In this episode of The PE Geek Podcast, I introduce you to ConnectedPE. We explore the upcoming online conference, the ConnectedPE Community, the ConnectedPE Conference in Dubai & the new ConnectedPE Podcast.
Websites mentioned in this episode
1. ConnectedPE – Details surrounding the upcoming physical education conference in Dubai. This game changing conference is not to be missed.
2. The ConnectedPE Online Conference – Register for the FREE online physical education conference starting June 6th, 2016. Missed the conference? get access to the recap and replays via the website
3. The ConnectedPE Community – Join the ConnectedPE Physical Education Community for ongoing professional development.
4. The ConnectedPE Podcast – Subscribe to the new podcast for bite sized professional development perfect for Physical Educators on the Move.
Press Play below to listen. Alternatively, download a full episode transcript here
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00:29 Jarrod Robinson: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Episode 58 of the PE Geek Podcast and as always thanks for joining us. Now in today’s episode, I’m gonna be introducing you to ConnectedPE, talking specifically about what it is, where you can get access to it in a variety of different ways and how it’s all about providing physical education professional development at a high level in all areas, not just technology and phys ed. And I wanted to launch it from the PE Geek Podcast because if you’ve been listening to this podcast, it’s likely that you’re a phys ed teacher, and you’re probably interested in the stuff that’s gonna be happening in the new podcast and all the other ConnectedPE related training.
01:18 JR: So, essentially, ConnectedPE is a new website which has been available for many, many years but we’ve really been putting a big effort into producing content in that space since November last year and it’s all centred around the idea of the ConnectedPE Community, which is a forum-based community designed for phys ed teachers to get access to professional development wherever they are. And the real difference here between it and the PE Geek website, which is obviously continuing, I mean this isn’t to say that it’s not, is that ConnectedPE is about more than just technology and phys ed and every month the ConnectedPE Community grows with more and more teachers joining and the big central thing every month is an exclusive webinar just for ConnectedPE members that is delivered by experts and teachers from all over the globe delivering content in all sorts of different fields, so that might include dance, or gymnastics, or assessment practices or anything of that nature and it’s been really, really well received.
02:36 JR: Now all of the ConnectedPE Community has been developed around this whole idea of creating a community that fits between traditional physical education professional development, which is obviously done at conferences and workshops and social media, which is a little bit more informal and you don’t really get accredited for your time online. So the ConnectedPE Community is in the middle, it’s providing webinars and training relevant to teachers across the globe and providing a platform for that to happen from wherever they are and everything that you do in ConnectedPE is accredited with certificates, etcetera.
03:20 JR: So that’s the first part of this ConnectedPE platform, the Community. The second part is that the Community actually leads into the real world conference. Now you may have seen and heard over the last six months that we are very excited to be bringing a brand new phys ed conference in Dubai and it’s running in October 7 to 8, and tickets are selling really fast. But ConnectedPE, the conference itself, is a really different take on what physical education conferences are and it’s all about not just the two days that you will be at the conference. It’s about the lead-up, and it’s about the follow-up, and it’s about providing training opportunities for you in that entire journey because, let’s face it, that’s how learning takes place, it’s not in two days, it’s in a long term view.
04:20 JR: If you think about everyone who goes to a conference, they used to get really excited about the things that happen and etcetera, but then often that excitement is lost for most of the people when they leave. Now sure, there are people who are connected socially via Twitter, etcetera, who continue it and that’s great, but the vast majority of people don’t. They don’t get connected online, it’s maybe something they’re not interested in, etcetera. So ConnectedPE, the conference is very much championing the idea that when you leave the conference, everyone gets added to the ConnectedPE forum-based Community which is not super-public and it’s a nice intro to how these social networks and things can work and it’s very dedicated to one topic only, which is phys ed, whereas the other social networks, sure, there’s lots of people on them, etcetera but it is easy to be distracted amongst those. So that’s how they’re connected but the ConnectedPE Community is growing and the big emphasis on the live conference is making it happen.
05:37 JR: So just to give you a bit of an overview, we are bringing to Dubai experts from all over the globe in the phys ed realm. So we have some keynotes from Andy Vasily, Nathan Horne, Dr. Dean Dudley and Naomi Hartl, so they’ll all be flying from all over the planet to Dubai to deliver the keynote speeches in a variety of different topics and if you wanna see what they’re doing, then head along to connectedpe.com and you can see a list of their sessions, etcetera. Now along with their keynotes, they’ll also be delivering some extended masterclass workshops around topics that are very similar to their keynote. Andy, Nathan, Dean and Naomi will be delivering masterclass sessions which will be really well received. We’ve also invited along a collection of others who will be delivering just masterclass sessions to those people in Dubai and that includes Dale Sidebottom, Mel Hamada, Adam Llevo and I, myself will be delivering a masterclass session at the conference.
06:45 JR: Now you may be sitting here and thinking, “Great! This conference sounds amazing, it’s a really, really good collection of phys ed minds. I can’t make it to Dubai, though.” That might be the sort of thinking that you’ve got, but the good part about it is that everyone who’s inside the ConnectedPE Community is going to be able to get access to the sessions, whether it’s via a recording or the live stream of those particular sessions as they take place at ConnectedPE. So if you are interested then you can head to connectedpe.com/join and get access to whatever it is that you might like to do. Whether that’s come and see the conference or whether that’s just follow along online. Those choices will be made available to you when you visit that page.
