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How
Technology Can Help Promote Your Physical
Education Program
By Scott
Tomassetti
Introduction
There are many ways today’s technology
can help you promote your Physical Education
program. Many of these have become easier
to use, and they are oftentimes either
free or low cost. They provide a means
for which your physical education program
can achieve high visibility and gain
back some of the recognition it deserves.
I will be only touching on a few of
my favorite ways to promote physical
education within my community. These
include digital photography, video production,
creating a web presence, and the simplest,
the PowerPoint presentation.
Photos
Digital photography has become commonplace
today; it is also inexpensive. There
are many means for displaying photos
publicly, which is a great way to show
off to your community the pursuits of
your youth. Digital photos can be printed
and displayed on bulletin boards, posters,
and pamphlets. They can also be added
to newsletters, placed in email notifications,
or uploaded to web photo sharing programs.
Some of my favorite uses for photots
include displaying them as screen savors
on my computer for my students to see
during class, placing them in a photo
albums for parents during open house
and teacher conference nights, or using
them on our web site as randomly displayed
images for parents, administration,
and other staff to view. “A picture
tells a story don’t it!”
Video
Video has also become more affordable
and portable, even in high definition.
Although video takes a bit more effort,
it can be worth the effort if proper
planning prevents poor performance.
One thing I have learned over the years
is to keep it short and full of energy,
to provide quick transitions, and to
supplement it with great music. Some
effective uses of video include documenting
community events, gymnastics or dance
routines, and performances. Breaking
long videos into chapters that can be
scrolled through like a DVD is one method
for keeping viewers’ attention.
A good rule of thumb is to keep your
video or chapters to less than 5 minutes.
Remember when tackling a video to provide
enough time for editing, which tends
to help make it fun for the viewer.
Web Presence
Another great project, especially handy
for the teacher candidate, is to create
a web presence. I have done this with
many of my former student teachers,
and each one that created a complete
web presence was rewarded with a job
directly out of school. Some things
to consider when creating a web presence
is to include a personal biography,
resume, photos of your experience teaching,
lessons plans with photos, and maybe
even a video or two. My last teacher
candidate created a web presence in
one week and was interviewing for a
job at an English speaking school the
next, where he is at today.
There are some simple and free tools
out there today that can help you create
such a presence, such as Google sites.
You are now able to create websites
for free that include the ability to
add dynamic content on the fly. Google
sites let you create and edit web pages,
news and events, dynamic pages, lists,
and they even allow event document sharing.
Nice! Domain names are fairly inexpensive
as well; many can be purchased for less
than $10 a year. Wow! My first web address
cost me $50 a month. Many domain name
servers also offer free tools for creating
your website from the ground up with
wizards and web forms. No need to learn
html or java and buy expensive programs
to create a website, although they remain
extremely useful for advanced implementations.
In fact, you can create a web domain
and point it to your free google site
to give it a more friendly name, like
bpe.com or something along those lines.
Power Point Presentations
The simple PowerPoint presentation can
be the most effective means for combining
the previously mentioned uses of technology
into an affective result. Presentations
can be shown to parents to display fitness
scores, student performances, and school
events. They can be used to create posters
for bulletin boards and to provide a
place to recognize goal achievement.
Part of my physical education program
involves posting on the bulletin board
the names of the students who have met
their physical fitness goals. Each student
has his or her own slide with his or
her original score, goal, and post-score
displayed alongside a picture of the
student. These are placed on a bulletin
board for all other community members
to see. This serves as a great motivator
and reward system for students.
It is hard to believe that it will
be 20 years this year since I first
displayed a presentation to a graduate
class on my Radio Shack (Toshiba) laptop
and LCD.
Technology can help you promote your
physical education program, and it is
no longer cost prohibitive. Go and get
yourself some today!
Resources
1. www.godaddy.com
web domains for cheep web site addresses
and web site creation tools.
2. www.google.com
for picture displaying with Piscara,
and web site creation with Google sites.
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