In the spring, I proposed three different ideas for my final COETAIL project, however, now I am going to take things in a different direction. Those other projects are still works in progress and I hope to implement them all in some capacity this year. This new idea is complete fresh and will create some great opportunities for collaboration within my department and with my MS Technology Coach. King Cole (aka David Cole) is a COETAILer in our cohort and when he proposed the idea of using GIF (graphic interchange format) files to analyze movement skills and create feedback loops for students I was on board. Why not support some in house collaboration in addition to building our personal learning network online? I will build on the recommendations by Joey Feith on how to use Animated GIFS in Google Forms. I will approach this project from the perspective of a teacher with specific physical education skills in mind where David will approach this more holistically from a coaches perspective and will include additional extensions to other subject areas.
My new project proposal will include having students use and create and view GIF to enable students to demonstrate personal competence in applying basketball movement skills in skill assessments and game situations.
Practically speaking, this will include:
1. Use of teacher created visual rubrics and checklists to analyze basketball ball shooting movement skills.
2. Student created GIF of a basketball shot and identify areas of improvement to continue developing movement skills.
3. Classify movement skills demonstrated by the teacher into achievement levels based on a visual rubric and checklist used in class. This will be a summative assessment sent to students in a google form.
I believe in pursuing this idea since it is building upon the importance of formative skill assessment in a manner that allows for new and meaningful self assessment. Formative skill assessment has been linked to peer and teacher feedback in the past and this approach to video feedback is simple and compatible with google docs. It will be relatively easy to implement and should require minimal in class time which provides opportunity to maximize activity time. Students will be able to visually identify their mistakes which will help them to improve and understand the movement itself in a way that was not possible before. Students will observe and analyze their own skill performance in order to gain understanding of the skill and make practical improvements.
My concerns moving forward include ensuring that student easily understand how to create and convert mov files into gif files efficiently and simply. I would like to integrate technology in a manner that does not take away from practicing the skill itself or subtracting from the activity time of students. Furthermore, students will be required to do some independent work outside of class to complete the task and to help prepare themselves to come to class ready to work on improvements. Accountability is a concern but my hope is that this new approach will lead to a higher level of engagement of my students. Also, a shift towards quality self assessment will lead to higher overall results and learning from students. If they take the time to watch the feedback loops carefully, they will gain new knowledge to help them improve practically but if they complete this on a superficial level the learning may not be authentic.
In order to be successful as a teacher, I will need to shift my focus on teacher feedback to one of a facilitator in order to create a meaningful self assessment task. I will help front load this process by creating visual rubrics that will compliment our existing skill checklist through teacher demonstrations. Furthermore, I will prepare instructional documents, templates and screencasts to provide students instruction on how to use, create and work with GIF files in a meaningful way. In order to deliver and collect student work, I will consider the use of Doctopus to send out templates to students and Goobric to send feedback to establish a grade. I will continue to work with David and use his advice and feedback, as a technology coach, to help create a strong unit design and address issues as they arise during implementation.
Image credits:
Air time by in transition licensed through Creative Commons (https://flic.kr/p/9y741)