07:37 JR: So that’s the sort of how the live conference and the community are working together. But I’m super-excited to announce, and this is why this episode’s coming out, that we have been working hard over the last two months to piece together an online phys ed conference that you can access from wherever you are. Now, super-excited that it’s going to be really well attended. This is a completely free event that is open to anyone who wants to learn. There’s 21 sessions that are gonna be taking place from June 6 to June 12, so seven days of content. You can register for all of them or you can register for just one or anything that you like. Basically, if you head along to connectedpe.com/live you’ll get to the conference webpage, whereby you will be able to watch and register for any sessions you like.
08:43 JR: I’m really excited by this, because this whole idea of creating an online conference gives me the opportunity to showcase the work of lots of phys ed minds across the planet. Some people that have never presented before, it’s their first time and they’re doing incredible things in their classes and it’s providing a platform for them to be shared, or also with people who are used to presenting and used to running webinars and used to doing this and are going to be exposed to a whole new audience. Wherever you are in that journey, I highly recommend coming along and registering for as many or all sessions that you please.
09:24 JR: Now to give you an idea of some of the sessions that we’re gonna be seeing. We have some featured sessions which you can see from the website and a featured session which is done in a webinar form and will last for about 45 minutes is with Nathan Horne of iphys-ed.com. And he is gonna be talking about assessment of games in phys ed and how he’s taken proven research and used it to be able to assess game play in phys ed. He’s gonna be taking you through the planning right through to the practice and beyond. Really excited to see that and that session will take place, just go and check the schedule and you can see.
10:04 JR: We also have another featured presentation from Tracy Lockwood of playeducator.com. She’s gonna be talking about the general play skills program, how you can develop physical literacy through play. And it’s appropriate for people who are just generalist teachers, right through to PE specialists, or people who are just working with young kids between the ages of five to 10.
10:29 JR: Now I have decided to run a session entitled 168 Hours Optimising your Life with Digital Hacks. This has come from sort of the idea that many teachers struggle with this whole idea that there are only 168 hours in a week and you have to try and cram in as much as you possibly can. I think for the most part people are working on things that probably don’t scale as easy as they might like. The whole presentation is gonna be focusing in on how you can be as productive as possible with those 168 hours and how you can leverage them to be as optimised as you might like. So there’s lots of things that you can do to maximize those 168 hours and I’ll be really excited to give you bit of an insight into how I do that with my own life. So that’s another one of our sessions.
11:29 JR: Adam Llevo is gonna be presenting on how you can use formMule, a Google Forms add-on, to automate some of the daily tasks that you do, which will be really well received. And then we’ve got another feature presentation from James Simms of mypeexam.org and he’s gonna be talking about how we are part of this re-imagining of how phys ed is delivered through online media. He is absolutely championing that in the UK, and he’ll give you a bit of an insight into how you can be part of this as well.
12:04 JR: And then, another feature presentation is from Ben Landers of the PE Specialist who’s completed this webinar for us before, and it’s looking at phys ed hacks, things that you can do, practical tips and strategies to make you a more effective PE teacher as well. So that’s a great session for the practical classroom and lots of tips and tricks in them. But there’s still about 18 other sessions that you can get access to, and if you’re interested in seeing what’s on offer then head to connectedpe.com/live and you’ll be able to register for as many sessions as you like. Now obviously, being a conference online and spanning across the entire day with three sessions per day, you can’t probably attend all of them because of time zone clashes and differences like that, so we will be recording all sessions and they will be available to you to watch back via replay if you’ve registered. So my advice is, register for any sessions that you find interesting and you will get an email following that session going live and you’ll have access to the video replay that you can watch. If you don’t register then you won’t get the email, so you probably won’t know that the session has happened and be able to access it. Beyond that, all the replays will always be available inside of ConnectedPE Community to watch as you please.
13:37 JR: So that is the ConnectedPE Online Conference, we’re really excited to have over 15,000 people potentially registering for our online event, and that’s gonna give lots of people some great new ideas and things that they can use in their classes. Now, the final thing that I wanna mention is that as part of all of this, we’ve just released a brand new podcast and you can guess what it’s called, it’s The ConnectedPE Podcast, and it’s gonna be released every two weeks. So in between the weeks of the PE Geek Podcast we’ll be releasing the ConnectedPE Podcast. I’ll be the host, but I’m gonna be interviewing people in other areas outside of the technology realm who are doing exciting things. So we’ve had a couple of great episodes already that are recorded and released, and you can go to iTunes and search ConnectedPE, which is all one word, and you can see what’s come out already. But ConnectedPE will be some bite-sized professional development episodes lasting between 10 and 15 minutes, and it will give you a bit of an overview of some exciting things happening in the PE realm, whether that’s come from the ConnectedPE Conference itself and you get to experience some of the keynotes, or whether it’s from other material that’s been produced exclusively for ConnectedPE.
15:05 JR: So hopefully this episode has given you a little bit of an overview of ConnectedPE. I’m encouraging you if you’ve enjoyed the PE Geek Podcast, to head along to the ConnectedPE Podcast and subscribe and make it part of your regular professional development. And I also encourage you to head along to connectedpe.com/live and sign up for the conference. Now, if you’re listening to this after June 12, 2016, obviously the conference is finished, you can’t register for sessions. But if you still visit that page you will get the opportunity to be able to watch back a recap summary of the entire conference and then find out more about where you can get access to the replays.
15:52 JR: So hopefully that’s given you a little bit of an overview. If you have any questions, as always then send me an email. You can always find a full episode transcript of today’s short episode over at the pegeek.com/58. Now, this episode has come in the middle of what would be a normal week. You will have a brand new PE Geek Podcast episode as scheduled and as normal for Episode 59 coming to you next week so I look forward to seeing you then. Speak soon.
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