Activity #3

Using QR Codes with PE Central’s Cooperative Fitness Challenge Lesson:

http://www.pecentral.com/lessonideas/ViewLesson.asp?ID=12509#.VqFRaL8-dtA

The lesson is Using QR Codes with PE Central’s Cooperative Fitness Challenge.  This lesson is to allow the students to use technology (iPad or any smart device that has a QR code reader app) to show the different types of assessments for the Cooperative Fitness Challenge.  This lesson is for grades 4-5.  For this lesson, they have the students split up into 6 stations, one for each challenge.  The students are shown how to use the devices and scan the QR codes.  Once the QR codes are scanned, it brings up a website that shows a video and gives descriptions on how to perform that stations fitness challenge.

In the article Thinking Technology: Toward a Constructivist Design Model, constructivism is defined as a way that “learners construct their own reality or at least interpret it based upon their perceptions of experiences, so an individual’s knowledge is a function of ones’ prior experiences, mental structures, and beliefs that are used to interpret objects and events”.  This lesson is constructivist because the learners are actively involved in the process of learning each fitness skill.  Physical education is mostly constructivist teaching because we are always actively involved in what we are learning.  Rather than simply being told how to do each fitness activity, they are actively learning by watching the video and looking at the critical elements for the skill.

This lesson is exemplary because of the way it includes Constructivism as noted above.  It is also exemplary because it includes math, technology, reading and web technology into the lesson.  The students have to use the technology devices to pull up the web by scanning a QR code in which students have to also read what goes along with the video.  Math is included because students are told how many they have to be able to do in so many seconds.  This can lead them to think how many they need in a certain about of time in which they need to be able to judge their timing and pace.

This lesson is equitable because all of the students have access to the technology needed to do this lesson.  The lesson shows that there is an iPad at each station – total of 6.  This allows all students to access and use technology.  This lesson allows the students to be able to work together in their groups by scanning, watching and reading how to do the fitness activity.  This activity is one that has the students active in their learning will help them also take ownership of their learning.  As stated in the article Redefining Equity: Meaningful Uses of Technology in Learning Environment, “it is important that all learners have equal access to these tools”.  The students can each have an opportunity to scan the QR code using the device.

This would be a lesson I would include in my classroom if I had access to devices in my gym.  If I were to do this lesson, I would include many more QR codes with other activities as well.