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Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely love technology. I am affectionately known at my school as a "computer geek" and I am happy to say that many of my colleagues come to me to ask for help when it comes to technology. I grew up in the 1960's and 1970's and my dad worked for IBM. He was a troubleshooter and worked on IBM's original mainframe computer. I have always enjoyed Science and Math and I even took a cutting edge computer class when I was in the seventh grade. I had no idea what a computer was or what it could, do despite the fact that my dad worked for a world-class computer company But nevertheless, I found the class extremely interesting.

Fast forward a number of years to college visits with my son. On one trip we took him to my alma mater - SUNY Cortland. I was showing him the campus and when we were on a tour of the library I was reminiscing about how the campus in general and the library in particular had changed. I remarked that the current computer room in the library was actually a typewriter room when I was a student. In this room you could put a quarter into a machine and the electric typewriter would power on for 10 minutes. My son could not believe this memory of my college experience and he asked me why I did not have a computer to type my papers. He thought that we would surely have had a computer available since "Gramps" worked for IBM! When I told him that the personal computer had not been invented yet he could not believe it! I had no idea that technology would move forward at such a fast and furious pace but I love technology and have been enjoying the evolution of all of the advancements, including how technology use has revolutionized the way that students participate and learn in Physical Education.

Recently I have been working on a presentation called Technology in Action, and it has made me realize how the advancement of technology has the potential to cause a revolution in your Physical Education program if you are ready and willing to jump on board. I have actually done several presentations on the subject of technology use in Physical Education dating back to my very first conference presentation in 2007. This presentation was about using pedometers and heart rate monitors, creating digital newsletters, and using digital cameras to create slide shows, DVD's and upload pictures to a website to promote quality Physical Education. My current presentation begins with the use of pedometers in Physical Education but then covers the vast array of iPad apps that can be used to teach content, increase physical activity, assist with classroom management, and assess students cognitively, behaviorally, and physically. In such a relatively short period of time, I have gone from enjoying technology as a novelty to becoming dependent on technology every single day in my Physical Education class! In fact, I do not know what I would do without my iPad! I firmly believe that technology can be both positive and negative, so it is up to us as adults to model use of technology in such a way so that our students can be good "consumers". We should show students how technology can be a positive influence in their lives for health and wellness.

Applying Technology to PE Class

I could have never imagined that I would have wireless access in my gymnasium. This advancement has allowed me to access the wealth of information that I can make available to my students. For example, I can show students videos of exciting events like the Winter Olympics, or I can reach back into the past during our 50 th Day of School Sock Hop and show my first graders Chubby Checker doing the "Twist" on American Bandstand!

While paper and pencil assessment is perfectly valuable and I do utilize this method of assessment for my second grade portfolios and other assessments, technology allows me to collect data quickly and effectively for a large number of students. For example, using an application called Plickers I can gather data on hundreds of students a day in just minutes. This data can then be managed, organized, and reported with a few clicks. I use this data as both formative and summative assessment, which drives my planning and lesson delivery in a much more effective and efficient manner.

When I was a young teacher, teams and groupings were made using captains. We all know how awful it is to have a student picked last and have their feelings hurt. The technology revolution has taken this task out of my hands with very positive results. There are a variety of great applications out there but my favorite - Team Shake - creates pairs, triples, quadruples, teams, and more with a simple push of a button or shake of the hand! Not only is this method quick and easy, but also my students never argue about groups because the technology made the decision! Other great applications help me to randomly choose students to answer questions while making sure that I am not always picking on students raising their hands.

Showing my students that technology can actually increase physical activity time is probably the most important goal for my technology use in PE. I use technology to move and I often show my students my Fitbit stats so that I can be a good role model. A few years ago I bought my first iPad after attending an AAHPERD National Conference. I was so excited to learn about the potential of iPad use in PE! As I learned how to use it effectively and more apps became available for physical activity, I decided to write a grant to purchase iPad minis for student use. I now have three iPad minis and students love to use them! A former student teacher said it best when he said that allowing students to use them in PE teaches them how to use technology to get moving and improve their health. Wow....it hit me then that this is our responsibility as PE teachers, and I set about finding new apps to use for student activity. There are so many great apps like Deck of Cards Workout, FitDeck Jr., Decide Now, Swork-it, Super Stretch Yoga, Stretch-it and more! Technology is supposed to be used to improve the quality of life. Through Physical Education use, we can teach students how to do just that!

I have been reminded recently that while I, and many of my students, enjoy a tremendous amount of technology, not all students and families have the same access. This year I started using Google Forms on my PE website for 5 th Grade PE Homework. The idea is that students are given questions to answer outside of PE class as homework and the use of Google Forms allows me to track their answers. I send home the PE Homework form with an option for students to answer the question at school if they do not have Internet access at home. I was surprised and humbled at the number of students who indicated that they needed to complete the questions at school. Allowing students this access at school "levels the playing field" for student technology use and can be a positive factor in student success.

