January 31, 2008

From heart monitors to video games, technology pervades P.E.

Foundation note: Teddi Jacobs and Nicole Disher are not your average physical education teachers. Jacobs is the Coordinator of Physical Education for the Brookline Public Schools, while Disher teaches K–8 Physical Education at the Driscoll School. In 2005, Jacobs and Disher received a collaborative grant from the Brookline Education Foundation to attend a "Jumpstart P.E." Workshop at Polar Headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Polar is the leader in downloadable heart-rate monitor technology. In addition to training in fitness concepts and assessment, both received heart rate transmitters, heart rate monitors, and pocket personal computers to organize data. The following article, which appeared in the January 31, 2008 Brookline TAB, provides an update on the way that this grant has influenced the teaching of physical education in the Brookline Public Schools.

by Neal Simpson/staff writer

While their classmates dribble basketballs between hoops, Jenny Beizer and three friends jog in place in a corner of the Driscoll School gym.

The girls stop suddenly and look, simultaneously, at their thick wristwatches. “184,” says one, and they begin to jog again.

You wouldn’t know it from watching, but every student in the gym, from the basketball players to the joggers, is measuring their heart rate. Each is wearing a watch that reads information from a remote sensor strapped to their chest.

But what the students don’t know yet is that the watches aren’t just reading their heart rate. They’re charting it.

“This records your heart rate,” physical education teacher Nicole Disher tells her students at the end of the class. “I can download it and get a recording what your heart rate is doing.”

The heart rate monitors are just one piece of gadgetry physical education teachers now use to assess student progress and excite students who would normal sit by the sidelines.

Once considered the antitheses of fitness education, gadgets have joined basketballs and aerobic mats in teachers’ arsenals. From heart monitors to hand-held computers and even video games, the digital age has descended on the school gym.

“It’s changed a lot,” said Teddi Jacobs, the districts physical education coordinator. “There was no technology in the old days — it was all playground balls.”

Jacobs said Disher is a technology pioneer among Brookline P.E. teachers. She straps heart monitors to her students, prints out computers assessments for parents and carriers a pocket PC that she can use to record grades, check attendance or even time races.

For P.E. teachers, who must teach and record for a whole school rather than a single class, the devices are a godsend.

“That’s what so nice,” said Disher. “I don’t have time between classes to record things.”

The district would like to equip more P.E teachers with the latest gadgetry. Jacobs recently asked the schools for $20,000 to buy new computers and 17 pocket PCs over the next three years.

Discher said the technology lets her better assess how her students are doing and where they can improve. The heart monitors, for example, will teach students where there heart rate should be during exercise and show them what kind of activities gets them there.
But first she has to teach them how to put it on.

“Guys, your heart is not here,” Disher told her eighth-grade class as she held the monitor to her stomach. “You laugh, but guess how many kids put this here? A lot.”

Disher sends the class into the bathroom to wet the bands and strapped them around their chests. Once she checks the monitors to make sure they’re working, the students are off dribbling, jogging or doing whatever they like.

Most student go on playing as if they weren’t wearing the devices, but some, like the four girls in the corner, start to play with the monitors, seeing how high they can get their heart rate.

Lilly Scheindlin and Leila Spi, both 13, are among them.
“It’s better than...,” said Leila.
“...basketball,” finishes Lilly.

Other said the monitors were just a nice change of pace.

“Usually it’s like fitness, so it’s the push-ups and the pull-ups or the running,” said Shoshanna Gordon, 14.

In a couple of weeks, the students will learn how to formulate their “zone,” or a heart rate they can sustain for 20 to 30 minutes of exercise.

The heart monitors represent a huge departure from the old days, when students would struggle to find their pulse by placing a finger on their neck.

By the time everybody found it, their heart rates down,” said Jacobs. “Now you glance at your watch, see if you’re in your zone; if you’re not, you increase your activity.”

Jacobs has her own favorite gym technology: video games.

In her high school classes, the teacher has begun using Dance Dance Revolution, a video game that has players dance along to on screen-prompts. She said she sees the game as “just as a another way to get kids who might be sedentary excited about moving.”

“Kids were running in — and this doesn’t happen at the fitness center — to be first,” she said.

P.E. teachers have also begun performing a student assessment called the FitnessGram. Implement district wide last year, the assessment shows students where they’re doing well and where they can improve.

“It’s nice to show them some hard data, just looking at their score and looking at what they can do to improve their own fitness levels,” said Jacobs.

Disher said she is grateful for the district’s enthusiasm for new approaches to physical education.

“I’m very, very luck to be where I am and have access to the technology I have,” she said.