Hi Kathy,

I too talked about microchips placed inside of a ball but my post was to help speed up games by reducing the number of times they look at instant replay. I like your take on the microchip that gives feedback about the players skills and technique because this would be very valuable to the coach and the player. It could help improve performance of the player and the team.

If I was to think outside the box for ways to integrate technology into my teaching of PE I will bet it is already happening, but I will try. The reason I say this, is because when I read the last chapter of Using Technology in Physical Education by Bonnie Mohnsen I was shocked at the sort of technology that is being developed already.

How about students walk into gym and put on comfortable shirt that had built in sensors. I would teach the mature elements of a throw (Baseball/beanbag etc)and as the students would attempt to learn the throw the sensors would make an avatar of their form and compare it to an exemplary throw side by side. This would be done on their own IPad which would be supplied by the teacher. The program would also make suggestions to the student and send the data to me so I could help the individual student as well as address what seemed to be the most common flaws in the class.

I mentioned QR Codes in an earlier post, and I am going to revisit the topic here because I believe it can serve some great uses! I have created a bike park on school grounds with multiple trail features for riders to challenge themselves on. When weather permits, I do a riding recess with groups of students for the span of a week. in this week I teach biking riding skills, techniques, and drill riders on how to approach, ride, and even bail out safely, the many features along the trail. My concern lies when inexperienced riders attempt the trail features with little, or no knowledgeable on riding that particular feature. A QR Code scanned with a smartphone (most kids are carrying them now days!) on a nearby sign could give a brief tutorial on how to ride the trail feature, safety concerns to be aware of, and helpful hints to aid in the success of completing the challenge! Mountain biking and trail riding is mostly a new activity for our youth. The possibility of specific instruction and help along the trail at any point in time is extremely appealing to me, especially as the trails creator!

In the future of sports I believe that you are going to see microchips placed inside of the balls along with the boundary lines for that sport. When these microchips pass a line they are going to send a message to a computer that the ball is out of play or the ball scored a point. For example if this were implemented into college and pro football it would help speed up the game because the play would not need to be reviewed as much as it has been during games. They can also place these microchips inside of knee pads and when the knee hits the ground the officials will know that the player is down without having to review the play. I believe that sport technology is going to speed up the games so that it is more enjoyable for viewers.

As a huge fan of the NFL, I think about how much movement happens in a game outside of actual plays, more specifically with wide receivers. Each snap, a wide receiver runs a specific route with the possibility of not actually touching the ball. I think that it would be interesting to get a live feed of the steps taken throughout the game by a wide receiver and be able to compare plays involved versus plays not involved. The reason this interests me is because in football, you only see the wide receivers who have made the play and received the ball and often people don't recognize the amount of physical fitness required throughout an entire game even when a player is not involved.

I have a couple creative ways technology could be applied in physical education. One way is I would like to have a way to monitor every student’s heart rate in my class, see how long they are performing in their target heart rate zone, and have it transmitted onto my computer so it could be recorded. Then I would be able to see how hard each student is working throughout my class period. I would also love to have a ball with a transmitter on it that when thrown could tell me how fast the ball traveled and how far it went. This would just be a fun tool to have. I would also like to have a video recorder that could video a student performing a particular skill and afterwards point out what specific elements of the skill need to be improved upon and how to make those adjustments. Students would be able to perfect their mechanics of particular skills. There are so many possibilities.

Thinking outside the box!

My dream for my physical education classes would be have some sort of robot or smartboard type for the locker room. It will display locker room rules, combinations, and other menial tasks dealt with daily. It would make things run more smoothly.
A dream for volleyball would be a ball that can detect a double contact, or camera for net contact. Human error is with every referee and I think that could help all of us out.

This is a great question and one that I have not really thought of but the wheels are turning now. If I was going to really think outside of the box I would like a computer system something like Tony Stark had in the Avengers where you could just see the desired objects in the air and could move them around with your hands. This would be great to help out on the field if I could just pull up a screen and give directions or show how to run a play or rules of the game. Since we are outside we have been limited to just giving students a paper and hoping it makes it into their binders and will be used again. It would be an awesome integration and very helpful.

Karen Pineda

Here's a chance to "think outside of the box" and be very creative in suggesting ways technology may be applied to your area in physical education or coaching. Using your imagination, describe ways technology might be employed in P.E. or coaching in the future. For example: while watching the shot put event at the NCAA Track & Field Championships I thought "wouldn't it be nice if the shot was implanted with a GPS and transmitter so as soon as it hit the ground, the distance was recorded on the results computer and scoreboard." Likewise, while watching the 10,000 meters I wondered if it was possible to monitor all 28 runners' heart rates simultaneously on the same computer screen. You get the idea...what would you dream of?

