Ben Hemberger

“I think the kids get excited when they go to scan in their device at the end of the period and see that they’ve met their goal. I hear a lot of positive comments. They know there is a standard that they need to meet and when they do meet it, there’s a sense of gratification, accomplishment, something to feel proud of about themselves. That’s another thing I like: the goal is different for everybody. It’s where your heart rate needs to be, which is really cool. Some of your more gifted athletes may need to work quite a bit harder than another kid might have to. It holds everybody accountable. That’s what I like, and in a roundabout way, I think our kids like that too.” – Ben Hemberger, PE teacher and basketball coach at Fosston (Minn.) High School

“The students are very motivated while the incentive programs are going on (Fall and Spring), since they have won prizes through IHT before, they want to win again. The HR monitors help enhance their knowledge of exertion levels, FITT Principles, MVPA, and Heart Rate Zones. The Spirit Software allows me the teacher to easily input their physical fitness assessments and it gives the students such a great printout. It really makes it easy to see where they are at, and how much more they have do to get into the healthy fitness zones.”- Kaitlyn Bloemer, Physical Education and Health Teacher at Bay View (Wis.) Middle School

“It’s exciting to see kids getting excited about taking PE. The kids are eager to see their heartrate data. They are always telling me to upload it…. After they see the red and see themselves pushing themselves and see the data, then they start getting excited about meeting their goal, about coming in telling me, ‘coach, I met my goal today, and I had fun doing it!’ That’s special. When they make their goal and all they did was have fun.” – Kelly McClennon, PE teacher at A. Maceo Smith New Tech High School, Dallas (Texas) ISD

Doug Hallberg

“And if they’re proud, and making progress, then they are much more likely to want to continue. That I think is the ultimate goal: get a kid to want to take care of their own fitness level. It’s just an amazing tool to be able to connect with the kids.” – Doug Hallberg, PE teacher at Draper Middle School, Mohonasen (N.Y.) school district

“As students came to understand how the system worked, many of them took it upon themselves to make sure that they were in the zone as much as possible during class time. Motivation was up for many students. They wanted to earn the extra credit point by achieving more minutes in the zone than what was expected for the class period.” – Betsy Luck, PE Teacher at Oskaloosa (Iowa) Middle School