21st Century Skills, Technology & Physical Education
Students Give Back to Their Community by Creating & Sharing Game Ideas Digitally
P.E. Gaming Home Resources Standards & Competencies Inspiration About the Author
How can students practice the skills of communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking in P.E.? The investigation into this driving question was implemented through the use of technology in two action research phases detailed below. The phases were:
- Project Game Creation
- Project Game Sharing
I. Project Game Creation with 7th Grade
The backstory:
This was a 'Game Creation' unit with a twist. Not only did my seventh grade students work collaboratively to create a game, with rules and fitness value taken into account, but they had to find a way to share their game digitally. With a wide range of technological talents, my students collaborated and cooperated to get the job done. I was very proud of their ability to ask each other for help as well as their willingness to share with each other what technology skills they had.
A quick video of the process:
Slide show: Communicating, collaborating, cooperating, creating and laughter!
2. Project Game Share with 8th Grade
The back story:
Our district no longer has physical education specialists at the elementary level, leaving elementary teachers on their own for daily ideas for fitness and games. Presented with this need for ideas that their beloved kindergarten through fifth grade teachers had, my 8th grade students teamed up to share a game idea to elementary students. Direct teaching would have been ideal but impractical even though my students assured me that they could easily get out of math class to do it. Collaborating and cooperating, they came up with the next best thing; creating video lessons of beloved games to be shared with their past teachers, throughout the district...and the world.