Basketball with Friends

I meet with Ben to play basketball and the look on his eyes, sheer excitement. I love the passion he has for the game of basketball, the look of joy in his face, it's priceless. It makes it all worth it. Ben quickly grabs his basketball and starts having the time of his life, without a care in the world.

Bowling!

I took Ben to 281 lanes to a few rounds of bowling. We ended up playing 3 rounds and Ben was amazing! Ben has the cognitive knowledge of bowling, never missing a beat. He was able to get a handful of strikes and I was thoroughly impressed. During the middle of our games, two high school students started bowling in the lane next to us and I could tell Ben was gradually getting uncomfortable. The high schools kids were very friendly and meant no harm, simply were trying to play a few games of bowling and have some conversation. Ben did not like it. I want to make him more comfortable around peers.

Shooting Hoops with Benson

Now I finally get to play basketball with Ben 1 on 1, giving myself the ability to engage him in conversation with his full attention. I learned that Ben loves to dribble, more than he does to shoot, and he is a fan of Syracuse basketball, which I could have imagined. I hope to see a more social Ben by the end of the semester, hoping he does not hesitate to say what is on his mind.

Meeting Benson

It was finally time for me to meet Ben during the Project Dream Kickoff, and admittedly so, I was nervous. I knew he was 15 and I knew he liked basketball, but that it just about all I knew. Ben and I really hit it off and I learned just how good at basketball he is. I met his father and I could tell just how much his father cares about him. I want to show his father that I am here to help Ben and be his friend. I am looking forward to the days to come.

Daily Burn vs. Traineo, The Ultimate Battle

Daily Burn vs. Traineo

Daily Burn

Advantages

The Locker Room

A place you can call home, a one stop shop where you can put all of your workouts, nutrition etc into the database. It's so simple, right there for you, do not need to go searching the site, it's right in front of your nose.

iPhone App

Nowadays absolutely everyone is on-the-go, smart phone in hand, using technology to its fullest to make life simpler, why wouldn't Daily Burn be any different. With the iPhone application, Daily Burn allows users to update their progress from anywhere they can get Wi-Fi. Best of all there is a food scanner app that allows you to scan the barcode directly into your food log.

Workout Videos

Daily Burn has the best visual aids imaginable. For those fitness challenged individuals who are unaware of workouts or skills to help lose weight, Daily Burn has videos of users demonstrating the skill. What more can you ask for? For those workouts without a video, there is almost always a photo or a link to more information. It gives you no reason to get up and start working out.

Goals

Daily Burn keeps track of everything, the distance travelled, calories burned, push ups done, so you can set goals. If you want to run 100 miles in less than a month, Daily Burn can assist you in your dream. If you want to do 10,000 pushups in two months, boom, Daily Burn has your back. Tracking your own statistics can be tough and you will probably lose count, thus, Daily Burn is really helpful.

Disadvantages

Forums

Daily Burn forums, a place where users can interact, talk and help one another, as far as I am concerned does not exist. The Daily Burn community pages are extremely hard to find and seemingly dead. There is no chitter-chatter amongst users, sure makes it tough for people to achieve fitness.

All About Going Pro

Okay Daily Burn we get it you need money to thrive, but us users do not need to be reminded every two seconds of all the perks we can get when we go pro. Daily Burn sure does make it enticing to join the land of Daily Burn Pro, but they are very annoying about it. Can't I just log in my nutrition, sleep and workouts in peace?

Traineo

Advantages

Inclusion of the Wii

I have a Wii myself, and when I found out Traineo was smart enough to involve the Wii, I got a little excited. Wii in and of itself is a great tool alone, but along with Traineo now you can track calories burned amongst many other things. How can you not get pumped up about this?

Custom Logs

Traineo users can create their unique trackers of their custom data, whether it is inches, pounds, calories or so on. The custom logs generates a graph over time and helps you reach your goal.

Disadvantages

Activity Tracker

It does not even have push ups! Push Ups! Come on, give me a break, I'm sure about 80% of our country has at least done one push up in their lifetime, and you do not include push ups in your activity tracker? Give me something to work with, come on people!

Food Tracker

It does not let you enter individual foods just a section for calories and another for diet quality. Yes you can argue that is what is really important, but entering the individual foods is so much easier for everyone. So in general, I'd say Traineo's trackers are not up to par.

Conclusion

In the end, Daily Burn is definitely the way to go. You get more bang for your buck, you will definitely see results in no time. Traineo just does not stand up to Daily Burn.

Lesson Plan

Block Plan

Train-E-O!

My first impressions of Traineo were not the best. I was not happy with their program, it was hard to follow and not very effective. Simultaneously, I am using Daily Burn which is also an online exercise and nutrition program. I like Daily Burn a lot better because there are not nearly as much restrictions. With Daily Burn I can track my sleep, nutrition, workouts, distance travelled etc. without paying a dime. On the other hand Traineo asks for money before I can do anything. Traineo allows me to get tips on how to lose weight, be fit, be motivated and so on but nothing really helpful. I'm sure if I paid the fee Traineo would be a great tool for me and anyone, but I'd prefer Daily Burn otherwise.

I can see myself using Traineo to accomplish LS 1B, as long as the entry fee for all my students are within the budget. Traineo by itself will not help my students accomplish LS 1B, but if the school budget covers the costs it will be very helpful, I would not expect my students to want to spend their money on Traineo. In a perfect world it would be in the budget, and I'd use Traineo to allow my students to create a fitness program thats fit for their needs. I'm aware that Traineo is much better when the student is open to use TraineoPLUS, students will learn lessons of how to become physically educated people, enhance their muscular strength, endurace, flexibilty, balance and more. I know that with TraineoPLUS students can integrate the Nintendo Wii which is phenomenal. The Wii by itself is great tool but with Traineo I can only imagine how great it could be. I would love to see this used in classrooms, in the curriculum and a part of the NYS Regents Level Objectives.

Kevin Renzo Is Burning

I was pleasantly surprised with the Daily Burn program. I am currently using Daily Burn and Traineo, two great online exercise and nutrition trackers, personally I enjoyed using Daily Burn better. With no surprise there were restrictions with Daily Burn and Traineo, those restrictions can be lifted if I chose to pay a certain amount which I did not. However, Daily Burn, with the restrictions and all allowed me to do so much more than Traineo. Traineo was hard to follow, barely let me do anything without paying while Daily Burn allowed me to do so much! Daily Burn is a great program and tool for all people to use, along with their motivators, fitness plans and all, and if it were in my budget I would pay the fees and continue to use it. However, I will continue getting my exercise how I have been.



Along with Daily Burn, students can use Picasa. Picasa is an image organizer and image viewer for digital photos and the best part is that it is free! Students will be able to take screen shots of their progress in Daily Burn and enables the student to show the teacher all the hard work they are doing. With the aid of Daily Burn, Picasa can be a great way of reporting progress towards the learning standard 1A. The screen shots can be feedback for the student and teacher and will show what areas the student needs help in. I have taken plenty of screen shots, it is simple, effective and very helpful. If you look above at the first picture, you can see that I was recording my sleep for the night and that I only received 2 hours of sleep that night. It was a rough night for me and my finals, I felt I had to share that in my blog. There is no reason why any Physical Educator cannot do the same.