There's an App for That Smartphone use in Health and Physical Education

Matthew Cummiskey, (Oct 2011) There’s an APP for that Smartphone use in Health and Physical Education. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 82, 8; ProQuest pg. 24-29

Article Summary

Have you ever taken a second to look around to see how many people are using a phone and not just any phone, but a smartphone??  This article review written by Matthew Cummisky, shows statistics on how fast the United States population has grown in the need for technology to be at our fingertips.  Having technology close to our fingertips there are still many concerning factors of being too technology dependent.   He looks at all the variety of technology apps that are beneficial in world of teaching health and physical education.   How educators can use smartphones to get ahead of this trend by showing ways to promote life long learners.  

Smartphones in the United States continue to increase in demand.  As of right now the age group that uses smartphones the most are teenagers.  This study shown by three different groups show that children born in 1990 to today are defined by their technology and media use.   A nearly 90 percent increase in depend of usage of a smartphone. That now nearly 62 percent are able to use their smartphone in school.  When students are asked to state why are smartphones so valuable? 57 percent of students say, “Allows them to stay connected throughout the day.” Where as 59 percent of students state, “It reflects their personal style.” Overall, teenagers are view as ones using smartphones as a social status and others are finding that to be a major concern. 

Since the majority of teenagers are using smartphones there are some positive but yet, some necessary concerns with how they are using this tool.  Best part of having a smartphone is that you literately have a mini computer at the palm of your fingertips.  You can get any bit of information you want, anywhere go.  However, in this study it has shown that from 2004 to 2009 youth ages 8 to 18 have increased their screen time by total of 53 hours per week.  With the increase time spent in front of a screen, students typically aren’t using smartphones to increase physical activity but to spend time checking the weather, playing games, social networking, and music. Where as apps used on phone for personal health and own lifestyle are low on the totem pole. This is where health and physical education teachers can be leaders to promote life long health through usage of smartphones.

 Teachers looking at how to promote the use of smartphones into their classroom need to look at all the different factors.  First, looking at products apps that classroom teachers have available to them through different phone operating systems. The apple OS operating system provides the most apps, followed very closely by android, and extremely less apps provide by other operating companies.  You have to figure out what operating system works best for you and what is mostly used by your students.  There are thousands of apps and there are 12,000 apps just for health.  The best part of apps is that there are many free apps that you can download and tryout to see if it works for your needs.

Wellness teachers have already found great ways to incorporate smartphones into their teaching units.  In using technology in their physical education practices, especially these two standards: three (participates regularly in physical activity), four (achieves/maintains a health-enhancing level of physical fitness).  These three examples below will show just how easy it can be to interweave the use of apps on smartphones into the wellness classroom.   A Health teacher discussing a lesson on weight management, discussing calories and on ways to keep track of food can have students use an app to calculate calories.   Teacher involves students to download a free app on to their personal device to keep track of their calories. Another teacher allows students to develop their own workout either in the weight room or outside.  Using an app called, “MapMyRun.”  Where students could go out into the school neighborhood and run their own route. Last example, states a teacher doing yoga unit and app that has over 200 free poses to have up on the big screen to instruct the students, while the classroom teacher helps struggling students.  These examples all show ways that health and physical educators can interweave app in smartphones to demonstrate life long fitness.  These fitness don’t need to stop in the classroom but can carry on to their home life.  In the end, students will be able to find ways to continue their own life long health instead of just using smartphones for social networking and games.

All in all, educators continue to see the smartphone at the child fingertips, so why not embrace the powerful tool!!  Smartphone apps continue to develop and are free to any user to investigate.  Start small – with one class.  Experiment with that group of students and then expand from there.   Expand your parameters, because it has the potential to promote health and physical activity 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Reflection:

I was blown away by the increase of the use in smartphones in just a short amount of time.  It’s crazy how fast technology is revolving, to constantly change to fit the need of the consumer.  What a benefit technology has for everyone in education.  I thought as a physical education teacher there wouldn’t be nearly 12,000 apps to support my practice and to find out most are free apps.  Apps that expand the walls of the classroom and show student how adults are making sure they are living a healthy lifestyle.  This approach is allowing students to get hands on experiences.  This article was great because it also provided me with two pages worth of apps that I could try right away in my program.  However, I am an elementary teacher and I know my students have phones in their bags that they could take out, not nearly the amount that upper grade level students would have.   This article was more geared to middle and high school wellness classrooms where they can use their mobile device in the classroom.   It would also eliminate it from being stolen in the locker room.  Wellness classrooms could ask students to download a free app and apply it to the lesson.  However, I wonder what complications might arise from asking students to download an app.   Then depending on what type of phone you need to make sure there is an app that would be used on all operating systems.  Not every student will have the same phone. It is truly amazing how fast you can download an app.  Using what the students already have is great tool to eliminate the worry on funding.  In the end, just another great tool that is all ready in the palm of the user.  

