P.E. Wiki (note: you can access my teacher blog from this wiki as well.)

Title: Physical Education Classroom Wiki and Teacher Blog

Abstract
I plan to use Web 2.0 tools in order to create more efficient ways to communicate effectively with students, parents, and teachers. My plan is to create a physical education wiki for Oglethorpe County Primary School and a physical education teacher blog for P.E. teachers in our community to share ideas. My wiki will let parents, students, and other teachers know what is happening in P.E. while also allowing them to contribute to the learning process. The wiki will also provide an opportunity for the children to participate in learning activities outside of P.E. with their parents, siblings, and/or teachers.

Rationale
I teach Physical Education at Oglethorpe County Primary School. I see somewhere between 500-600 children every week. I feel like I do a pretty good job of getting to know my students considering that I only see them twice a week for forty five minutes, but I have always wanted to be able to talk to my students more than that time allows me to do. As I participated in the Red Clay Project I got very excited about what I could do with Web 2.0 tools. I immediately decided that I was going to create a P.E. Wiki to increase the dialogue in my classroom. By using a Wiki all of the students in my classes could talk to me in their own homeroom classroom, during their computer time at school, or at home without interrupting our short and valuable classroom time.

Parents almost always come to school during open house to meet their child’s homeroom teacher in order to begin building a relationship with him or her, but it is rare that a parent comes down to the gym to meet the P.E. teacher during open house. I believe that I could use a Wiki as a way to build a relationship with parents in our school.

There is one last problem I have as our school’s physical education teacher. I often get jealous of other teachers in our school because they have colleagues that teach the exact same thing as them in close proximity. For example, the 1st Grade teachers often collaborate together about the 1st Grade Curriculum. Since I am the only physical education teacher at my school I do not have this luxury, so when I heard about blogging I couldn’t wait to start a blog with other physical teachers to discuss lesson plans, strategies, and other commonalities.

Furthering Instruction & Goals
My main goal as a physical education teacher is to encourage children to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle. I plan to use the classroom wiki to further my health and physical education instruction. I have a place on the classroom wiki where children can play interactive games to learn about keeping their bodies healthy. They can also find out information about sports happenings and activities that will encourage them to stay active even outside of the physical education classroom. There is also a place where children can talk with me and each other about activities that they find enjoyable and even post pictures of themselves playing games, sports, or participating in healthy activities.

I constantly strive to increase my ability to be successful in teaching concepts and skills to my students. I hope that the teacher blog I have created will assist me with this goal by allowing me to collaborate more effectively with other physical education professionals.

Philosophical Lenses
I think that my project incorporates at least two of Red Clay’s philosophical lenses. I want to use literacy to allow students to have a voice in what we are doing in P.E. because children need to be able to participate in activities that they perceive as enjoyable in order to continue living an active lifestyle outside of the physical education setting. I want them to realize that they have a choice with activities and with their eating habits and the capability of designing and implementing their own regimens.

As a teacher I also want to be a leader to my students and amongst my colleagues. I have created the wiki and the blog in order to enable me to communicate with a wide variety of people in order to constantly share, improve, and reflect upon my teaching practices.

Timeline
June and July 2008 – I plan to create a classroom wiki and a teacher blog.

August 2008 – During pre-planning I plan to ask the representative who maintains our school’s website to advertise that the physical education department has a wiki space and encourage people to take a look at it. I also plan to ask the classroom teachers to encourage parents to view the P.E. wiki through their conversations and/or newsletters. I also plan to teach my paraprofessional how to update and maintain the classroom wiki. I also plan to talk to my technology department and Principal about getting computers in the gym and find out about internet access in the gym.

September 2008 – I plan to ask at least a few classroom teachers and the media specialist to begin introducing and utilizing the physical education classroom wiki during their writing and/or computer time.

October 2008 – I plan to advertise the classroom wiki at our SWING Festival.

November 2008 – I plan to have worked our technology department with getting computers and technology set up in the gym.

December 2008 – I hope for my classroom wiki to be fully operational and be using it as a station during center time at least once per month.

I know I will encounter problems along the way and I hope to use the teacher blog I set up to talk with others about what will be the best way to handle those. Throughout this entire year I plan to continuously be finding ideas to facilitate discussions with other physical education teachers about our curriculum and practices.

Red Clay Writing Project
To be perfectly honest I took this course to learn more about current technologies that would mainly benefit me personally, but what I gained was something much more beneficial. I had never heard of Web 2.0 before this course, but now that I am familiar with it I love the concept. I think that the tools that were introduced to me through this project can really improve my ability to teach my students. I love how these tools allow students to take part in the learning process.