I have used a handful of apps in my PE class in the past but have never shared them, so here's my first one that I'm going to share with you. We do have iPads in our school, but it's not implemented through the whole school, it's only certain year groups and they have to buy their own devices. I don't have an iPad and any apps that I use are through my iPhone or websites. Nevertheless, we do have school wide subscriptions for certain programs and Showbie is one of them.
Many teachers or even students don't expect PE teachers to be setting up homework or even written assignments, which I did a lot more when I was teaching in an IB school, but I do feel there is a place for it in PE. We have 50 minute lessons with our students and after changing times, we are probably left with 30-35 minutes of actual lesson time. Often, I run out of time to do a quality plenary and often I use showbie as the platform to have that discussion another time. I like the idea of students having a bit of time to go away and reflect on what happened for them to share what they had learnt and how they are going to move forward with it. This could be done as a class discussion, where everyone replies and offers their opinion or set as an assignment, where their answer is only shared with you.
I have also used it to assess students. Currently we are doing an athletics unit for Year 7 and 8's and I am assessing them on the 'evaluating and improving' strand. Students get various feedback, either myself, their peers or through the HUDL technique video app and then go onto showbie answering some questions that I have posted on there. I always go through an example answer, using the students answers, so they know what is exactly expected.
I have also assigned work in the past where they have to submit a document. This document can then be annotated, which saves you downloading it, annotating and then uploading it again. However, the document has to be saved in a certain format (PDF, as well as others) for you to see the document without downloading it. In terms of giving feedback, I sometimes use the voice note, if there is a lot of feedback to give and this works both ways. I feel this is a real time saver when giving feedback, as written feedback does not always makes sense to the students.
It is a also a platform to flip the classroom with your class. I don't completely flip the classroom, but I do share videos and articles that give them an insight of what we are going to cover in our upcoming class. Basically with my time constraints, I use showbie to do a starter and a plenary, so we can get the maximum use out of the time that we do have.
I have also got all our sport coaches and players to use it too for communication purposes. I am a co-teacher in their group and often add schedules or fixtures once they are confirmed. If a game gets cancelled or changed last minute, students get notified straight away, as long as they have the notification alert set up. This takes away the worry of taking any phone numbers or emails to communicate urgent information to them, which they may or may not check in time.
Another feature of Showbie I really like is that parents can see what is going on through their child's profile. Currently, I am organsing a BSME trip and in need of contacting parents regularly. I just post a message on our Showbie group and parents see it, but this only works if they are registered and active on it. Not all our parents are.
I really do like Showbie. It's paperless, it's simple and you can use it on your phone. This is ideal for me, as I'm checking work or setting assignments on my commute to and from work. I just wish there was one platform where we can do what showbie does but also take a register, award points, input grades etc, rather than using the several platforms that we have. However the simplicity of showbie is ideal for any teacher, student or parent out there.