Originally published by Medgizmo.
Wearables: Kindergartens & Schools of Future
Experience the gold standard in fitness technology that supports students from kindergarten through graduation day.
WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY FOR A PURPOSE
We are fervently committed to our mission of empowering students to self-manage their health and well-being. To accomplish that, we’ve created the most accurate, easy-to-use, versatile and durable wearable technology products in physical education.
Like teachers, our job is to not only get results, but be able to measure them with precision. We know that the success of that goal depends on the quality of tools being used. Created with purpose in order to track and support it, our digital heart rate monitor and uploadable pedometer allow teachers and students to reach their full potential from kindergarten through graduation day.
SIMPLICITY IS WHAT’S SUSTAINABLE IN THE LONG RUN
We designed the Spirit heart rate monitor with the specific goal of creating the gold standard in group heart rate training. With our digital heart rate monitor, see and measure incredible results in helping students take a self-directed, self-motivated ownership approach to their health.
THE IHT SPIRIT SYSTEM HEART RATE MONITOR IS IN A CLASS OF ITS OWN
Simplicity: It can’t get any easier than this. The Spirit Monitor turns itself on and begins to work as soon as it’s put on and shuts off when taken off. Data is instantly sent to students and parents.
No Moving Parts, Never Lost: The Spirit Monitor is one piece and the software eliminates all risk of losing a monitor as it tracks each HRM every time a student swipes it. The teacher’s always knows who has the monitor, who’s picked up and who has returned or not returned.
Durability: IHT offers a one year warranty and an additional service plan to cover all expenses, refurbishment and battery changes. We also designed the monitor for extreme durability and working with active kids, class after class, day after day.
No Limits on Distance or Range: Use it in the gym, on a 5-mile run or take the Spirit Monitor home for the weekend. There’s no limit to the possibilities of its use.
Real-Time Feedback: Real-time feedback is based on auditory feedback as students move from one zone to another and also real time visual feedback at any time participants go to the computer to see their progress thus far. This approach accelerates the learning curve for an innate, more in-depth understanding of a student’s own body. The result is the reinforcement of self-directed and self-sufficient learning, with immediate feedback sent to their phone or computer to verify and document their personal application of moderate to vigorous performance.
Personal Data and Connection: We keep this personal and private and about each individual.
No Cross Talk: Eliminates all cross talk, so each student’s data is true and accurate and all their own, from start to finish.
Battery Life: Operates on an inexpensive LCD watch battery and can be changed with ease by the end user. The power consumption is also designed to allow each battery to last well over one year, even with heavy use.
Affordable: Designed for group training, one class set facilitates all class periods and all students throughout the day. So, if your largest class is 30 students, you only need 30 monitors to reach hundreds of students throughout the day in each period.
SMART TECHNOLOGY YOU CAN COUNT ON
Automatically sync Gopher’s FITstep™ Pro Uploadable Pedometers to the IHT Spirit System to capture MVPA, activity minutes, and steps instantly!
FITstep™ PRO: THE NEXT GENERATION IN PE PEDOMETERS
Assess your class and upload your data in minutes with Gopher’s FITstep™ Pro Pedometer.
• More precise step counting– even if pedometer is not perfectly upright!
• Prevents inflated step by a delayed counting feature that only counts consecutive steps taken after activity begins and not single steps taken in preparation
• Large, easy-to-read graph that continually displays MVPA
• Longer battery life
• Calibrates steps per minute (SPM) from 80-160
• Order individually or in packs that include 15, 30, or 100 pedometers, security straps, and storage cases
• Each 15 and 30 pack includes 1 data reader w/ software; 100 packs include 2 readers
• Software compatible w/ PC and Mac
• Link steps to fitness, academics, and health for every student from K-12
• Unlimited assessment capabilities including not only capturing steps but all grant metrics from pre and post fitness testing, surveys, and academic benchmarks, customizable to your goals
• Instantly send reports to students and parents
• Data is accessible from any device, at any time, from anywhere.
ONE SOFTWARE. ALL DATA.
No other software in education brings all data together while connecting all stakeholders. From heart rate, steps, standards and rubrics, fitness testing, individual to aggregate reporting, student and parent feedback, academics, and attendance; capture and correlate it all every day for every single student.
INDIVIDUAL CONNECTION, INSTANT FEEDBACK
Imagine 12 years from today, when your 1st graders receive their high school diploma and along with it are handed their entire wellness portfolio correlated to their academic, attendance and fitness success. The Spirit System is a personal motivator that provides a high tech and data driven exercise prescription. Create a legacy for students and their families while meeting the daily needs of school administration and compliance.
Key Features:
• Students & parents receive an instant email summary of student’s daily workout.
• Students easily add a journal entry for behavior trend analysis.
• The IHT Spirit Challenges unleash the best in every student.
• Link fitness, academics and health from K-12th grade.