It is amazing to see the dreams from years ago that are a reality today!

My dream would be that in every PE or coaching setting there would be a virtual suit that the student could wear. This suit would perform the given skill perfectly so that your body could feel what it was like to execute the movement perfectly.
Some examples would be running form, throwing a ball, a tennis serve, a basketball dribble, an olympic lift, a gymnastics move.
It would be amazing to learn by doing.

My dream would be to have a variety of technology equipment that special education students with physical needs can use. They can use this to assist them to be apart of the general education classroom more.
The suit would be great too!

It would be nice to have more stat tracker machines that were not so expensive, like the exit velocity of the ball. For volleyball more radar technology that would help with arm velocity. We have some of these things right now but the cost is so expensive that we cannot afford them.

The students at my school love Badminton. Badminton is the most popular content area I offer as an elective. My department holds a senior class badminton tournament at the end of the semester, student compete in a an entire day school wide double tournament. As much as I feel my students are very skilled at the skills and the game, there still is room for improvement on skills and technique. I think if there was a speedometer, or speed/distance tracking device inside the shuttle it would be very helpful for students to understand the skills. Skills such as the smash and drop shot are a very difficult skills to master and understanding the height of the birdie in the air and the speed of birdie will help them make an educated guess as to the type of skill that would be most appropriate or successful to return to the opponent. The tracking information would be read on an iPad through an application. This device would be most beneficial when student are learning individual skills. This idea would also make the learning experience more interesting.

The ideal piece of technology I would like would be a heart rate monitoring system that is able to track all students from within 500 feet. The student would wear a small non-obtrusive device that sends their heart rate to a central computer that would be able to keep a log of their heart rate and calculate averages. The device the student is wearing would also be able to show them what their current heart rate is at any given moment. This would allow a student to self-assess their effort and be able to use the data to make fitness decisions. Such devices would make it possible for the teacher to see if a student is reaching cardiovascular fitness goals since heart rate and exertion vary from student to student. A teacher would be able to give breaks to students at optimal times and encourage/push students to work harder when necessary. It would also be helpful to monitor children who have a medical conditions such as tachycardia.

There are blue tooth heart rate monitors currently but the range is not 500 feet. The range is closer to 200 feet outside. Inside it depends on how many cement walls you have between the HRM and the computer/tablet. I would like to see the range extended as students can be further away especially outside. We use the Polar H7 and the Polar App (the free version is Polar Beat or you can pay the yearly fee to use the GoFitApp which stores all recorded data and is accessible on line).

An idea that I think would be really cool to have as a coach is to have each player with chip/marker on them during games with a computer/screen available. You could "track" each one so you could give real time strategy on positioning during timeouts/halftime. This would allow student-athletes to actually see where they were and where they perhaps could have been to make their team more successful- this would be great in sports such as field hockey, soccer, and lacrosse. I know video analysis is now available but for some of us that is at least a day later. I also think along with that a tracker for the ball cold also be fun to try out. Angles and speed of shots would be especially helpful for goalies.

I like this question because I'm not alone apparently. I often have these types of thoughts in the effort to get realtime data or more accurate data both in PE class and coaching baseball. The funny thing is, we are getting closer to the ideas I've had over the years.
The 2 obvious ideas that are actually happening are students who have a realtime record (visible on a wall, phone or watch)of their heart rate, calories burned, distance covered, speed, etc... and it all be available in a digital folder for evaluation and review by themselves, teachers, and parents. This can remove a significant amount of subjective data and reduce "human error". In the same idea, I wanted a strike zone in baseball that says it was either a strike or a ball and not up to the umpires who are all different in their own way. This would bring consistency to the zone and the pitcher's expectations.
To piggy back your idea of the shot put, I'd like all of the sports to be able to track the ball's angle, velocity, distance, rotation etc,. No more arguements if the ball did or did not go in the goal, over the goal line, over the fence etc.

Virtual reality in the form of google cardboard came out this past year. One thing that would be really cool would be to allow students the experience of attending sporting events they have never been to and to be a participant. For example, one of my students told me he has never been to a hockey game before. It would be great if he could have a virtual reality experience where he attends the game, but is a participant and has all the skills the hockey players have to us. So not only do they get a first-time experience, they also get a work-out.