Supervising The Great Debate of 2012!

I first need to apologize for not wearing the proper attire for class today.

With that being said lets begin discussing what the Great Debate is and why it was so important for class. According to Professor Yang's blog post on Rockstar PE, "The Great Debate is on to determine which curriculum emphasis is more appropriate for the students in New York State." 


As the Superintendent of the School Board it was my job to make sure that the schedule (scroll all the way down the page for schedule) was to be followed and time was to be managed correctly. I thought we made it through everything we had to get to but I think it would have been more beneficial to have this debate over a two day period so that teams would have more opportunity to present their arguments. 


At first everyone seemed very timid, but once the time for rebuttals came the Great debate seemed to get very heated. If you were following the debate by watching it LIVE on ustream, or on Twitter you would have seen tweets like these: 

Baby Shark! (Do-Do-Do-Do-Do-Do) Singing My Way Through Lab 4

The first time I heard the song Baby Shark was way back in 8th grade when I went to a Lead America conference in Washington DC. I remember this man standing up on stage and jumping around all crazy yelling "SHARK ATTACK!" At first, just like any of the other students at the conference, I was too "cool," to act as crazy as he was. Lets jump ahead two days and now my friends and I are the ones on stage leading this cheer to about 150 other students. Now, "baby shark," is one of my favorite songs for kids.

So when The Sommersaults got together to discuss what we were going to do for Lab 3 I quickly volunteered to do the song portion. When I told my TA Matt I was going to do the baby shark song he was immediately ecstatic and told me I had to do it because he had seen a video of someone doing it and thought it was absolutely hysterical.

Click here for a video example of "Baby Shark" there are a million and one variations of this song. But for the sake of Saint Mary's I choose to do: baby shark, Momma shark, Daddy shark, Grandma shark, I was swimming, and Shark attack. GET CREATIVE!

I loved doing it and it was funny to watch some of my classmates in the back jumping up during shark attack all crazy! Thanks for the enthusiasm everyone it helps out a lot.

Also, my group this week was special projects so I helped make an inventory of all the equipment at Saint Mary's. We organized both closets and took pictures of all the equipment. Now if someone looks at a picture they can see where something is to be placed and they know how many, lets say basketballs, need to be in a bin.

Pictures will be coming soon..

Check out my Lab 4 Write up here.

Cleaning Up The Messy Backyard of The PE Hall of Shame

In Elementary school I am sure that almost everyone has played Clean Up Your Backyard, or as the PE Hall of Shame calls it "Messy Backyard"

The Object is for students to hurl a wide variety of objects over a net, or maybe a midline, of a basketball court for example, in order to be the side that has the "cleanest," backyard.

I remember playing Messy Backyard and I just remember the gym being utter chaos. Back then I had a great time playing the game, but now that I can look at the game and really assess its ability to "teach" the students skills I can see that it really does belong in the PE Hall of Shame.

There are multiple problems with this game.
1. It creates chaos, which isn't good for learning
2. Strategies are difficult for young students to understand (if they understand them at all)
3. It doesn't create movement or any activity really. Its a very stagnant game where students usually wait for an object to roll to them or be in close proximity.

I think there is an argument here for MBY to be in a PE class but most of the game will have to be modified.

YouTube Can Be Healthy?

I guess I have to preface this post with why I started to make videos in the first place. I bought my first video camera when I was in 7th Grade and I took hours of skateboarding video. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to edit it on the computer because it was too complex, so I got frustrated and gave up. The Summer before coming to Cortland for Freshman year I decided I was going to buy a Kodak Playsport just so I could have something to capture some memories. I used it everyday for the first month and fell in love with making/shooting video.

Two months later and I move into Hendrick hall and I meet one of our Classmates, Kyle McManus, because we both got into talking about how we love to flip. One week later our first video at SUNY Cortland was made, entitled "Dive 4 Fun" 

A week after Dive 4 Fun was made Kyle and I both joined the Gymnastics Club. I started using my camera to video myself and my friends at practice. I used it to analyze my movements and watch the mistakes I was making, and to track my process. Its been 3 semesters since then and I have over 100 hours of gymnastics footage on my computer. 

If you look back at videos like this "Gold Dust"then watch videos like "We Are Family" you can see how far my friends and I have come in just a short year. 

I have seen an improvement in my coordination, my strength, my awareness, my relief of stress, and my social health as well. The video is entitled "We Are Family" for a reason. It means a lot to me to watch all my closest friends doing what they love to do. 

but back to my main point, 

This video is real. I didn't make up a false story about how I use technology to help stay healthy and it is something that is very important to me. I will continue to use videos and YouTube to watch myself grow for as long as I can. I highly suggest people using video to track progress. It takes those moments that you just can't explain in words and allows you to re-live them essentially. 

you can check out ODDJobMedia to see my videos/work if you would like as well. 

St. Mary's: Round 2

After my first experience at St. Mary's going so smoothly I couldn't wait to get back to the school this week!

 This week it was Mallory, Dave, and I's chance to be the gym group and have the opportunity be the first people to teach while our peers assessed the students abilities to Run, Hop, and Gallop.

 The theme for this past week was Valentine's Day so we tried to make our games relevant to the holiday. For example when I sat the students down to explain the game to them I asked them if they knew what holiday was coming up, and to my surprise, more than half of them RAISED their hand. I choose a boy sitting to my left and he replied, "Valentines Day!" So I went on to ask them if they were making cards for their friends or their "valentines," in class. When I said, "valentines," they all laughed and giggled and said "ewwwwwwww!" or ,"no way!" I should have none that they would make that response but it was funny to see their reaction.

I explained to them that the game would be called, Will You Be My Valentine? (and instead of Valentine I used the word friend) The game goes as such, I ask the students to perform a specific task about the gym (run, hop, skip, etc) and then say go! The music starts and they run, hop, and skip, their way about the gym and when the music stops they run to a hula hoop with a partner and they ask them, "Will You Be My Friend?" The response should always be, "Of Course I will!" So throughout the game I asked them to find the first friend they met, I asked them to clap for their friends and I even got them to meet in the circles with the TA's and myself. I was very happy to see that they were energetic and into it and I am happy to say that I felt very pleased with myself when I left St. Mary's that day.

 The other part of the day that stuck out to me the most was playing on the playground. We played on the playground in just sweatshirts and sweatpants in the beginning of February in Upstate New York, Which rarely happens!

Check out my Lab 2 Here!