Alphabet Re-Mix

Teaching well requires you to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. The alphabet serves as a perfect example of an activity you can do to make it extra spicy. Even on Sesame Street, the simple alphabet plays an integral part of the overall mission of the TV series. And here is the rest of it.

Motor development skits (Part 1)

Here are the class presentations from Motor Development on infant development (reflexes, fundamental motor skills, and perception).

Skit #4 "ABC" by Julie, Brittany, Eric & Joe


Skit $5 "Every breath" by Care, Ryan & Sarah


Skit #6 "ChaChaSlide" by Melissa, Dan, Jason & Kris

And here is the rest of it.

No Limits - Hardcore Sitting

Abigail Branson sees not limits in what she can do. As a teacher you will have to find ways to help your students learn no matter what their level of ability. Listen how positive she is and how compelled and inspired her parents are to help and advocate for others with spina bifida SB. Where and how are you building your students competence (perceived or real), self-confidence, and above all self-concept. Are you providing motivating environments and engaging tasks that are developmentally appropriate for your students or is everyone supposed to do the same thing? Which is the better way to help your students? It takes work. No one said that teaching is easy. You have to have heart, dedication and be willing to put the time in to find ways to reach your students. It's all about them. No go out and find inspiration, be inspired, and most of all be inspirational. Carpe Diem!





Aaron enters the Guiness Book of World Records. Congrats Aaron!

Giving Thanks

Taking time to be with or remember our loved ones is the essence of Thanksgiving. As teachers, we should also be thankful of the plentiful resources available for all levels and disciplines. Some of the free resources and online guides that I've neglected to feature include: Lifehacker - most popular top 10's of 2008 - Persuade people subconsciously, Chris Brogan - social media master gives you 50 ways to take your blog to the next level, send text messages via e-mail, Think Anatomy, Zamar, Gizmodo's post on video formats, NYT article on reaching teens with autism, GTD-free is a personal TODO/action manager inspired by GTD (Getting Things Done) method by David Allen (see David Allen & Co. official site), Pazera - audio extractor, Audicity - free open-source all-purpose audio editor, Gmail Drive Config - mount more than one Gmail account as a remote disk drive Excel Chart Advisor, Busuu , Frengly, and Mango - language learning sites. Given the plethora of free resources and the ease of online tools and social networking sites there really is no excuse for not learning new skills to help you become a Rockstar PE Teacher. To see previously featured resources that can help you and your students just click on the "resources" label in the right-hand column of this blog and you'll find stuff for nutrition, physical activity, disability awareness, and many more topics.

Reading this short post further supports our hopes for you to become effective and powerful communicators as teachers and leaders. In Nagesh Belludi's blog you can find more tips on how to make an impact in all that you do.

In personal communication, the words of a speaker are just a part of his efforts to communicate.The pitch and tone of his voice, the speed and rhythm of the spoken word and the pauses between his words may express more than what is being communicated by words alone. Further, his gestures, posture, pose and expressions usually convey a variety of subtle signals. These non-verbal elements can present a listener with important clues to the speaker’s thoughts and feelings, thus substantiating or contradicting the speaker’s words.

As a teacher candidate/beginning teacher, you will need to communicate positively and clearly with many people. From your mentor teachers, principals, superintendents, parents, athletic directors, university supervisors, vice-principals, other faculty members, students, players, other coaches....the list goes on and on. Remember that communication not only involves the face-to-face encounters, but written documents, phone conversations, e-mails, faxes, text-messaging, instant messaging, and posts to social networking sites, websites, and blogs.
And here is the rest of it.
[Via Right Attitudes]

"Just Trying to Fit In" - Standup Comic with Cerbral Palsy

Josh Blue says he's not naturally funny but he certainly doesn't look uncomfortable delivering his routines. Bringing awareness to people with disabilities is one of his main missions and I think he does a wonderful job of delivering his message. And here is the rest of it.

Utterli Utterlicious - Podcasting for health

Ate a cup of whole-wheat spaghetti and chicken marsala.

Mobile post sent by ExergameLab using Utterli. Replies.

Utterlicious

Podcast your dining experiences! Upload photos of your meals and share delicious descriptions of the foods consumed.

If you enjoy your food, you'll be more mindful when you eat it. If you're mindful when you eat, you'll be conscious of what you're putting in your body. If you're conscious of what you're putting in your body, you'll be likely to choose healthier foods (most of the time, anyway.)

My exergaming colleague Biray Alsac (Befitt with Biray) showed me this website that allows you to upload audio, video, photos, and text to your Utterli account, which you can in turn share with your friends. Always the fitness "Maverick" of social networking, Befitt teaches her students how to use technology to assist their fitness and wellness plans. She created the Utterlicious month long podcast challenge to help us all be more mindful of what we eat. There have been many past research projects that made participants photograph everything they eat and many of them showed a change (at least in short-term) in eating patterns. But, isn't that what most of us in the health, recreation, wellness, fitness, physical activity, physical education, and therapy fields want for our audience...to be more mindful of our actions, bodies, thoughts, food as well as our impact on others and the environment.

Wouldn't it be nice (channeling some Beach Boys here) to have all the food you eat tracked using something like Utterli or one of the other mobile device. Once the meal is loaded to a website like CalorieLab, (featured elsewhere) the nutrition values would be added to your daily intake. For example, you eat at PF Chang's and order the Chang's Chicken in Soothing Lettuce Wraps (thanks Julie), all of the info including the calories (energy intake) would be collected. And since your mobile device probably has a heart rate monitor, GPS, accelerometer, or pedometer assessing your physical activity levels (See miCoach, GameBullet, Sony F305, iPhone, Flaik, Sportio, Bones in Motion, Loopt, Motion Based, PerDiemco or others featured in an earlier post). - your energy expenditure would be tracked. The intake and expenditure would be automatically calculated and it would really show you what you're doing or not doing to your body. Hmmm...
[Cross-posted to Exergame Lab]

Slacker is no slouch

Create your own Slacker Station now

Handigo for People of All Abilities

In what is the first cross-blog post between this blog and my Exergame Lab blog, Ubisoft released a free online game called Handigo The Game. Actually there are three mini-games (Sensory handicap,  Motor handicap, and Mental handicap) and their objective along with handicap International was to play games that puts you "in a disabled persons's shoes."  Of course I must take issue with that phrase as we all know the importance of using first person language, i.e. "person with disability or "person with a handicap."  

A2B Tricycle

Shabtai Hirshberg from Hadassah College (Jerusalem) designed this tricycle to encourage physical activity among kids suffering from neurological or muscular disorders. And here is the rest of it.

[Yanko Design: Trike for Disabled Tikes... and Project page: A2B trike...]