Technology and physical education. What do they have in common? This is what folks often ask me when I introduce myself as the Coordinator of Physical Education and Integrated Technology for Orange County's Department of Education. In response, I often ask them to think about a highly skilled athlete—say, an Olympic swimmer preparing for a competition. She works on treadmills, positions herself on electronic starting blocks, is timed by electronic touch pads on the edges of the swimming pool, and may even be analyzed by computer software.
But how do you replicate those experiences in a physical education class? The answer varies with the program and the teacher. In all cases, however, course content must come before technology. (Using technology for technology's sake is no better than using classroom activities to keep students busy rather than to help them learn.)
Many school districts are using technology to help meet national standards in physical education courses. In 1995, the National Association of Sport and Physical Education published Moving Into the Future: National Standards for Physical Education for grades K–12 (see sidebar). For each standard, this document provides sample benchmarks and assessment examples for every other grade.
Physical Education Content Standards for Grades K–12
A physically educated person
Demonstrates competency in many movement forms and proficiency in a few movement forms.
Applies movement concepts and principles to the learning and development of motor skills.
Exhibits a physically active lifestyle.
Achieves and maintains a health-enhancing level of physical fitness.
Demonstrates responsible personal and social behavior in physical activity settings.
Demonstrates understanding and respect for differences among people in physical activity settings.
Understands that physical activity provides opportunities for enjoyment, challenge, self-expression, and social interaction.
From Moving Into the Future: National Standards for Physical Education (St. Louis: National Association of Sport and Physical Education, 1995).
The following examples show how three teachers are using technology to facilitate both learning and meaningful assessment, with the seven content standards in mind. All have been honored by the National Association of Sport and Physical Education—Carolyn Thompson as the Secondary Teacher of the Year in 1994, Karen Mendon as the Southwest District Middle School Teacher of the Year in 1995, and Carol Chestnutt as this year's Southern District Middle School Teacher of the Year. In addition, Mendon was one of the Disney Teachers of the Year in 1995.
Lifetime Sports at Bell Gardens
Bell Gardens High School in East Los Angeles is a big school. Three thousand students are enrolled there; 98 percent are Hispanic. Thompson uses technology throughout her physical education program, but does so a little differently for each class.
Net gains in tennis. In Thompson's first period 10th grade class, the 40 students are divided into 10 groups of four. The groups rotate among 10 learning stations. At eight of the stations, students go through drills to master the overhead pattern for their tennis serves and the sidearm patterns for forehand strokes (Standard 1). A ninth station is equipped with a Sharp video camera with a three-inch viewfinder. Each student executes the forehand stroke, while classmates take turns videotaping the player and tossing and retrieving the ball.
At station 10—the review station—another video camera gives students an opportunity for self-examination and reflection. As students watch the video, they critique their own and other group members' performances. With this feedback fresh in their minds, the students rotate to the next station to continue practicing the forehand drive.
This entire process—practicing a skill, receiving immediate feedback from peers, critiquing one's own performance, and continuing to practice—is a proven strategy for perfecting a skill.
Fitness at heart. Thompson's second period 9th grade class is working on a unit that stresses an understanding of fitness concepts (Standard 4). Working in groups of six, students collect personal data on their fitness and wellness status. They spend about five minutes at each of nine stations. At some stations, they use high-tech devices like heart monitors, a Futrex device that measures the percentage of body fat, and electronic blood pressure devices. At other stations, they use such low-tech instruments as rulers, spirometers to test lung capacity, and sit-and-reach boxes. The latter enables them to perform a back-saver sit-and-reach test to determine their lower back and hamstring flexibility. They also perform a push-up test to determine their upper body strength and endurance, and a curl-up test to determine their abdominal strength and endurance.
Students use Polar Vantage heart monitors at three stations. They begin by adjusting the monitor strap that holds the transmitter in place around their chest as they jump rope. Information on the number of heartbeats per minute is sent to the receiver located in a wristwatch the student wears. At the second station, students remove their watches and place them, one at a time, on an interface—a black box on which a receiver is placed. This transfers the data from the watch to the computer (PC or Mac) and creates a graph. At the next station, students review their graphic printouts to determine whether they kept their heart rate in their target heart rate zone during the entire jump rope activity.
