Wearables may boost physical education — if data is used appropriately

Dive Brief:

In some physical education classes, students don wearables devices like the Apple Watch, giving instructors more specific data about a child’s workout, to help them meet fitness goals, wrote District Administration.
Armbands, for example, show the heart rate of students in Washington’s Burlington-Edison School District. At one of the schools, Bay View Elementary, physical education teacher Marty Reese can view the impact working out is having physically on a student.
How teachers and schools handle the data collected on students is also considered. Teachers — sometimes with help from the IT department — will delete the data that’s been collected after students transfer to a new school, or when they are promoted to a new grade.

Dive Insight:

By putting wearable technology to use in schools, administrators and educators may find students more engaged in physical education (PE) classes, helping children learn the importance, and the impact, of exercising.

Wearables, however, are not inexpensive tools for schools to adopt, and school and district leaders must also consider how the data will be collected and sent to an app, which may require a WiFi or Bluetooth connection. Administrators may also need to consider how the health data will be used, and how it will be safely stored.

If the data collected is specific to a student, schools must also consider a child’s privacy rights. Schools and districts can communicate with both children and parents to ensure they understand the information collected through the devices is not being used to evaluate them, noted the National School Boards Association.

Still, these health details may help engage students more in other classes, like health and nutrition, as well as science and biology where children learn how the human body works through lessons on energy, calories and physiology.

In this way, wearables may help students make connections across different subjects and across the curriculum, bringing an added benefit to students by encouraging the development of crucial thinking, problem solving and creativity abilities.