I can now view video in my gym on a permanent large screen!

I have always, were possible, tried to use video to assist with student learning and understanding of skill development in sport. However this is not easy when I don't have any sort of permanent viewing screen or data projector in our school gym. To remedy this I have borrowed out a data projector and am now storing it in my office in the gym and have asked the groundsman to assist me putting up a large screen.

Our gym has a mezene floor which is where I now set up the data projector and iPad to project onto a screen made of two white wood panels screwed to the wall. These wood panels are high above the gym floor making it easy for students to view a skill being played through my iPad.

Currently my Year 11/12 students are doing badminton and today our focus was on the smash. I was able to use a clip showing a badminton smash (40 seconds of video) which I had looping on my iPad. As I moved around to each group I was able to direct their attention to the video and talk them through the video, pointing out key aspects of the smash. I then ran them through a simple drill that had me feeding shuttles to the students to smash. It was great to be able direct students attention back to the video during the drill when required. The students watching the drill (2 students) also got to compare aspects of their peers performance to the video. By getting the spectators to verbalise to the person undertaking the drill assisted everyones learning.

Below is a couple of photos showing the largescreen in the school gym. There is only a blue screen up as I had to disconnect my iPad to take the photo. Once properly mounted the screen will be another 80cm higher. The screen is viewable from everywhere on the gym floor and the video can be clearly seen from the furtherest point in the gym.

Athletics - focusing on technique not measurement

At the start of every year I take my students through a unit on athletics, this year it is years 7, 8 and 9. Each year I teach the different events and associated skills and by the end students have recorded times, distances and heights for all events. Along with other observational data I have used those times, distances and heights to generate a grade. This year I have not been getting the students to measure any results. We started last week with their focus purely on developing technique.

If it can't be measured it doesn't count

In the school system, and I would suggest in many other institutions and businesses, we are constantly told that if we can't measure it we shouldn't put it in our long term plans for improvement. We often do the same thing in our classrooms. If we struggle to work out how we can attach a percentage or grade to a students learning we often discount that learning by not reporting on it. My personal opinion is that we have gone too far this way. I agree to be able to measure something and see growth/improvement is very useful. But if we only ever base success around the things that provide numerical data we are missing some very important things. The following quote sums this up nicely. 

"Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts". Albert Einstein


Schools need to be careful that they do not discount things like student well being, mentoring, student motivation, camps, the Arts, recess (in the U.S.A. some schools cut recess), physical activity etc..... in favour of putting more time into the things that are more easily measured and seen as more traditional measures of student success.

Performance Pay and Fostering Competition to Improve Education?

Our education system is proposing a rewards system for teachers (bonus pay in 2014) as a way of improving teacher performance. A survey by the Herald Sun has shown the large majority of the teachers they surveyed did not agree with performance pay, 80% in fact.  Read Bonus pay sore point for teachers. People like career analyst Dan Pink quote study after study that suggests money is a poor motivator for tasks requiring creativity and divergent thinking. To me (and it is only my opinion) bonus pay, particularly if it is capped will lead to competition and not collaboration between teachers.  It will divide staff not bring them together, comments like, "how did they get the bonus when I did not?" might be the type of comment that eats away at a staff's morale.

Educational systems like Finland's (No. 1 in the world) promote cooperation and not competition while educational systems like the U.S. promote competition over cooperation (No. 26 in the world). Competition is fuelled in our system through initiatives like the MySchool website, which uses a very narrow piece of data to portray schools to parents and the general public. The public see our education system performing well (or not) based on one measuring tool! No consideration (publicly) is given to the many and varied facets that go into making up a quality school. Add to this the QLD Government is currently in the spotlight for comparing schools across their state based on Government audits of schools, again a contradiction to international best practise. For more information about league tables read League tables what they won't tell you.

I am not opposed to processes that require schools to reflect deeply on teaching performance and student learning. I also agree with creating an educational system that is accountable, but do it by training high quality teachers, paying teachers what they are worth, providing an education system that supports (financely) ongoing training, creating a system that does not discriminate and is equitable and accessible to all. Do it by focusing on international best practise not the opposite.

Why Write in Exams?

A great article by Christopher Bantick in The Weekend Australian 14th - 15th Jan. made some excellent points about handwriting being an outdated mode of communication, particularly for senior students in an exam setting. The article sites keyboarding as a strong determinant for developing literacy, although you could probably find studies that show the same for handwriting.

The statement that I found ringing true in the article was, "A student who researches and types their essays over the course of the year and then is expected to hand write cogent, fluent, legible essays by longhand in three hours is being subjected to unfair and inconsistent expectations." It is a conversation I hear from at least one teacher around exam time each year. A teacher will say, "The kids are complaining about having sore wrists from writing in their exams!" They generally say this in a way that infers the students should write more during the year and then they wouldn't have so much trouble, when actually we should be thinking the other way and setting exams in a way that reflects how students write during the year.

As senior teachers we never ask our students to submit handwritten assignments anymore and if there are teachers who still do require handwritten assignments well I think they are getting their students to use their time very poorly.

There are a few logistical issues in a system that is not geared to do exams on a computer but they could be overcome quite easily. Unfortunately I don't see our system changing in the immediate future.