For the first episode in this series, we had David Gelsak from Exercise Connection to come on and discuss his Exercise Buddy app. David briefly discusses his how he created Exercise Connection, how he is dealing with COVID-19 as a business owner, how APE teachers and families can utilize Exercise Buddy during the pandemic, and how he is continually adapting his program and app. The app is very popular and utilizes video modeling, visual schedules, and an assortment of other strategies to effectively supplement physical education services for students with autism spectrum disorder. If you are interested in getting a free trial for the app (it is currently being offered for free until April 30th) or purchasing the app to encourage your own students to be more engaged in physical activity and get more out of exercise here is the website to purchase the Exercise Buddy. See the video below that highlights Exercise Connection and their app Exercise Buddy.
For the second episode. we had Matthew Bassett (@PhysEdApps) tell us about a plethora of resources he has developed with the help with several other physical educators across the nation, for SHAPE America. Matt is a general physical educator for San Jose Charter Academy in California, and in 2017 was named the CAHPERD Elementary Teacher of the Year. Matt discussed how his job has been impacted by the pandemic, how he plans on continuing to deliver quality physical education to his students, and how he started working with SHAPE America to develop the SHAPE America Corona Virus Resources page, which provides a resource list of different online physical education resources one can use to continue to deliver quality physical education services to students during the pandemic. In addition, he outlines a variety of tutorial videos for physical educators to use to help them through this crisis, such as as video for editing iMovie, using Google Forms, and a Basketball Dribbling Video with some #Physed Teachers from around the world.
For the 3rd installment of the COVID-19 series, Dr. Melissa Bittner (@CSULB_APE) discussed how she is coping with the pandemic from a university viewpoint. Dr. Bittner is an assistant professor of adapted physical education at California State University, Long Beach. Because of the pandemic, her undergraduates were missing the opportunity to work with students with disabilities, so Dr. Bittner took the initiative to create an online practicum program, where her students conduct a free online lesson Tuesday through Friday at 1 pm PST. In addition, Fridays are bilingual day. Share this opportunity with your students by following their Facebook page here. Finally, they also created a home packet on activities for students to engage with at home, as well as they created their YouTube Channel with a variety of activities and past practicum lessons: LongBeachStateAPE.
For the 4th installment of the COVID-19 APE podcast series, Brad Wiener (@APETeacher) joined us to discuss how he has navigated his job as an adapted physical educator during the pandemic. Brad is a former SHAPE America National APE Teacher of the year and is a currently an adapted physical educator for Montgomery County Public School, in Maryland. In this episode, Brad discusses how he is delivering APE services to students, how his school is monitoring students' IEPs, as well as he shares how and why he developed a variety of APE related resources during the pandemic. Brad has revamped his APE website since the pandemic, and has created a variety of resources (curriculum for different age groups, videos, worksheets, etc) that parents and APE teachers can use to continue to provide services to students with disabilities. In addition, Brad discusses how we need to use these resources as templates, and customize them for our individual students' needs. Resources within the website include home activities for children, and activities for children with multiple disabilities and children that are preschool age.For the 3rd installment of the COVID-19 series, Dr. Melissa Bittner (@CSULB_APE) discussed how she is coping with the pandemic from a university viewpoint. Dr. Bittner is an assistant professor of adapted physical education at California State University, Long Beach. Because of the pandemic, her undergraduates were missing the opportunity to work with students with disabilities, so Dr. Bittner took the initiative to create an online practicum program, where her students conduct a free online lesson Tuesday through Friday at 1 pm PST. In addition, Fridays are bilingual day. Share this opportunity with your students by following their Facebook page here. Finally, they also created a home packet on activities for students to engage with at home, as well as they created their YouTube Channel with a variety of activities and past practicum lessons: LongBeachStateAPE.
For the 5th, and likely final episode of this COVID series, I sat down to discuss how COVID has impacted the day-to-day life of Dr. Kristi Roth, a full professor at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and one of the co-authors of Principles and Methods of Adapted Physical Education and Recreation. In addition, we discuss how to use her app to find APE activities and how-to videos. She details how she has created this app, as well as other technologies to curate quality content for others to easily use in order to find useful content. To further drive home the point that these mediums allow experts to curate and provide easily accessible resources to those who need it, she provided a resource on how to provide APE to students with severe disabilities in home settings. Finally, Dr. Roth and I discuss best practices in online learning, and some advantages of using online learning.
