IHT Spirit Mobile Fitness App
Physical education teachers faced with dwindling class time can expand their programs and recapture lost exercise time by integrating the IHT Spirit Mobile fitness app into their use of the IHT ZONE wrist heart rate monitors.
Developed and released in September 2017, the IHT Spirit Mobile App enables teachers using the IHT ZONE wrist HRMs to stay connected as students make up missed assignments or take on new assignments outside of their normal P.E. classes. While it’s inherently easier for classroom teachers to assign and verify completion of make-up assignments, physical educators have struggled.
“It used to be that we’d send home a piece of paper with an assignment to make up and they’d sign it saying they did the workout, but you don’t really know,” said Riverton, Wy. P.E. teacher Mike Bradley.
During a normal class session, Bradley assigns a lesson and sets heart rate-based goals that students strive to achieve. Each student wears an IHT ZONE HRM, which displays the student’s heart rate and heart rate zone (resting, moderate, vigorous) throughout the session. At the workout’s conclusion, students receive a summary via email that includes:
- total minutes spent exercising at an elevated heart rate;
- chart displaying heart rate throughout the session; and
- how students performed compared to the teacher’s goal for the lesson.
With the Spirit Mobile fitness app, Bradley can give students who miss a class session a ZONE monitor to use on their own time and see their progress as they make up the assignment. The fitness app activates the heart rate monitor and connects the student to the assignment. Upon completion, the student and teacher receive the same email summary as the students who completed the session during class.
“I think the app will be beneficial with make-up time,” he said, adding that completing the assignment through the app allows the teacher to see the student’s data and provide any necessary coaching and feedback to help boost performance or reinforce the lesson.
With research proving the academic benefits of quality physical education and physical activity during the school day, Bradley’s looking for ways to minimize lost exercise time for his students.
“Think about it this way: if one of my students misses just one class, that’s 20 percent of their at-school exercise time for a week,” he said. “That’s huge. I would think we lose about 10 percent of our total workouts, and they can be made up.”
He won’t settle for the alternative of allowing a student to miss valuable exercise time.
“I don’t want them to give up a workout day,” he said. “Now, you can send a monitor home and have them do it through their app. If for no other reason, that’s one day a kid didn’t take off from being active.”
The IHT Spirit Mobile fitness app is a free download in the iTunes App and Google Play stores.
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