Episode 92 - Choice & Voice with Mike Ginicola

The PE Geek Podcast

In this episode of The PE Geek Podcast we speak with Mike Ginicola about the value of leveraging student choice & voice in thje Physical Education classroom. This has taken many forms in Mike's classes & has been empowered by the use of Gamification & Emerging Technologies. He also shares his love for the Plickers app and how he was able to take it to the next level using Magnets.Resources mentioned in this episodePlickers, ClassCraft, Balance It Jump It TranscriptionDuration: [00:19:33][00:00:28] Jarrod Robinson: Alright hello everyone and welcome to episode number 92 of the PE podcast and as always it's an absolute pleasure to have you here. Now, I'm joined today by Mike Ginicola. How are you?[00:00:39] Mike Ginicola: Good Jarrod, thank you for having me here.[00:00:42] Jarrod Robinson: Absolute pleasure. Now, we're sitting here doing a little bit of time zone math trying to work out where we are in relation to each other, but for our listeners where are you based and how long have you been in that area?[00:00:53] Mike Ginicola: Yeah I'm in Connecticut in the United States and I've been teaching here in the area for twenty years. Originally I grew up in Ohio.[00:01:02] Jarrod Robinson: Oh nice, so I mean is that something that you can map back to your childhood as having an interest in wanting to be a teacher or did this come about through a different path? [00:01:13] Mike Ginicola: Yeah I always had a natural affinity for all things sports, physical so it seemed natural that I ended up going in the army to get college money and that kind of cemented even more just really loving the movement of everything.[00:01:27] Jarrod Robinson: Yeah, so I mean sport-wise growing up was there a particular sport that you really enjoyed or it was just an all-around passion?[00:01:34] Mike Ginicola: I've been playing volleyball for about thirty years now.[00:01:38] Jarrod Robinson: Wow, and that's something that you still do to this day?[00:01:43] Mike Ginicola: I do. Not as well as I used to, but definitely keeping up in my mid-forties.[00:01:48] Jarrod Robinson: Yeah, is it one of those sports though because you have had such a lifelong enjoyment with it that it's one of the lesser enjoyable things that you like to teach or is, or do you like that moment when you get to share your passion with the kids?[00:02:03] Mike Ginicola: For about fifteen years I really did enjoy teaching it and now really moved on to just ever since Twitter and social media and the PLN just branching off to all types of striking and making it even more for the students, better experiences for them.[00:02:19] Jarrod Robinson: Yeah, yeah I mean similar for me like I grew up with track and field and I loved it but just that teaching of it is a completely different thing altogether and it was one of my lesser things to teach and I gradually moved away to enjoying other subject areas and other things. With tech being one of those and I know for you've gone through this journey in the last three years and it's been great to see with a lot of sharing of stuff that you're doing in your classroom practice. So, my question is when did you get started with this whole social media journey and how has it helped you in your practice?[00:02:57] Mike Ginicola: Yeah well you're going to make me feel like a dinosaur here, for twenty years of teaching I only joined social media really about a year ago, Twitter I think was last April so it's about 15/16 months now and that set me on course from there. I was invited to Voxer, the PE Central Facebook group and kind of went from there.[00:03:17] Jarrod Robinson: Sure how did that even come about? Because there's way more teachers off line than there are online and it's often difficult to even know that these worlds exist. So for you was it like did you go to a conference and stumble a(continued)