Project #3 is done!

CHALLENGE:

The challenge I identified in my classroom has to do with calories burned during exercise. We have all had to do a physical fitness log, or something like that at one point in our high school or junior high career. The challenge is to find out how many calories you burned doing a specific activity or exercise. Everyone has a different body type so you can't say that everyone burns 100 calories running one mile. That is an estimate, and what if you are doing other exercises besides running?

This is a problem I have ran into when trying to teach about physical fitness and nutrition. A lot of those lessons deal with talking about calories, eating more or less, or staying the same. If you need to lose weight you have to consume fewer calories than you take in. This is hard to track when it comes to nutrition and exercise. So I decided to find a tool that lets you calculate your calories burned in a simple and easy way.

TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION:

The technology that I found is called the "Fit-O-Meter" on WebMD. It is a great tool and easily accessible. All you do is type in your activity. It gives you a list of activities that are related or the exact one you typed in. You choose your activity, type in your weight, the duration you participated in the exercise, and it calculates calories burned.

http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-fitness-calorie-counter

Type activity into the search bar, and press enter.

Example: kick boxing

Click on the correct activity. In this example only one shows up. If you type in running it will have multiple options based on intensity. 

Type in your weight and duration (hours and minutes) and click calculate. The program will generate the amount of calories your burned during that exercise. 

REFLECTION:

This is an excellent program, and was easy to find and use. Such a simple tool like this makes a big difference and can make the material more understandable and concrete. Instead of rambling on about calories now the students can see and calculate their own. I am using this program now as I exercise in my daily life. It is interesting for me to find out how many calories I am burning, my activity level, and have everything easy to access with the click of a button. 

I have always been interested in how many calories I burn with all the different activities I like to do. I wanted to find an easy way to calculate that. Many programs that I found online only had a few activities you could choose from, or they were personalized based on weight and duration. This program does both! It was fun to see what was out there in terms of technology programs for my class, and I am glad I found this one. 

Lesson #10

I use technology everyday and in a lot of different ways. I think the way I use it the most, in contributing to my knowledge, is by researching topics in health that I am interested. This could  be through blogs, videos, or organization websites such as webMD and the CDC.

I have used different types of technology to collaborate with classmates. I have used G-Chat, Skype, email, and of course google docs. I really like google docs because it allows you to work on a paper on one project all at the same time. You don't have to meet in person but can simply log on and add you part to the paper or project. It is simple to add people and post documents, very easy to use, and it can be extremely helpful.

I would definitely use videos, websites, and I want to make a class website for when I have my own class. These different technologies can add to content and can be extremely helpful in letting kids have one portal where they can check when things are due, grades, upcoming assignments, etc. for class. I think that is a great tool.

I was very skeptical of this class. But once I started learning how to explore and learn for myself how things work it was great. I loved our projects that we did: the blog, website, and movie, and I can see how they would benefit a classroom. I had no idea how to make a movie or a website upon entering this class. Now I do know how, and I am excited about it and proud of what I learned.

I will definitely be more willing to try and learn new technologies, you never know what you can find and use in the class. As I stated before I will definitely be using movies and a class website. Those are great and fun things.