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Into the Wild: Outdoor Education And You
May 25, 2010 By
Any outdoor enthusiast today can most likely agree that simply being in the great outdoors serves as its own reward; the escape from everyday stressors that it offers is like none other. You don’t have to be a nature lover to admire the luscious landscapes and interesting creatures that are found in nature, but admiration for the fauna and flora is certainly not the only thing outdoor education has to offer; it teaches life skills that are essential to the development of any well-rounded individual. By looking at how outdoor education can motivate all types of people, what it inherently teaches, and the benefits it could have on the school curriculum, it remains a mystery why outdoor education is not present in every school today.
Different people participate in sports for different reasons; those who thrive on competition, and those who obsess over continually improving themselves, but what about the people who want to participate in physical activity at a lower level of performance without being critiqued about the speed at which they are traveling or about the level of expertise they are considered to be in? Outdoor activities can accommodate any type of performer, at any fitness level, regardless of the season. Because of the variety of sports and activities outdoor education provides, students who benefit from such an education program may be exposed to a multitude to activities that keep them interested throughout the year, ultimately motivating them to lead an active lifestyle.
However interesting the activities may be, it is the life skills that students can learn from such a program that makes outdoor education essential to any school curriculum. By participating in outdoor activities, individuals quickly learn that fancy shoes and jackets won’t get you any further than the most basic apparel. They learn to appreciate each other for who they are and not what they have, which minimizes prejudice against those who come from a lower income family. They learn to respect each other, and the environment.
By using a “Leave-No-Trace” approach to outdoor education, individuals learn the repercussions of their actions on the environment, and more importantly, how to minimize them. They also have to think about how another person might feel if the scenery they wanted to admire was changed, littered or even destroyed by previous malpractices. This type of thinking develops a sense of empathy (putting yourself in another person’s shoes), which has the potential to foster pro-social behavior.
Moreover, a life skill that individuals may acquire through outdoor education is to learn how to set realistic goals and how to work towards achieving those goals. People who think too highly of themselves and set goals according to their perceived level of fitness and ability may quickly find that not everything is as easy as it looks; some of the most powerful forces on earth are found in nature and should not be underestimated, this could lead to consequences more severe than a bruised ego. Individuals develop a form of respect for nature and begin to understand that the planning and preparation of outdoor endeavors are just as important as their physical effort.
Finally, outdoor education in a school curriculum has the potential to answer the most infamous of all questions that students ask year after year: “why am I learning this stuff?” Through outdoor activities, students have the opportunity to experience processes that occur in nature everyday in a very concrete way; they find out where scientific theories come from, how they can apply them in real life. With the knowledge they acquire from all of the other subject areas such as biology, nutrition, physics, mathematics, cultural studies, history and science, outdoor activities can serve as an interdisciplinary subject, which brings meaning to their education, therefore motivating them to make the best out of their school experience.
Overall, by tying in meaning to an individual’s education has the potential to develop intrinsic motivation for learners to succeed in school. Thanks to the multitude of different activities that suit different types of people, outdoor education may also provide individuals with a way to stay physically active for a lifetime. Furthermore, the values and life skills it fosters makes outdoor education a valuable asset to anyone’s learning.
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Jordan McFarlen joins ThePhysicalEducator.com’s Executive Team
May 17, 2010 By
ThePhysicalEducator.com would like to welcome Jordan McFarlen to its executive team. He will be joining our team as a Writer/Developer.
Jordan has already created a great online presence for himself through his work on his blog, his conversations on Twitter, and his network on Delicious. His ideas, his love for physical activity, and his great know-how in all things related to educational technology were all reasons that made Jordan an ideal candidate for our team.
We’re truly honored to have Jordan join us and look forward to see what great things he will bring to ThePhysicalEducator.com
If you would like to learn more about Jordan, check out his profile here .
The “Fun Theory” and Physical Education
May 16, 2010 By
Which seems more fun to you?
It’s one of those ideas that I wish I had thought of first. “Something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better”, describes The Fun Theory as initiated by Volkswagen in Sweden earlier this year. After learning about this concept, I personally took it upon myself to start something that stemmed from this in my classroom. The purpose of this article is to expose you to The Fun Theory in hopes that it too will inspire you to apply it to your own teaching.
The Volkswagen group initially started the campaign as a way to get people to change their lifestyles by adding fun to behaviour choices. The ultimate goal of course was to begin to alter their audience’s view about driving environmentally friendly cars by showing them that there is fun to acting responsibly.
The website features video clips demonstrating how they have changed people’s behaviours for the better. In the most popular video, a fully functional Piano Staircase is built adjacent to an escalator in a busy metro station in downtown Stockholm. The 1 minute 47 second clip shows the diverse public in their decisions to choose the musical stairs over the bland, moving escalator. From young children hopping up and down, to elderly citizens slowly climbing, this innovative car company truly showed that “Fun can obviously change behaviour for the better”. The conclusion: 66% of people chose to ‘play’ the stairs.
