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Have a greeeeeeeeeat Wednesday!

life of exercising for gamers;)

Exergames

Exergames are one example of how technology can be used in physical education. Nothing connects with school children in today’s society more than technology. This fact alone is what inspired the creation of the term exergames. With raising obesity rates and an increase in poor health among American children, physical educators have been desperate to find an away to get student up off the couches and moving. It became easy to see that decreasing the amount of time kids spend playing video games was going to be very challenging and somewhat impossible. Due to these revelations educators began to look for alternative ideas thus leading to the idea and development of exergames. Exergames are video game technology that combines with fitness. Predictably exergames significantly increase the appeal of physical education class and physical activity in general. The increase in appeal of physical education class is due to the fact that exergames generally make the classroom environment more entertaining, challenging and gratifying.

P.E going HIGH TECH

Jumping jacks, team sports, and laps around the school yard are still primarily how kids are getting physical exercise at school, but the use of technology is seeping into P.E. class too. Beyond just bringing Dance Dance Revolution to P.E., some schools are integrating gym-style circuits, heart-rate monitors, and pedometers to encourage students to develop a sense of being physically fit.
Plugging kids into their own physiology, veteran P.E. teacher Betty Ann Fish from Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia is using heart rate monitors and software for circuit-training workouts. Fish also uses the results from the monitor to explain to her students how the circulatory system works.
The new devices are relatively new in Fish’s teaching repertoire. “I’ve been teaching here for 25 years,” Fish says. “And if anyone said I’d be using technology when I was an undergrad, I would have laughed.” Now she uses an iPad to track student’s work during class, takes photos and records videos of students performing exercises and uses apps to teach students new fitness concepts and exercises. She also uses online videos for demonstration. During the previous winter Olympics, she says, she showed videos of the events to help students understand the exercise, then try them out. It was especially helpful with some of the lesser known sports, such as curling.
For assessment, Fish uses TeacherPal and a spreadsheet to track student performance. But there are other tech tools like DailyFitLog, which is used by more than 10,000 students in more than 1,250 schools to track physical fitness. Here’s how it works: Teachers enter activities students have completed, such as the number of minutes they’ve exercised or the number of steps they’ve walked. Students can also manually enter data from their heart rate monitors. Every month, students work with their teachers to go over their data, assess themselves and set goals for the future. All student data is pushed to the teachers so they can keep track in between meetings, according to the company’s managing partner Timothy Palek.
Palek says the goal of the system is “to get kids more active and to teach kids how to take care of themselves.” That matches Fish’s goals, too. She sees her role as teaching her students to love physical activity. “I have done my job well if they’re in their 30s and 40s and they’re still active.”

Want to lose the fat....think of a PEDOMETER

Pedometers

Pedometers count and monitor the number of steps taken throughout the day. Most pedometers provide a fairly accurate count of steps taken during ambulatory activities such as walking, jogging, and running. Estimates of the distance walked and caloric expenditure are less accurate. Some newer devices also provide an estimate of the total time spent during continuous walking at a moderate intensity for durations of 10 min or more. To provide accurate step counts, most pedometers need to be attached to a firm waistband; however, some can be carried in a shirt pocket, a pants pocket, or a bag held close to the body. Studies show that some pedometers provide a valid (bias <3%) and reliable (coefficient of variation <2.1%) measure of steps during constant- and variable-speed walking for both healthy and overweight adults when the pedometer is placed on the waistband (sides and back), in a shirt pocket, or around the neck; however, positioning the pedometer in a pants pocket or in a backpack decreases accuracy (Hasson et al. 2009; Holbrook, Barreira, and Kang 2009).

Studies show that pedometer-based walking increases physical activity (Williams et al. 2008). In a synthesis of studies addressing the use of pedometers to increase physical activity, Bravata and colleagues (2007) reported that on average, pedometer users increase their physical activity by 27% over baseline levels. A key predictor of increased physical activity is setting a step goal (e.g., 10,000 steps per day) for participants. Pedometer-based walking programs are associated with significant decreases in body mass index, body weight, and systolic blood pressure (Bravata et al. 2007; Richardson et al. 2008).

Thresholds for health benefits from walking have been established using pedometers. Accumulating 8000 to 9000 steps per day at a rate of no less than 100 steps·min−1 is equivalent to 30 min of moderate physical activity, the health benefit threshold. For weight loss, accumulating 11,000 to 13,000 steps per day is recommended. Using criterion-referenced approaches, youth-specific thresholds for good health are being established. In the future, minimal levels of steps per day may be used to identify health risk thresholds for cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and osteoporosis. Table 3.4 presents classification of physical activity levels for adults and children based on the number of steps taken daily (Tudor-Locke et al. 2005, 2008). Additional information about the validity and accuracy of pedometers is available (Holbrook, Barreira, and Kang 2009; Lamonte, Ainsworth, and Reis 2006; Tudor-Locke et al. 2002, 2006).

Wearable Technological Devices