By determining and assessing their own target heart rate zones, students gain a better understanding of their fitness. Based on this information, they set goals for the coming year—another proven strategy for improving students' health-related fitness scores.
Greening of golf skills. Notice that in the two classrooms I have described, technology enhances the learning and physical activity—but does not replace them with passive viewing of a computer monitor. There may be times when we want to focus on students' cognitive understanding, and we may have students interact with software, as in the next example, but we should do this for a limited amount of time and for a specific purpose.
In Thompson's period three 10th grade class, students are working toward Standards 1 and 2, using the sport of golf. Again, students are divided into groups of four, as they rotate through 10 stations. At the first two stations, which are similar to those in the tennis class, students videotape and assess their golf strokes. Station three, however, adds an additional component: Measurement in Motion (1994) software. This software enables the 10th graders to connect their video camera to an audiovisual card in the computer, which converts the analog video to a digitized video. When the students open the digitized video clip, software tools enable them to analyze their strokes using biomechanical principles of movement. Thus, this lesson contributes not only to the students' ability to perform the golf stroke but also to their understanding of movement (Standard 2).
At the next six stations, students are involved with time-on-task golf stroke practice. They practice putting and driving individually, then practice golf strokes with peer feedback. At station nine, they watch Golf Tips (1995), a CD-ROM video on proper technique, then review complementary audio and text-based materials that reinforce what they've seen. The students take turns operating the mouse and keyboard, reading the text, summarizing each aspect of the stroke, and negotiating to resolve conflicts about whether to move on or to review the material.
Working Out Concepts at Montebello
A few miles north at Montebello Intermediate School, Karen Mendon is working with her 8th grade afternoon class in the fitness center—a converted wood shop. The students are assigned to one of three groups, and each group to one of the three areas of the room—one devoted to exercise equipment, a second furnished with tables and chairs, and a third area where computers are set up.
Students wearing heart monitors use a variety of aerobic equipment, including a climber, rower, stair stepper, ergometer, and treadmill (Standards 3 and 4). They thereby learn that there are many ways of participating in aerobic activity. The 8th graders sitting at the tables are reading a textbook, Moving As a Team (1992), and preparing their answers to the question, What are the key elements of warm-up?
Meanwhile, at the computer station, students boot up the MacHealth-Related Fitness Tutorial/Portfolio (1996) software. This program consists of two HyperCard stacks. The first conveys important concepts about health-related fitness and warm-up exercises, along with a variety of fitness exercises. The second HyperCard stack includes each student's personal portfolio, where class members have entered their fitness scores and set goals for the year. Students click on the "switching stack" icon to get to their portfolio, then click on the schedule section and enter their answer to the warm-up question.
Learning How to Learn in Alabama
Of course Southern California teachers are not the only ones using technology in physical education. Carol Chestnutt conducts a unit on Technology in Physical Education as a concluding activity for her 8th graders at Simmons Middle School in Birmingham, Alabama.
Students select one sport that they are not familiar with and spend eight weeks researching the motor skills and biomechanics of the sport on the Internet. They then practice these motor skills (Standard 1) and demonstrate their learning using HyperStudio (1996) software to create multimedia projects. By applying what they have learned to improve their motor skills in the sport (Standard 2), they have, in effect, learned how to learn.
Although Chestnutt's students are not doing so at present, they could take a complete approach to learning their sport—not only looking at fitness concepts but also exploring the sport's aesthetic features, history, and related personal and social issues. They would then be advancing their learning in relation to all seven standards.
The devices and applications that students at all three of these schools use are but a few of the many options available to physical educators. The introduction of the E-mate—a personal computer for students—should make technology even more accessible, both on the field and in the gymnasium. The result, as in all of these examples, will be an even greater depth of learning.
