Physical Awareness

Enrica MaraglianoLiceo Classico C.Colombo Genova ItalyMaths and Physics teacher

Project's short description

During their Physical Education classes students are experimenting what they learned during the Physics and Maths classes, so they can become aware of the reasons of the motion, the balance, the rotations and learn to control their body.When you have fun while you are doing something, for sure you'll learn more, faster and better.

Where did the idea come from?

In the last years I carried on eTwinning and Comenius projects mainly based on Maths, but this year I felt I had to find an idea related to Physics, as this subject has many links to students' real life

I read a small book (in Italian) La scienza nel pallone about Physics and soccer and last Summer I watched at television the presentation of a book about Physics and ski E adesso come faccio a fermarmi?!

So I decided to go and ask to my P.E. Colleagues if they were interested in a project

How the project began?

I explained my idea to my P.E. colleagues and they were happy to work together on a project about Physics and Sport

Students' P.E. book has many pages about the connections between sports and Physics but we never realized

Another Physics teacher in my school agreed with this idea and also the English colleagues

So we contacted some partners of a previous Comenius project and a friend who always invited me to his eTwinning projects and we founded the project

Project's goals

Students: practice their English

learn about other European cultures

learn about Maths (conics) and Physics (Kinematic, Dynamic, Fluids) experimenting the laws and the trajectories during their P.E. classes

improve their ICT skills

learn to work and cooperate in international groups

Teachers:

share knowledges and teaching methods

The project steps (1)

Maths teachers give lessons about conics and Geometry focusing mainly on the project goals

Physics teachers give lessons focusing mainly about interactions with Sports.

Physical Education teachers point the focus about the causes and consequences of motion and physical activity in general

English teachers help in giving students the vocabulary of the sport disciplines and of Physics

The project steps (2)

Students chose their favourite sport and are working in groups preparing the videos

Once the films are ready, students will learn how they can edit them adding graphics features and comments

To complete the project, all the links to the videos and all the project products will be integrated into a Prezi presentation

Which resources or tools are we using?

The project is still in progress and so we are open to use new tools (maybe to some we learn during this L.E....)

We liked students cooperate as much as possible, so we asked them to introduce themselves then they met during video-conferences and we communicate mainly using the TwinSpace

Team Introduction tools

Students introduced themselves with Voki or Glogster

Christmas whishes

They exchanged Christmas whishes by cards, videos and posts on the WishWall

Contacts and games

Students met some times and they will meet again. Of course they met virtually during Flashmeeting videoconferences

During these meetings they do some activities, mainly challenging games like puzzles and crosswords made with Puzzlemaker

Cartoons and graphic tools

Students made some cartoons using GoAminate and Kerpoof

They are preparing some images with their favourite sport words using Tagxedo

Inspiration videos

To help students to understand what they had to do we found many videos about Physics and sport on YouTube

Students Videos

To prepare videos we are planning to use Movie Maker or YouTube. Then the videos will be uploaded on YouTube.

Students are making films and in a short while they will elaborate them

Some theory...

Students are sharing Physics problems involving some sport situations using their Physics book, they are learning the connections between Physics and Sport using their Physics and P.E. Books. They edit those problems using MS Office or LibreOffice.

All their presentations will be integrated in a single one using SlideShare

They of course also read some books about Physics and sports (as the two that lightened my idea)

Final product

The students are working in groups (national and international) communicating between each other using mail but also during Flashmeeting video-conferences. Tasks will be done by every group but each group will be in charge of publishing one part of the project: the final goal will be preparing a Prezi presentation with the collaboration of all the students involved. Each group of students will be responsible to edit their part. All the students will see all the presentations and will learn many things about the Physics in Sport.

Last step

As last step we planned to organize public presentations inviting the other teachers, parents and... of course the partners in video-conference!

What is the impact the project has on the project?

Students are more interested during Maths and Physics classes and are much more aware about the consequences of their actions. Their critical thinking is improved

Students learn much more about ICT and improve their specific vocabulary about sport and Physics

Teachers enjoy working together and sharing knowledges and teaching methods

Has the project enhanced the learning process?

For students in general solving Physics problems is easier, as they have clearly in mind the motion and its consequences

For them it is a challenge to solve the problems proposed by their foreign mates

They learned the specific vocabulary of Physics and sports, usually not given in the 11th grade

They are also learning a lot of ICT, usually not deepened in Classical Lyceum

They learn how they can work in group, also international

Conclusions

Etwinning projects are very useful to improve, enhance and promote students best attitudes

One of the keys of the success is interdisciplinarity: in this way we can involve more colleagues, working in teams and sharing the responsabilities and students will see the same cocepts by many other points of view

Transversal objectives

With eTwinning projects we can achieve transversal objectives often impossible to obtain with traditional teaching:

active use of English

use of new ICT tools

improved relations among students

knowledge of different cultures

learning tied to specific practical and well defined objectives

improvement of creativity and self-esteem

Resources and references

http://new-twinspace.etwinning.net/web/p92756

www.voki.com/

www.glogster.com/

http://padlet.com/

http://www.tagxedo.com/

http://goanimate.com/

http://kerpoof.com/

http://flashmeeting.e2bn.net/

http://www.slideshare.net/

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/free-puzzlemaker/?CFID=3168572&CFTOKEN=37459322

http://prezi.com/

http://connect.garmin.com/