Article on: Does technology in physical education enhance or increase the time available to engage in physical activity?

(2012) Does technology in physical education enhance or increase the time available to engage in physical activity?, Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 83:7, 53-56, DOI: 10.1080/07303084.2012.10598813

Article Summary:

   This article was written by seven different physical education teachers and grad students across the country who give their opinions to show the effect that technology has in the wellness setting to help increase instruction time to engage in physical activity.  The majority opinion was that instruction time would increase with the usage of technology in the classroom. 

     The voiced concern with technology in a physical education classroom was similar to any classroom teacher use of tech tools.  PE classes are typically 30 – 50 minutes only.    With having a limited amount of time in physical education classes, teachers must know the tech equipment.  When teachers waste time learning on the go or trying to make it work on the spot, the lesson loses the positive benefit.  If you don’t feel comfortable in using technology in your teaching then stick to your style!!  Another concern was that students use enough technology throughout the day.  Students need the engaged activities of physical movement.  Physical Education teachers, as engaging, fun educators, need to keep it that way, “FUN”.   Lastly, physical education typically receives a lower budget than most academic programs.  The cost and environment of a gym may reduce the availability of technology for many physical education teachers.

      Those in favor of using technology to enhance physical activity all agreed that technology is just another tool.  Technology added into physical education will have a positive effect on student’s activity levels, self-monitoring, and feedback, as long as, we use simple technology.  Simple technologies are hands on tech tools such as pedometers, hand-held heart rate monitor, IPADs and dance video games.   Simple tools such as pedometers allow students to measure their steps, hand-held heart rate monitor to gauge their workout level, and IPADs to assessed their own skill work.  This educator found when incorporating these tech tools into their classroom they noticed an increase in their student’s activity level.  Students where able to goal set and see results instantly.  Teachers can also use tech tools in ways of showing instructional in a YouTube video such as holding a tennis racket.  It can gain student attention by being a different voice than that of the teacher.  Educators overall goal is to keep the students engaged and moving.  These simple tech tools allow that to happen without taking way the movement time. In the physical education setting teachers see the positive benefit it has on students.  However, this educator wants to make sure students use technology as a supplementary tool but not the end all, be all, in physical education. 

The article also discusses the positive effect it has on the student assessments and collaboration with other colleagues.  As educator’s technology benefits us by the way teachers are doing their assessments on students. One important way is when video taping the whole class doing a skill and not small groups of students.  When teachers focused on small groups of students during an assessment, the rest of the students practicing the skill are losing additional instruction time and student’s quality of practices decreases.  Since there are limited amount of physical education teachers in the same elementary building.  Using technology can help teachers to collaborate with other physical education colleagues to enhance our practice.

Physical education teachers like any teacher must use technology effectively.  If technology is used “to decrease management time, increase the effectiveness of task presentation and increase student motivation” then yes, in the end technology does have a positive impact on increasing student’s activity level.  

Reflection

      When I first started to use technology in my physical education classroom I was nervous that I was losing the purpose of my teaching, which is movement based.  I thought also that the students needed a break from technology.  This article is right; students are more engaged when technology is around them.  When using Dance, Dance Revolution the students are so excited to dance even if they aren’t on the challenging pad.  When I started to use pedometers, I noticed that students had an added motivation to increase their steps.  The end result was that they exercised more! We have four days a week of physical education and one day is movement-based health.  When I first started teaching I would spend time talking about the health lesson and then game that allowed students to move for about 10 minutes at most. I always felt that wasn’t enough movement.  I started showing brain pop videos and other clips to explain the lesson.  However, I quickly found out that you need to have grip on your Internet sources or you will completely lose your students and time would be wasted.  Knowing your technology tools and having backup plans when Internet is down is key to keeping the students engaged.  I never felt that showing skill videos had a negative effect on students.  I felt that it was a good change up. I plan to keep using simple technology in my classroom like app MyGroup where I can move students quickly into teams without wasting too much time, pedometers, QR Codes, and IPads.  Simple tech tools provide instant feedback and are all hands on approaches.  That is why students love to play video games.  After reading this article, it makes a good point on doing whole group video assessments.  That way I don’t miss opportunities to provide on the spot feedback to individual students and keep student at high level of productivity.  Overall, students love technology and are excited to use it.  Why not find an effective way to use tech in your classroom.  I have in the physical education setting and students are still highly engaged and moving more!!!