Hey Mike, i feel your pain. My school district is not yet looking into options to allow kids to get gym credit from outside activities and sources. The idea is out there, and would allow schools to reduce the number of gym offerings during the school day. A slippery slope. My school has kicked around the idea of me teaching my health classes in the auditorium w/ 50-100 kids at a time.

In my experience of doing fitness logs with parent signatures, I've found that parents will lie for their kids to help with thier grade. Many times uneducated parents don't see the importance of lifelong fitness, because their experience with pe was the old "roll the ball out" method.

I like the idea of choosing your fitness, because it allows for students to participate in an activity that they will more likely do in the future. But for this type of program students should have to pass a course where they demonstrate the appropriate knowlegde of self directed exercise.

Here are the guidelines I would suggest for this type of program to work.
*Pass Frosh. class that includes
*goal setting,
*needing a 50 percentile score on all areas of fitness,
*training in a tracking system where they log their exercise from the gym (Fitlinxx)
*Fitness testing done throughout the year to see if they are progressing/maintaining fitness levels.

This way a teacher would still be involved in monitoring student success, but because of the small amount of supervision, a teacher could handle a bigger load of students.

This way kids would be responsible for fitness for all four years of high school.

In New York, it is up to each district to have the “flex credit option.” Students, if it is approved by the Director of PE and Health and I believe the building principal, are allowed to not have a PE class (mandated by the state) if they have an alternate activity that they do on a regular basis. Examples that I was given were scuba diving, travel hockey, competitive gymnastics, equestrian, etc, but I am not sure how they validate the student is doing it to receive credit. I am not sure if this was a potential option for your district or if all the options would be online. If so my cousin took an online PE course in high school, she had to do a tennis project; that was it. If you took the class “Walking for Fitness,” “Teaching Golf,” etc that Fresno offers you could structure a class like that. The student needs to complete history, rules and do the activity a certain number of times, track the activity and write a response to that. I am sure you could do that and it would be a good class, although in class participation I always feel is more valuable.

That is awful!! In New York State PE is mandated to be taught by a certified physical education teacher. With the obesity rate at an all time high I don’t know how your district could be encouraging this. Students are very rarely self motivated and those that are, are already athletes. The students I worry about are the ones who do not want to come to PE who maybe have a weight issue. How are we going to motivate those students to achieve life long fitness skills though a computer???

My school district has not yet added this but they have allowed students to receive their high school PE credit in the Jr. High school. This was added because the credits to graduate were increased in our district. The funny thing is that most students were graduating with the amount of credits they increased it by anyhow. So now we have very few high school PE classes. They also allow summer PE that ran for 3 weeks this summer and went for 4 hours most days and 8 hours some of the days to get the amount of hours in they needed.

Our district attempted to seek out computer programs to use as a "catch net" for the student that could not, or chose not to pass Phys Ed and therefore did not graduate. Or the students that had a "revelation" at some point and realized that they needed to get going and wake up! Our department fought to squash this idea because this would kill our department for one reason or another. Kids would talk and word would get around and we would find some kids banging our PE on computers instead participating in the class. I find it very difficult to be able to value a form of life long fitness which is learned on the computer. For some, this could be their last chance to be active and move.

Greetings,

An online PE class would not work. At the high school level, it is difficult enough to have students motivated and participate fully when the teacher is standing right next to them!! It would be impossible to track, unless the student recorded and required to submit a video of their completed physical activity-- entirely. I think it could be a good idea to have an online forum for students to participate in, but not a complete, comprehensive course that would take the place of a physical education class.

In my opinion, online PE is an oxymoron. The accountability piece is massive in this situation. A course could certainly be created with objectives and activities to be completed with reflections. A teacher would have to be involved to assess the assignments, just as this course does.

As I type this reflection, I could see how it may work. If a student fails a Physical Education/Health course, the online program can be used for credit recovery. One person talked about having check ins with actual fitness testing which I felt was a great point. The students can take a fitness test at the beginning of the course and then at the end to measure their progress. The teacher would still have to be involved in assessment and there would have to be some days to meet with the instructor to take tests and do some other things along the way.

It seems like a slippery slope, but could work if set up properly. We all know how important physical education and physical activity is for our students and none of us want that taken away. The use of technology should be infused with our programs to enhance the content and bring it to life. If a kid is spending all his/her time online completing a physical education program, where is the activity? We need to make sure the student is active, and the best place to accomplish this is in the school.

There are some extenuating circumstances with students with injuries or illnesses. These students could benefit from online programs.

I see both sides of the argument. If I could choose, I would push for not having an online program over a traditional style. But if it were created with standards based goals, objectives, and assessments while keeping the teacher heavily involved, it could work.