Wearable Technology in Physical Education
Have you ever had or seen students not participating in P.E. class and you couldn’t really do anything about it? You motivate them as much as you want, as much as they can take, but they will only do the bare minimum to get a good grade for the day? Personally, I have seen a lot of this when I was part of or observed a P.E. class. Student participation is a huge problem in physical education classrooms across the world. However, heart rate monitors might be able to fix that. Derek Severson wrote an article called Why Heart Rate Monitors are Essential for Your PE Class for a source named PE Blog, a place where people write about the latest PE topics and trends. He wrote about how heart rate monitors have been successful in his experiences and I found it to be very interesting.
Heart rate monitors in the form of wearable bracelets could be the solution for P.E. teachers. Students will wear these while they exercise and it will show them their heart rate in real time, as well as give the teacher their real time data and performance reports for each student at the end of the class. For example, lets say you want every student to hit a moderate to vigorous level of their heart rate. According to the Mayo Clinic, a moderate heart rate is 50–70 percent of their maximum heart rate, while vigorous is 70-85 percent. As a teacher you can be creative with this, such as they have to stay in a certain zone for a certain percentage of the class period, but for now you want them to hit around 65-75 percent for the class period at least once. Mayo Clinic states, “You can calculate your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220. For example, if you’re 45 years old, subtract 45 from 220 to get a maximum heart rate of 175. This is the average maximum number of times your heart should beat per minute during exercise” (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2019). For a high school class, you would be dealing with mostly 14–18 year olds. Their maximum heart rate would be from 202–206. This means they should be hitting around 141 to 144 beats per minute for 70 percent. If the student hits that number during the class period the teacher will know they gave effort for that day, earning a good grade. Like mentioned, teachers can be creative with this. With the help of apps, the data can show how long each student was in a certain zone, such as light, moderate, or vigorous. Teachers may make it so students have to stay in a moderate zone for twenty straight minutes, among other ideas. Whatever teachers do, as long as they get all students to participate, the monitors are successful.
Overall, the monitors are all about student participation and getting every student up and moving. Severson states, “Heart rate monitors are the most valid way a teacher can measure effort and exercise intensity with students. This takes away the guessing game of determining whether or not your students are actually exerting themselves in class. As teachers, our perception of student effort has many flaws. We can look at a student and easily misjudge how hard a student is working. HRMs eliminate that perception and judgment” (Severson, 2018). Teachers can simply look at the data to see if students are actively participating and give them correlating grades. I hope to see more heart rate monitors in classrooms across the world to improve student activity and participation.
References
Mayo Clinic Staff. (2019, August 6). Exercise Intensity: How to Measure it? Retrieved April 3, 2020, from https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/in-depth/exercise-intensity/art-20046887
Severson, D. (2018, December 7). Why Heart Rate Monitors are Essential for Your PE Class — Gopher PE Blog. Retrieved April 3, 2020, from https://www.gophersport.com/blog/why-heart-rate-monitors-are-essential-for-your-pe-class/
