and then download the data each day to your desk top.
Collecting Data
Sunburst Communications have developed software called "Learner Profile," which allows a teacher to collect information on their students during various activities. This can be an invaluable tool for recording behaviors and performance attributes when preparing for parent teacher meetings.
Creating Customized Forms
Pendragon Forms allows you to create your own forms for collecting data on multiple students. You can create a set of forms for each sport that you teach that can allow you to save times and distances, as well as comments and evaluations. Pendragon Forms can also be used as a timing device by tapping on a stop watch with your stylus to start the event, and tapping again to stop the event or collect lap times. How you use this function will depend on how you set up your form.
Creating Customized Programs
Macromedia has software which allows you to create applications for various hand held computers. Depending on the level of your students, you could even have them create programs using the macromedia software.
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"The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases."
~ Carl Jung ~
By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
~ Charles Wadsworth ~
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| Technology in PE Articles |
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Read "Computers and Phys Ed Do Mix! at "Education World."
"Students and teachers in Hood River, Oregon, use a spreadsheet program to track progress in physical fitness. Graphs and charts show how students have improved and what skills they need to work on. A copy of those graphs and charts is included with student report cards. Included: Teachers share their reactions and the reactions of students and parents." Read the rest ...
A Sporting Chance for Information Technology?
by Kenneth R. Fox, University of Exeter
"It is evident that the use of Information Technology in physical education (PE) has lagged behind many other secondary subjects. In a world where the blast of the whistle has traditionally been more powerful than the word, perhaps it is not surprising that Information Technology is having trouble progressing beyond the 'booting up' stage." Read the rest of this article here.
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Please let your colleagues know about PELINKS4U, and remember you can catch up on a year's worth of news in our PE Archives.
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PDA's and Our Future
PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) is a term that technology providers are assuring us we will hear more and more in the future. More commonly known as hand held computers or Palm's, PDA is the collective name for all small pocket sized digital devices that assist us in our every day activities.
Mobile telephones are already beginning to take on many of the roles of a PDA with wireless web connections, in addition to wireless voice communications. Palm Pilots can retrieve information from the web via their docking platform and Blackberry's, like mobile phones, are also able to wirelessly send and receive digital information such as e-mails and web based information. The PDA of the future will be designed to do all of these things within one single device.
So what will the future look like? I have recently attended a number of different technology seminars, or talks, which all seem to be titled "The Digital Future" or "Wireless and Beyond". I have heard stories or predictions that paint a picture of a world where everyone will be connected via wireless technology.
While sitting on the bus on the way to work we can read the newspaper from our PDA, e-mail friends, or book a restaurant for our evenings entertainment. Single people looking for a life partner can transmit their characteristics, and when another well suited person who's also transmitting their characteristics comes near, a vibrating pager will go off letting us know their is a match in the vicinity. On the way home as we're stuck in traffic we can regulate the heat in our home and turn on the oven to start cooking our dinner, so that when we get home the place is warm and dinner is ready to be served. It just sounds so perfect!
So what does this mean for teachers? I am not sure how many of these predictions will impact our classes. We already have the opportunity to take attendance digitally. Maybe in the future we will wirelessly send attendance to the front office so that they can determine who should be in class, and who is not present? Maybe our students will wirelessly communicate with us to let us know why they are not in class, or if they are running late? Or, will our students be too busy communicating with each other, that we will have to ask them to leave their PDAs at home? I guess only the future will give us the answers.
The point I'm really trying to make is that technology is with us to stay. At times it may appear that technology does not save us time and help us do our jobs more efficiently, but I truly believe that it does when we give technology a chance. It takes time to learn how to use anything, so we have to learn not to expect results immediately. When you log onto any of the Physical Education listserves, you can read messages highlighting positive encounters with technology.
PDA's, and their cousins, are a dream come true for physical education teachers. They are computers that can be taken anywhere; the tennis court, the running track, the gymnasium, the swimming pool, the football field, or the weight room. If you are thinking of getting a PDA, my advice is to start small. Learn to accomplish one task at a time and build from there. The future is limitless!
If anyone else would like to share their experiences with PDA's or similar devices, please forward your contributions. Not only can we learn from our own experiences, we can learn a lot from other people's experiences too.
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