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Thursday, May 13, 2010

Final Part 1A & B

1. The website is from CBC.ca. CBC.ca is located in North America in Canada. CBC is a TV and radio news show. This story take place in Saskatoon.

2.This piece was very interesting to me. Having students active before even starting their days lessons is an excellent way to start of the day. One part of the news story, which I found the most interesting, was the part explaining the BDNF and it’s purpose in the brain. If physical education teachers can work together with the student’s regular teachers in maintaining a high level of activity throughout the day, I can see a beneficial change to the way students learn.

3.The PE teacher was not mentioned during this experiment. This is because the studies done for the experiment were in the classroom and not the gym. In the clip there was a section talking about students not participating in gym or barely participating. By taking pre-tests of student’s current fitness levels and making a plan with how to increase the student’s overall activity, I will be able to ensure my program is beneficial. Also, including parents of the students to help out with out of classroom fitness exercises and educating them on the importance of physical activity will also help benefit my PE program.

4.The teacher in the article tested the students before they started the experiment. Later, when tested again, the test showed on average each student moved up a full grade level in reading, writing and in math. I was not surprised at all from the findings. During my time at the CHAMP mentoring young students, we encouraged them during “homework time” to stand up and do a problem or do a quick exercise to get their blood and body pumping. This helped the students become more focused and finish their work. I think these outcomes are similar to our NYS PE Standards. Throughout the experiment, the students were in a safe and healthy environment. Also, students were able to learn how to use the equipment and technology the teacher introduces to the class (like in standard 1).

5.BDNF is a nerve growth factor which acts like a fertilizer to preserve nerve cells on the parts of the brain in the hippocampus. When vigorous activity takes place, the release of many BDNF follows. Physical activity increase the gorwth of nerves in the brain. Two books named in the news report were Nature's Ritalin for the Marathon Mind by Stephen C. Putnam and The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (by John Ratey)


Part 2.



1. I think Daily Burn is an effective online tool to help out those who may be struggling with diet and exercise or are just starting out. I thought navigating throughout the website was challenging at first, but after a couple of log-ins I was able to find whatever I was looking for as well as discovering new things. I don’t use an online exercise and nutrition tracker but I have been following a series of exercises called “P90X”. With P90X I am able to track my food or follower the recipes given to me. Also, each day after each exercise I log which ones I did as well as how many reps. I think the p90X program is great but I like how Daily Burn tracks weight lose and what is the appropriate amount of food to eat according to height, weight and gender.

2.Through tracking nutrition and exercise on Daily Burn students will be able to accomplish Recommended Regent’s Level for LS #1B. Students could use this online tool as their own way to track their progress in their time in class. If a student is already very activie and plays a sport, I would encourage them to pick a program on Daily Burn which would be suitable in helping them succeed more in the sport they are playing in. For groups, one modification I would make would be to have the students select the same fitness program and work together as a group to motivate one another to continue to stay fit.

3.Over the course of the semester I have been using Microsoft word to plot out data collected in my statistics class. I believe this would be a useful tool to copy data compare data too. In excel, you can make any graph comparing data in quick amount of time. Also, Excel allows you to show correlations between data.
You can take a look at a sample excel data collection and graph here




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