In
2020, Physical Educator published Grant M. Hill’s and Arturo Valdez-Garcia’s
article “Perceptions of Physical Education Teachers Regarding the Use of
Technology in Their Classrooms.” While I was on the hunt to find which recently
peer reviewed article on technology in the classroom I was going to evaluate, I
was not sure what I was going to find—but I did not expect to land on an article
about physical education. Mostly, because apart from health class, and maybe a
pedometer in gym class, I wasn’t sure how big of a factor technology in
physical education was, or why it was as important as technology in a core
classroom. So, because I was intrigued, I chose this article.
To be honest, I was a little disappointed. I’m
not sure what I was expecting to find . . . I guess I was expecting super
revolutionary and important reasons for needing technology in physical
education, and while there were reasons I hadn’t considered, I don’t know that
I see value in investing in technology in physical education if those resources
could be used in a core classroom. Be that as it may, let’s dive into what the article
had to say about technology in physical education . . .
The article claims that a large push for
technology in physical education is to help students and teachers track progress
and general health, such as calorie counting, heart rate, steps, etc. The blog
mentions, to these kinds of trackers in particular, that these kinds of
measuring and tracking tools can be downloaded to phones. While this is
important, this kind of class participation would require all students to have
smartphones with this capability. As our textbook and several of the journals
we’ve read this week have already established, most older children do have their
own phones, but not all students do. This kind of tracking for class also doesn’t
account for students may be grounded from their phones, or have a broken phone,
etc. So, I am a little hesitant to put too much reliance on students’ personal
devices in the classroom. On the other hand, I am all for investing in technology
for schools that students use during class time, such as pedometers, heart rate
monitors, etc.
Some other technologies that the article
mentions are “[p]ortable Bluetooth sound system devices and portable projectors
that present video or slides are additional technologies physical education
teachers can use” (Hill and Valdez-Garcia, 2020, p. 30). I’m not exactly sure
what these would be for, and the article doesn’t really go into detail on what these
kinds of portable devices would be used to display to students. Music during workouts
is often used to keep people motivated or at least distracted, but schools
certainly don’t need to invest in sound systems for that. The other thing I’m thinking
about is maybe videos showing students proper form—but I’m not sure why the
teacher or coach couldn’t do that themselves. Again, I’m a little disappointed that
the authors weren’t very thorough in explaining all the benefits and uses of technology
from physical education. I’d also like to reiterate that I’m not talking about
health classes where students are at their desks in a classroom—I took this
article to mean technology with gym activity, since the technology mentioned is
used for counting steps, heart rate, weight, etc.
While I agree with the authors in that
adding technology has numerous potential benefits to students, including but
not limited to, “greater potential interest
in the activity,
more collaboration between students, a potentially greater number of
trials, quicker feedback, and better connectivity of the learning activity to
outside life. Consequently, it appears important that teachers correctly and
flexibly use a variety of educational technologies to make their instruction
more effective” (Hill and Valdez-Garcia, 2020, p. 30), again, I am confused by
how exactly students in physical education would flourish greatly.
This study tracked two school districts in the
Southwestern U.S. and 201 educators agreed to participate in this survey /
study, which is clearly a very limited pool.
Overall,
I’m not satisfied with the article’s reporting, and I wasn’t convinced as to
why schools should be investing their funds for technology in physical
education. I’m not opposed to it—I chose this article because I was curious in
which ways technology can benefit these students. I just don’t feel like I was shown
anything new or exciting that’s going to revolutionize that particular
classroom.
Educational
interest to me . . .
I’ll start by saying I’m a little
disappointed. I used our textbook to check out the apps and websites offered
for English teachers and students, and I couldn’t locate them in the Appstore,
or find websites that looked like they weren’t going to give my computer a virus.
Since I struck out there, I just went with what my class recently used in our Creative
Writing Class: Microsoft Teams. This was actually really beneficial because all
of the students were added to the class, and we could all see each other’s
poems and short stories. Teams was really great for peer reviewing because
there are modes for editing and reviewing, and this was really important so
that we could comment or make suggestions / corrections without changing what
the author wrote, so that we could take the advice or not, and also so we could
keep track of where we started. We could also make side notes to ask questions
about things we were unsure of, or leave encouraging comments about the things
we loved as readers and wanted more of, and so on. These would be displayed on
the projector so that everyone could read along as we stood up and read aloud
(because poetry is meant to be heard, as our professor reminded us nearly
daily). And by the end of the semester when we had our completed portfolio of
work bound together, we also included those original, untouched, rough drafts with
our peers’ comments and all. For me, this was an excellent use of technology in
the classroom that made our day-to-day lives so much easier and clearer.
References
Hill,
Grant M., and Arturo Valdez-Garcia. “Perceptions of \
physical education teachers regarding the use
of technology in their classrooms.” The Physical Educator, vol. 77, no.
1, 1 Jan. 2020, pp. 29–41, https://doi.org/10.18666/tpe-2020-v77-i1-9148.
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