Now Barb is back in the classroom as Department Head for Health and Physical Education and Athletic Director at Bishop Reding Catholic Secondary School, where she is teaching the Grade 12 Introductory Kinesiology course. Since reentering the classroom she has been investigating new ways to incorporate 21st Century Learning into her department, which according to the Ontario Ministry of Education means, “raising expectations for valuable, higher-order skills like critical thinking, communication, innovation, creativity, collaboration, and entrepreneurship.” To Barb it meant entering the age of digital learning.
When the new Health and Physical Education curriculum was released in 2015, Barb started looking for a new resource for her Grade 12 Introductory Kinesiology course. The HCDSB had already implemented a rule that any new textbook purchases must come with a digital option so Barb decided to use TEP’s new digital Kinesiology resource package. Despite being a bit of a neophyte Barb approached her principal about going digital. “When I approached my principal he said ‘Yep, we’ve got the funding Barb I’ll get you [however many] licenses that you need.’
Barb was excited to get her principal’s buy-in, but didn’t know anything about using digital resources so she got in touch with the support team at TEP and made an appointment for an online live demo of the digital Kinesiology resource package. She was walked through every different feature of the digital resource and shown how to use it with her students. She even arranged for the support team to run a live webinar for her entire class.
To help her students personalize their learning experience, Barb encouraged them to use any digital device they wanted — laptop, smartphone, tablet. The students were walked through how to customize the digital Kinesiology student resource, which included highlighting and note taking features. They were also shown how to stay up-to-date on tests, quizzes, readings and assignments using the built-in online calendar.