Genius Hour Weeks 5 and 6

Good evening friends,

Sorry it's been a while, been a little busy the past 2 weeks. Therefor I decided to combine my last 2 weeks progress into one post.

In the fifth week of training I was able to work with another trainer, who focused me more onto contact, and when and where I should be hitting the ball. When I first started playing softball 3 years ago everyone told me I'm too early in my swing. This meaning that I was swinging before the ball was in the hittable area. Which is the complete opposite of what I am being told now, is that I am swinging too late. During week 5's training session I learned that I should be hitting ball out front, that way my arms are fully extended.

In the sixth week I didn't have a trainer, so instead I decided working on attacking the ball. As you can see in the video below I am trying to hit the ball with more power or umph. After this week I found my elbow was fairly sore, which I found out is a good thing. I might try to add one small work exercise to my workout to help build muscle in my elbow. This activity you hold an arm by your side, elbow at 90 degrees, palm up. You take you other hand and press down for 5 seconds and repeat 10 times, each arm. For the rest of my workout I have increase to the following

Core: 25 sit-ups, 25 reverse crunches, 40 bicycle crunches, 40 Russian twists, and 50 second plank.

Arms:20 push-ups, 25 dips, 40 arm curls, 60 seconds punching, 20 wrist curls

I think the workouts have been helping with power so far. I am also pretty impressed with the progress I have made in the last 6 weeks.

Song: The only way I know by Jason Aldean with Luke Bryan and Eric Church

Genius Hour Week #4

Wow another week has gone by already!


This past week I did a fair amount of softball practice, compared to the past couple weeks. On Wednesday I went to Extra Innings in Hamilton for batting practice with an instructor who plays ladies A softball. She is a fantastic softball player. She gave me two very important tips that I need to add to my list.


As you can see in the video below I am reaching for the ball. Her advice to me was to stay back. At first I thought she meant stay back in the box, and I was unsure of how to do this, when I am suppose to transfer my weight forward. After a couple of attempts, I started to understand what she meant. I needed to, in a sense have better posture while batting. Keeping my back straight, and back, this would prevent me from reaching for the ball.


The second tip she provided me with was to practice shifting my weight forward and back 2 times, and on the third swing. This will help me time my step better, and maximize the amount of power in my swing.


Additionally, this weekend I was able to play in an indoor baseball tournament to check my progress. What I did find out, was that I am not actually ready for a game situation. At the present moment I have so much strategy development to do, that my brain is forgetting the most important part, which my friends refer to as "see ball, hit ball". What this means is, watching the ball come in, and watching the ball leave your bat. This is to increase your contact with the ball, and we know that better contact means a better hit.


My focus for this week at batting practice is going to be to continue working on keeping myself back and not reaching for the ball and contact. When it comes to my practice swings on my free time, I will focus on the transferring of weight as shown by the trainer in the video. For my workout I am going to try and start to increase the amount of reps or time for each activity, as well continue my balance training through yoga.


Here is the video from last week, and I hope you check in next week to follow up with my progress.

Song: 5-1-5-0 Dierks Bentley

Genius Hour Week #3

This weeks focus was on technique of my swing. I found out that it is very difficult to try and focus on all these changes that I have to make in order to better my swing. When it came to transferring my weight, I'd like to think I have made some improvements. However, I found that my balance is off now from shifting my weight, therefore I have another thing to work on. To improve my balance I am going to modify my workout by adding some yoga poses. Secondly, I learned that changing your grip is not an easy thing! I was informed that I had to change my grip to align my knuckles and hold my bat similar to a punch (Figure 1). However, I found that the web in my hand between my thumb and index  finger was getting sore. Additionally, I found when I lost focus on my thumb would sneak back up on the bat (Figure 2). This is another thing I need to work on, and change the muscle memory in my grip. 

Figure 1

Figure 2

I took a video of myself practicing (below). I want to note that my contact is not that great, because I was mostly focusing on my stance, grip and following through.

Song: Yee Haw Jake Owen

For this upcoming week, I want to focus on my core strength, and grip for my individual training. I have also scheduled a batting practice session Wednesday night with a female A softball player. If time permits I also want to get out and play in a softball tournament to see how my new learning so far has transferred into game situations. Check back next week to see the results.

Educational Technology

Good Morning!

This week for my teaching with technology, I was asked to share a technological tool. We have explore with so many great tools, it is hard to just pick one! However, one of the tools I can see myself using in my future classroom is popplet. This website works as an online concept map, that allows both students and teachers to organize ideas. I made the following concept map on popplet.

This popplet shows an idea for a project based lesson plan based on Tammy's (2015) idea where students are to create a museum of local ecosystems. In the classroom I can see myself using this tool to help students brainstorm ideas for an inquiry project, or have students make a popplet for a concept review.

At the beginning of this course I was concerned about using technology in the classroom, because technology and I usually don't get along. So far, I have realised that technology is not as scary as I once thought it was. As technology has advanced it has become more and more user friendly. I guess this is so people like me are able to use their product problem free. I am eager to move into the second half of this course, and learn more about teaching with technology!