More Students Have Access to Fitness Information But Few Learn to Make Full Use of the Data
By making heart rate monitor education a vital part of using PE fitness technology, teachers enable students to take ownership of their fitness development.
“I’ve asked student after student after student: ‘I see you’ve got yourself a ,’” said Shane Stubbs, a 20-year veteran PE teacher in Australia. “Then I say ‘hands up if you’ve ever looked at the dashboard on the app or on that website?’ Then I ask, ‘how many of you know what it means?’ None of them do.”
Teachers can set students up for success by providing heart rate monitor education before students use new PE technology.
In 2017, Stubbs added IHT’s heart rate technology to his program. Students wear the IHT ZONE heart rate monitor wrist heart rate monitors during class and then receive individual workout reports through an email delivered immediately after class by the IHT Spirit
Creating Lifelong Fitness Management Skills
“I want them to understand that this is important and something they should continue once they are out of school,” said Crestview (Iowa) School of Inquiry PE teacher Chris Amundson, who added IHT’s technology to his program last year.
Amundson said students became more engaged in his classes when he introduced the heart rate monitors. The teacher sets a goal for the class – how much time students need to exercise in their target heart rate zones – but the goal impacts each student individually. By providing students with basic heart rate monitor education when he introduced the technology, he created a more collaborative, community-minded PE class.
“I had kids who were standing there extra long as they were ,” Amundson recalled. “I walked over to figure out what they were doing and they were all talking about how many minutes they needed to get to their goal for today; what they needed to do to push themselves.”
While students are pushing themselves to reach their target heart rate zones, Amundson can better observe each student, which allows him to deliver more direct feedback, accompanied by the Spirit System email the student receives, following class.
“Now I can actually observe my students correctly and properly, make sure they are doing everything,” he said. “I can maybe observe a couple of kids every day and give them feedback. That’s the thing I’ve been really happy with.”
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