PY4055 Blog 2 – Susan O’Donoghue 16167392 Physical Education and its potential to address the imbalance between boys’ and girls’ levels of participation in physical activity       Your experience on the topic on school placement From my experience on school placement, I feel that physical education, with the right attitudes, does have the ability to address the imbalance between boys’ and girls’ levels of participation in Physical Activity. In my experience, while there was an issue with participation, it was across both genders, and this in my opinion, was due to the attitude my cooperating teacher had towards participation. He was quite happy to allow students to sit out or ‘go to the gym’ (which meant sitting at the top of the stairs chatting), so naturally students- both boys and girls took advantage of this. However, when I began placement I acted as if I didn’t know this happened, and when students tried not to participate I gave them jobs such as score ke...

PY4055 Blog – Susan O’Donoghue 16167392 Quality Physical Education (#CoolPE) and the use of digital technology to provide an inclusive learning environment Your experience on the topic on school placement       Unfortunately, the school I completed my placement in was not very advanced with regards to digital technology. While there was projectors and white boards in all of the classrooms, none of the students had access to laptops or iPad's and there was only one computer room in the school. In the PE hall there was no technology at all, not even a sound system to use during dance, so I made do with a portable speaker. However, because I have never experienced using technology in a classroom I cannot say that not having it hindered me, although when I begin to imagine the ways in which technology could have enhanced an inclusive environment in my PE lessons, the opportunities seem endless! If I had access to digital technology I could have used it as a way o...