UNLIMITED ASSESSMENTS MADE SIMPLE
Throw away your pencils and paper, it’s time to automate everything and empower everyone. With unlimited assessment capabilities, if you can dream it up, you can measure it in the Spirit System. From any device, anywhere, a touch of the finger brings all measurements and historical data together with ease. Capture pre and post fitness testing, including automating your cardio tests. Data instantly connects to each student. No downloading, no saving, no extra work!
Key Features:
• Unlimited assessment capabilities, customizable to your goals.
• Integrates with student record systems to automate rosters and classes.
• Automatically upload pedometer data.
• Automate all cardio testing.
HOUSE YOUR ENTIRE CURRICULUM
Organize and manage your entire curriculum, regardless of what you use or have developed. Every lesson is at your fingertips, with access to the lesson’s standards, rubrics, charts and graphs. Decide what you’ll be teaching, connect each lesson to their standards, assess and report! Customizable, easy to use, mobile and time-saving, the Spirit System is designed to help teachers do their best when it matters most.
Key Features:
• Streamline every aspect of your classroom management efforts.
• Easy-to-use, cloud-based to connect all curriculum resources in one place.
• Countless tools that make teaching and learning easier and more fun.
• Personalized and customized by the teacher to make it their own.
How one company is Changing the Future of Health through Wearable Technology in Physical Ed
By WearableTechnologyUX
Smithers Apex recently sat down with Jen Ohlson, Founder and President of Interactive Health Technologies to hear more about how her leading educational assessment technology called the “Spirit System”, using wearables and a motivating incentive program to influence schools nationwide to implement technology in the name of well-being.
Smithers: Can you share with us IHT’s process in selecting wearable devices as a tool to improve sports behavior in young people?
Jen: We know that by getting the children of today started on a healthy lifestyle and providing them the proper resources and self-confidence to understand how to maintain that lifestyle on their own accord as they age, it offers a legitimate solution to improving their long-term health habits and behaviors. With technology fully integrated in all of our lives, especially our children’, wearables are an ideal tool to meet young people where they are. They engage and inspire them to track and follow their own fitness progress and become a personal motivator that provides a high tech and data driven exercise prescription. Wearables, specifically our heart rate monitor, also give teachers the ability to switch from the “old-style” PE curriculum — where speed and ability were paramount — to an enhanced, more focused theme that emphasizes fitness and well-being, not athleticism. This levels the playing field for all kids, regardless of their fitness level, resulting in greater inclusion and success for every student. Finally, researchers have continuously identified that physical activity beginning in childhood and continuing throughout adulthood improves ones’ probability for a longer, healthier life. While home is the best place to build the foundation of health in kids, schools provide the best possible learning environment and an opportunity to instill positive changes in young people’s choices. By combining wearable technology with health education during the formative years in an individual’s life and through the school system, the better the chance they have to succeed.
Smithers: Through the use of fitness trackers, people get access to a lot of data that more often than not is hard to make sense of all that data at the consumer level. How did you cross that bridge when implementing that program at IHT?
Jen: Like teachers and school districts, our job is to not only get results, but be able to measure them with precision. The educational environment is much different than the consumer market in that it’s not adequate enough for the data collected and reported from wearables to be “interesting”, it has to have the ability to elevate and transform schools, shift legislation, and help make key programing decision for the future. We know that the success of achieving that goal depends on the quality of tools being used. Along with our wearable devices, we’ve created the largest connected assessment and data collection platform in education that enables teachers and administrators to easily and objectively measure PE’s effectiveness from kindergarten through graduation day for every single student. We are fervently committed to making sense of all the data our system collects by focusing on physical education’s greatest needs: to correlate individual student fitness to academic performance, streamline classroom management, connect all stakeholders, and empower students to self-manage their health and well-being, for life..
Smithers: In your opinion, what do wearable technologies designers need to take in consideration when creating products that have the potential of increasing the well-being of the user?
Jen: We believe the key answer lies in empowering individuals to personally choose to live a healthy lifestyles and then building a support system around them daily for sustainability and long term success. Wearable technology is a great tool to create awareness in an individual, which is the catalyst for initial change, but to increase the well-being of the user for life; a behavior shift has to take place. That can only come from empowering the individual to take ownership of their own health. If people don’t learn how to do it for themselves then no technology design will ever be truly successful. Focus on facilitating people along their own journey to wellness, make it simple to maintain, provide opportunities for community to surround them for support, and create a daily practice for them to move in the right direction day-after-day.
Smithers: What are you looking forward to hear at Wearable Technology UX this October in Seattle?
Jen: I’m looking forward to hearing all of the speakers as the lineup is so powerful but Stacey Burr and Amy Jones Vaterlaus are at the top of my list. It’s an honor to empower individuals to self-manage their health and well-being. To have the chance to spend time together and hear them kick off the conference will make for a great start to a wonderful two days.