Since my first day on the job as a PE Teacher in 1984 until now, the technology revolution has been nothing short of amazing! The challenge is finding the balance between too much technology and technology use for good health and wellness. Students and adults need to have access to appropriate technology and be taught how to use it responsibly as well as it's potential to improve their overall health. As Physical Educators we are uniquely positioned to teach students this positive use of technology and model it in our own lives. I know that my dad would be astounded at the progress of technology and I hope he would be proud of my passion to teach others to embrace it.

About the Author: Margaret Robelee is a PE teacher at North Park Elementary School in Hyde Park, NY. She has a blog called The Best Part of My Week and has been teaching for more than 30 years. She is an advocate for quality Physical Education and loves technology. Margaret was honored as the 2011 NYS AHPERD Elementary PE TOY and the 2014 Eastern District of SHAPE America Elementary PE TOY

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The Technology Revolution in Physical Education - S&S Blog

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Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely love technology. I am affectionately known at my school as a "computer geek" and I am happy to say that many of my colleagues come to me to ask for help when ... Read More

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Using Technology In PE Class

YouTube Show Below:

Resources and Links

Questions? Comments? Things you want us to talk about on the Podcast? Click HERE for the pinned Tweet.

Not necessary to have in the classroom but can help enhance student learning

The technology tool has to be beneficial for students

Technology tools coming soon to the PE Class

Be efficient with the technology you're using in class

USB Drive with files for when the internet goes out

Be good at troubleshooting problems when they occur

Try not to panic, students can learn from you trying to troubleshoot problems

Use social media to see other PE teachers gym's - A window into their world

Surround yourself with people you want to be more like. Follow only Physical Education content to focus your growth

Students love social media and it can be a tool to motivate them to move

Be your own public relations representative. Posting and sharing content allows for the community to see what students are learning in the classroom.

Don't stress about technology as a first year teacher, figure out how to be a teacher first

Learn as much as you can. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Don't fall into the comparison trap

Personal Technology Tools

Below you'll find an overview of my personal tech that I carry around in my backpack at conferences and when I'm working on the website or creating videos and content.
Download the Show Notes for this episode below:

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Questions? Comments? Things you want us to talk about on the Podcast? Click HERE for the pinned Tweet.

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Good source of communication for teachers and students

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Good source of communication for teachers and students

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Stage Lighting for Dance: Essential Tips - Illuminated Integration

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Want to know how to design stage lighting for dance performances? This guide from Illuminated Integration will help you shed a light on dance!

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On Stage Lighting - Stage Lighting Tutorials, Information and How To

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A guest post from Lucas Krech, a Lighting Designer with a passion for lighting dance performance. An great introduction to dance lighting that looks at some history, theory and the use of side light in particular.

Dancers live in light as fish live in water. The stage space in which they move is their aquarium, their portion of the sea. Within translucent walls and above the stage floor, the lighting supports their flashing buoyance or their arrested sculptural bodies. The dance is fluid and never static. Designing for the dance has been my most constant love. I have designed the decor as well as the lighting for a good many ballets and I have installed the basic systems with which I have worked in dance repertory. If I leave anything to posterity, it will be, I think, most importantly in the field of dance lighting. My extraordinary good fortune was that I came along at a point in time when Martha Graham was creating and when Lincoln Kirstein was backing George Balanchine to create new and fresh uses of the ballet form. ~~Jean Rosenthal, The Magic of Light

Lighting the Dance

These first few sentences are perhaps all one needs to understand the dance. The rest is style and historical aesthetics. "Dancers live in light as fish live in water." If you have ever seen a truly first rate dancer glide across the stage effortlessly and with infinite grace, you know what this means. The relationship between a dancer and their light, between a choreographer and their lighting designer, is unique among artistic collaborations. Perhaps the closest analogy would be the relationship of the composer to their conductor. So much of dance, even when dealing with classical story ballet, comes down to the lighting that one must almost unlearn everything you know about lighting in order to learn how to light for the dance.

Dance lighting is unique among performance disciplines in large part because dance is concerned first and foremost with movement. While in all performance mediums our focus is on bodies in space, it is the dance where we focus on where and how that body moves. Perhaps there is a large sweeping arc of an entrance that spirals to center for a pirouette where our dancer is joined by a partner who then jaunts about the stage with her. In short, we are concerned with the whole stage and the quality of movement rather than where someone is standing for such and such a monologue.

My background and training as a designer is in modern ballet and post-modern dance. The following essay is written primarily from the perspective of designing for modern dance forms. While many of these principals can be applied to classical ballet and some post-modern styles, those forms are not the focus as they demand their own unique approach.

For the purposes of this essay I am assuming the use of a conventional modern dance space. This typical dance space has several wings, perhaps four per side, with a boom placed in the center of each just out of sitelines. Sidelights are hung on the booms and point straight across stage. These low hung units allow for color changes between pieces in repertory and allows the entire stage space to be filled, with very few lights. The wings and dance floor are black and there is often a white cyc in the background. Should the cyc not be used for a particular piece, there is a black curtain immediately downstage of the Cyc.

