The #PhysEdSummit is back! August 26th sees the return of one of the most amazing examples of the #physed and #healthed community coming together as a global community to give back to their own. This free online conference, led by the amazing Physedagogy team, provides a world class digital professional learning opportunity for health and physical education professionals through sharing, discussing, and reflecting on best practices.
5 Reasons Why I Love The PhysedSummit
1. THE #HEALTHED COMMUNITY IS REPRESENTED. I’ve previously acknowledged that health teachers are in a minority and our voice can quieter than our #physed counterparts. This sometimes plays out at conferences where the number of sessions offered to health teachers is quite frankly disappointing. Although the numbers are down slightly, this years PhysedSummit has some impressive health sessions that you won’t want to miss!
10am EST Deanne Romero – Switching from Content to Skills-Based Health Education. This will be the first time that I will get to see Deanne present. She was Colorado’s Health TOY ’15 AND the Central District Health TOY 2017, and I enjoyed meeting her at #SHAPEBoston’17. During her session, participants will engage in mini health lessons to learn how to execute them, and practice and apply skills-based health approaches to create health literate students. This is such a hot topic for health teachers and I urge you to check this session out!
12pm EST Mike Kuczala – Best Physical Activity Practice in the Health Classroom Mike has been an enormous inspiration to me over the past few years, and once you check out this session you will see why! This session will provide a detailed framework for using movement and physical activity in all learning contexts including the health classroom. Participants will also gain knowledge in order to become a source of information for other staff members. Other topics include the brain/body connection, the cognitive principles that support using physical activity, and why movement and physical activity enhance the teaching and learning process.
After watching Mike’s session you will want to go and purchase his latest book – Ready, Set, Go – The Kinesthetic Classroom 2.0 I promise you won’t be disappointed.
8pm EST Amy Lauren Smith – Updating Health Curriculum to Meet the Needs of Today’s Teen Time. You know who ALWAYS represents on behalf of the #healthed community? AMY DOES! The #PhysEdSummit conference program says of this session; One of the benefits of a skills-based model is that it gives teachers freedom to adapt content to best suit the unique needs of their student population. In this session, participants will be given tools to add current health concerns–including sleep hygiene, technology balance, anxiety, mindfulness, and more–to their curriculum while maintaining a focus on skills. Ready to implement resources will be shared along with time to discuss any other relevant concerns.
11pm EST Kris Lundgren – Just Talk I’m very excited to see Kris’ session as he is also lined up to present at the IAHPERD Conference in November. He’s another from the Illinois stable of must-follow Health educators – think Andy Horne, Scott Todnem, Ben Leven, Danah Ouimette et al. This session will be a discussion about mental health awareness and suicide prevention. Attendees will learn how to become an Agent of Impact with Hope For The Day, an organization that achieves proactive suicide prevention by providing outreach and mental health education through self-expression platforms. I’m predicting big things for Kris over the next year!
Also on while Kris is presenting is another session that I highly recommend from a mentor of mine…
11pm EST Dr. Martha James-Hassan – Anatomy of Inequality: Understanding the role of physical education in addressing the academic needs of the whole child If you value social justice and are looking for ways in which to include social justice into your teaching then you MUST check out this presentation. Martha will examine physical education instruction through a lens of cultural fluency. To accomplish this task she will unpack the layers necessary to address social justice topics and the needs of students in meaningful ways in health and physical education classrooms.
2. THE BADGES! OK, I admit it, I’m a geek and I love the badges. The Physedagogy team award badges for a number of things during the run up and throughout the conference. Sign up to attend? You get a badge. Recommend the conference to someone else who then signs up? You get a badge. It’s almost Oprah Winfrey-esque…you get a badge, you get a badge, you get a badge! Last year I was one of only two attendees to be awarded to exclusive UNICORN BADGE and you know I’m aiming for that again this year.
3. THE OPPORTUNITY THAT IT GIVES EDUCATORS WHO WISH TO PRESENT. The PhysedSummit 3.0 was the first time I was aware of the global power of social media and how technology could allow us as a community to come together and share best practice in a way that could impact not only teachers across the world but also the thousands of students in their care. Up until that time I had collaborated with a few teachers around the world but not on such a big scale. I had also presented at conferences with my good friend and co-worker Andy Horne but neither of us had participated yet alone presented in a webinar. Eager to try something new and also determined to ensure that #healthed be represented, we signed up, presented, and had an awesome time. Since being given the opportunity to present at the #PhysedSummit 3.0 we have continued to present further webinars. My favorite #PhysEdSummit was a little out of the box and one that I presented alongside Ben Pirillo and Bob Knipe. Watch closely and you’ll see me tear up at one point talking about a past student!
4. THE ALL-STAR CALIBER OF PRESENTERS. Again, this year’s line-up includes successful bloggers and podcast creators, innovative global collaborators, published authors, cutting-edge academics, AHPERD board members, and international keynote presenters. All of these educators have given their time, for free, to share their knowledge so that we can continue to grow as a teaching community.
You gotta love the global nature of the #PhysEdSummit. There are 32 sessions this year and I have personally met presenters from at least 17 of them! Can anyone top that?
Personally I’m looking forward to the BreakOut EDU session from #TeamFoe, the Gamification session from Mike Ginicola and no matter what time of morning they’re on, I’ll be online and bantering with my #AussiePhysEd buddies Andy Hair and Aaron Gardiner.
5. THE ONGOING AVAILABILITY OF SESSIONS AS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. The PhysedSummit sessions are streamed live across the globe and they are interactive in that you can engage with the presenters via Tozzle and other forms of social media while they are presenting. PLUS, all of the videos will be uploaded to YouTube and exist as free professional development on demand, on your own time. I have gone back to many of the previous summits to access videos and take copious notes.
Tune in, watch, engage, keep the conversation going on social media and let’s make this years #PhysedSummit the most successful yet!
There are no online #slowchathealth questions this week but please consider checking out the links in this blog and follow some of the people presenting at the PhysedSummit.
Oh, and you can sign up for the PhysedSummit here – tell them I sent you!
#slowchathealth 