Week 5 Reflection Post

     It is almost time to reveal my TED talk and as I finalize my research for Genius Hour topic I am given the chance to reflect on what I have learned so far. However, I will not give up too much in this post because I will leave the real information sharing to my TED talk. Just as a reminder, my Genius Hour question is: what are the benefits of participation in extra-curricular school sports for students? I took on this question because I know there are a lot of skeptics who believe that sports are a waste of time or just simply something fun for students to do, but I have learned that this is not the case. I have learned that the benefits of sports for students are numerous, but I feel can be narrowed down into four main categories: life skills, physiological benefits, social benefits, and academic benefits. I decided to focus on the benefits outside of academic in order to broaden my scope because I found so much rich information about how athletics can support the overall development of a young person that I could not pass it up. Life skills like determination and perseverance benefit the student inside and outside of the classroom. I also got a chance to read about some adults who were surveyed about their experiences with athletics and got interesting responses about how they feel athletics developed them as a person. These responses revealed how they were taught skills as student-athletes that has been ingrained in their memory. I also found lots of interesting information about how sports promote a healthy school community by fostering school pride and giving students a reason to be excited about their school. Below you will find a learning object that I developed to display some of the key ideas that I found in my research. Stay tuned for my TED talk!

          This week has also given me an opportunity to reflect on what I have learned about using technology for education. I must admit that I have not always been open to wide uses of technology, especially in my teaching, but I have learned about so many tools that I can use for my students that I feel will benefit their education. Simple tools like the wordle page I made (as seen above) or powtoon can get students engaged and excited about whatever they are learning. One of my goals as a teacher is to get students to have so much fun learning that they forget they are doing it, and I believe this can be done using various technological tools. With all the knowledge I have gained I am excited to start my teaching using all of the tools and strategies I have learned!