With the world’s hype of acting responsibly and being physically active, eating healthy and choosing to play, did we never think about simply adding a high fun factor to changing behaviours with respect to physical education and healthy active living?
Indeed, the clever images and brilliant concepts that were highlighted in the videos inspired me to carry the Fun Theory to my own classroom.
I had been trying to get my grade 7 & 8 students to drink more water on a daily basis, and using the Fun Theory, the idea of the Water Challenge came into existence.
Following a few facts on the amount of water that a person should be drinking in a day, students were each given a bottle and told they were all part of a game. The Water Challenge rules were simple: if a student was ever to be caught without their bottle, they got a ‘letter’ and would be eliminated if they spelled H2O. Students all took part in the game by calling ‘water check’ on each other throughout the school day and soon it became a trend to be carrying water around –everyone wanted to be a part of the water game.
In essence, turning water consumption into play added an element of fun which engaged students into making sound decisions about their health. It was such a pleasure to observe individuals ensure and encourage their peers to make the positive behaviour choice.
Through this, the Fun Theory definitely did its trick at Doon and the lifestyle change was apparent. It opened my eyes to a different way of presenting facts and encouraging positive change.
The Water Challenge is just an example of how anyone can apply the Fun Theory to a school setting.
In brief, my primary hope is for you to simply enjoy the videos, go watch them. Further to that, I wish for each of us to be inspired – to bring the Fun Theory to our classrooms and lessons, to be creative and innovative. It is true that The Fun Theory shows concern for inducing positive behaviour choices – a concept that caring Physical & Health Educators all over the World can relate to. As you will see, the Fun Theory is more that just a car advertisement; it is the continued belief that we truly can make a difference.
Go see The Fun Theory videos at www.thefuntheory.com and let us know in the comments what you think and how you’d apply this to your PE classes.
ThePhysicalEducator.com joins in on #teachertuesday
May 10, 2010 By
Today is Monday, which means its #musicmonday on Twitter. #Musicmonday is a Twitter meme that encourages Twitter users to share some of their favorite music with their followers by tweeting the name of a song/artist and ending the tweet with the #musicmonday hashtag.
There are a lot of daily memes on Twiter, such as #followfriday (which encourages people to share some of the people they follow with their own followers).
Earlier today, I tweeted “What will you be teaching today?” After getting some really cool responses back on Twitter and Facebook, I realized that having a daily Twitter meme for teachers to share what they’re doing in their classes would be pretty cool.
I looked into it, and it turns out that there already exists such a meme. It’s called #teachertuesday and was created by @teachertuesday. According to @KristenWinkler, the hashtag is used to ”recommend interesting teachers, schools, organisations, applications or anything else about education to your friends and followers on Twitter, like on #followfriday.”
I think it would be great to combine the #teachertuesday hastag with the #PE one that has been adopted by the members of ThePhysicalEducator.com’s network. Let’s use the two together to share what’s going on in our gyms, other PE teachers who are on Twitter, or anything else you’ve got going on in regards to Physical Education.
Can’t wait to hear from you all on #teachertuesday!
The Road to ThePhysicalEducator.com 2.0
May 9, 2010 By
You probably haven’t heard much from ThePhysicalEducator.com lately, but don’t assume that that must be because we’ve been slacking. A lot of things have been going on behind the scenes.
First off, you may have noticed our new Homepage. We’ve integrated WordPress into the site so that we can focus more on blogging. Blogs are an amazing way to share ideas and WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms out there. Notice the Social Media buttons in this post? We hope those will help you share the content you love with your own online network which, in turn, helps us find new Physical Educators to connect with. Pretty soon we’ll have a steady flow of blog posts rolling through here, so make sure you subscribe today.
Another change you may have noticed is how “I’ has become “We”. I’m pleased to announce that we now have a solid team of passionate Physical Educators who I’ll be managing the site with. I’m not going to reveal their identities just yet, but I will go ahead and say that you can start expecting big things from ThePhysicalEducator.com.
If you take a second to click on some of those Social Media buttons in the sidebar, you’ll see that we’ve been doing some work with our social networking sites. For example, if you go to our Facebook Fan Page, you’ll see that we’ve added a lot of really cool apps there that will make the site much more engaging and much more useful for you, the Physical Educator. On LinkedIn, you can now follow our “Company” profile and find others who are following it as well. We’ve got bookmarks going up on Del.icio.us and videos being made for YouTube. There hasn’t been a better time to join ThePhysicalEducator.com’s network than right now.
Yes, its a work in progress (hence the beta tag up in the header), but with each passing day we’re getting closer and closer to our official relaunching of the site. Until then, keep checking out our site and its networks to not only stay up-to-date with what we’re doing, but to also discover new ways that you can get involved with ThePhysicalEducator.com’s online professional community.
We’re working harder than ever and can’t wait to start showing you what we’ve been up to!
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