When people ask me about my COETAIL experience, I am happy to express that this has been a very valuable and practical learning experience. The greatest learning in this course was the confidence I gained from trying new things and experiment with technology in the physical education classroom. COETAIL has pushed my practice and as a result I have engaged students in new ways and developed new resources and teaching consideration for myself and fellow colleagues.
I would like to thank a few people for their help in this project with their ideas, consideration, participation and support. First of all, thank you to Dave Cole for planting the seed and suggesting the idea in the first place and providing a framework on how to introduce the use of GIF files to students. Joseph Taylor is a direct colleague and he is the person you see demonstrating skills in the visual basketball rubric I created for students. Gabriel Gatto implemented the same unit plan in his two sections of grade nine Physical Education classes to gather more student data and to provide perspective from a direct colleague. I also gathered valuable online resources from Joey Feith. My final project would not have possible without the help of some of the people in my PLN (personal learning network).
Here is my final project:
Click here to view the embedded video.
When the unit was over, I surveyed and interviewed my students. Overall, I had very positive responses about the use of GIF files in PE to help analyze and improve movement skills in basketball. Many students commented that they found this unit engaging and feel they benefited from the use of video to improve their basketball set shot.
I definitely have plans to continue using GIF in future PE classes. One of my professional goals this year includes completing visual rubrics for key sports (basketball, volleyball, soccer, tennis and badminton) using teacher demonstrations. My department is supportive of this goal and the visual GIF files will help clarify performance needed to reach different standards of a movement skill.
If you are a Physical Education teacher and are interested in using GIF in your practice, I would be happy to connect and share information. Here a few links to resources that may be useful if you would like to explore this strategy further:
Resources: