You make a great point. When I grew up we were outside every day, playing sports, or even just climbing trees, or building forts. I remember baseball games with every kid in the neighborhood, and football games too. I also had a hoop in my driveway and we played all the time. I do not ever remember being inside with friends. There just was not anything to do. That is because we did not have a television in our rooms, and we did not have video games.
Now students do not play sports together. Their parent’s pay for them to play on teams and a coach tells them what to do when to do it. They never have to cooperate and figure out on their own who is on whose team, or figure out what rules they want to play by. Students, or athletes do not have to think for themselves.
Students also are more stationary then ever before. They are playing video games, or they are playing on the computer, or they are watching television. Yes there are a lot of sport video games, and it does teach students how to play, and it teaches them the rules, but it does not help in the coordination or the skills that are needed to play the sport.
So I guess I think technology, when it comes to entertainment for students, is not something that I am a fan of. My husband and I are trying hard to not fall into the trap. We have four children, and we do not have televisions in their rooms, they do not play video games. They each have 1 hand held game that they can play on the weekend, when their homework is done. As for going outside, they are out every day, and they play games on their own. Technology for teachers and for organization and efficiency is something I am a fan of. It allows us to give more time to the students, and a lot of technology is for the purpose of keeping our students as healthy as we can, and in a safe manner.

I always think of the Rocky movie when the Russian is training withall the high tech stuff, and Rocky just runs through the snow. Both were finely tuned athletes.

I am sure there are those teachers that use technology to a fault. I agree that there is a fine line that seperates a Physical Education class from a technology use class or a Physical Science class. However, I think we need to use some technological resources to show students how their heart works and how they can measure certain things. Things like heart rate, body mass, exersion during exercise etc...

I think this is an excellent question. Being a "gadget" guy, I am usually on board with trying to purchase and incorporate technology into PE. However, I beleive you must stick with the things that you are comfortable teaching and build from there. It is way to exspensive to try multiple ideas during a school year. The resources will never be used and the money you spent will be wasted. Also, make sure kids know how to calculate their own heart rate manually by looking at the clock and finding their pulse. Heart monitors do this for them and they may miss the whole idea of target heart rates. We have built our weight room with game bikes and DDR's and the school has purchased an IPOD for our department. This is a good place to start if you are thhinking of purchasing a few things.