The Angles of Dance

Because our interest in dance is based first on movement, the lighting must be grounded in an approach that seeks out interesting ways to reveal that moving body. While in a play, where our concern is dialogue and plot, we focus on faces through the use of frontlighting. In dance, to show off the musculature and movement, we rely primarily on sidelight positions.

While sidelight is a primary tool in dance lighting, at a more basic level the use of different angles in dance is often treated in a more minimalist or poetic manner than one finds in a play or musical or television. While in a play or television, you might have a key light that is brighter than the myriad other lights used in the scene, for a dance, you might only have that one light or a very few lights from a tightly controlled palette of angles.

Sidelighting

The sidelighting conventions for dance developed out of the twin needs of a body's movement in a kinesthetically focused art form and a touring repertory. As such this system was devised to achieve the maximum variety in lighting looks with a minimum of instrumentation.

The first lighting position to consider are the shinbusters or shins. As you might infer from the name, these are lights hung at or about shin height. They are typically elipsoidals with shutter cuts taken off the floor and focused to head height at the centerline. With these, it becomes possible to brightly light the dancer without illuminating the floor. The effect is one of making the dancer appear to float as if by magic.

After the shins, the next most important position are the head highs, or heads. These are lights hung at or just above typical head height. They are also focused to centerline, but unlike the shins they do not cut off the floor. While the light does graze the floor, the effect is minimal and allows the dancer to be brightly light while keeping a minimum of notice on the floor

These two positions are so fundamental to dance that many designers, should they find themselves in severely limited situations, would utilize only them. This system of sidelighting was developed by american designer Jean Rosenthal and is covered in more detail in her seminal text The Magic of Light.

Through the use of low angled sidelighting like this a designer may fill the entire stage space with light using as few as 8 or 10 lighting instruments. In a touring situation where venues range from having large compliments of lighting fixtures to incredibly limited options, this system allows the basic integrity of the design to be maintained in virtually any performance space. I discuss the implications of designing in repertory for tour in more detail here.

While Shins and Heads are the two primary angles utilized in dance, larger companies and dance venues will have a much more extensive lighting system for their home season if not also on tour. A more expanded low boom might have Low Shins, High Shins, Mids, Low Heads and High Heads. Classical ballet companies will also have high booms, typically in a pink and a blue that hang at 3-4 meters above the stage floor. Pipe-ends and other high-side lights may also be employed.

Other Angles and Lighting Options

Dance may begin with sidelight, but that is not to say that other options are unavailable to the designer. Backlighting, toplights, frontlight and foot lights should all be considered part of the designer's tool kit. In addition to all these, lighted drops and cycloramas play a critical role in dance lighting.

Backlighting and top lighting often play a very prominent role in dance. Because the primary lighting angles keep the majority of light on the dancer and off the floor, the floor is left relatively dark. From this place, the designer has at their disposal any combination of overhead lighting positions to design shadows and patterns on the floor itself. Through the use of color, texture, shadow angle, and intensity, the designer can cause the dancer to appear to traverse entire worlds, while merely crossing the stage from down-right to up-left.

The use of a cyc in dance, or painted drops in ballet, can be quite effective as well. The color variety afforded by a three color cyc can give limitless variety to a designer when combined with the color options in the low booms.

Beyond the Basics and a bit of History

The advent of modern dance brought with it several changes that would rock the dance world and significantly impact the lighting designer in the process. The first was the elimination of toe shoes and ballet slippers. While not directly impacting lighting, this did lead to radical new explorations of form and movement, thus shifting the aesthetic center of the field. The second change, and one directly relevant to lighting, was the elimination of scenery.

With scenery gone, or relegated to a few gestural sculptures, lighting no longer had to contend with pesky walls that would block it. This freed the lighting designer to use whatever tool they saw as necessary to light the dance. It also shifted lighting to a more primary role in the creation of a visual space.

Lighting now had double duty of creating mood and atmosphere as well as setting. Lighting as scenery is commonplace in the dance world today. Be it through the use of toplight boxes, texture and color, or a partially obscured cyc, there are limitless ways to define the dance space architecturally with light.

Dance, in many ways, allows light to exist in its purest form. With little to no scenery and a focus entirely upon lighting a body in space, the medium lends itself to the poetic essence of what stage lighting can be. While theatre production can use quite a number of lighting instruments and angles to construct the various looks, dance is often content with a few clean, clear, simple gestures. Dance is an opportunity for the lighting designer to let their inner poet run free. To take light as a formal art and dance on stage with the performer. The lighting designer constructs the aquarium wherein a dancer may swim in their light.
Images are courtesy of Lucas Krech. The main photograph is copyright Julie Lemberger.

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Dance Lighting Introduction - On Stage Lighting

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An introduction to dance lighting design and the use of sidelight for dance performances.

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Tessandra Chavez is an Emmy award winning choreographer who is known for her innovative style of Contemporary dance which is a fusion of Jazz, Hip Hop and Modern. She started her own dance company, Unity Dance Ensemble at the young age of 15 and has since traveled the world as an inspirational master instructor and choreographer.