Taking Your Gym Class Online

from the lift-that-mouse,-now:-one,-two-three-and-four dept

Lots of schools are experimenting with online classes of some sort for students of all ages. It's easy to see how online classes can make sense in plenty of situations, but what about gym classes? It turns out that online physical education classes are doing amazingly (surprisingly) well -- much to the surprise even of those who created them. The idea is that kids are expected to work out how they want to, and then provide detailed reports to their teachers. The obvious response, is that people expect the kids to cheat and hang out at home playing video games or something (though, that can also force kids to be active). However, the idea really isn't that crazy. Lots of kids are very interested in particular sports and activities, and this could let them focus more on those activities -- especially when they're the types of things that would be difficult to do in a regular school setting. Some of the schools give out heart monitors and expect the students to respond with actual data from their exercise times. It also sounds like the kids who do cheat are often caught. Obviously, some kids are likely to sneak by, but there were always kids in gym class who slacked off anyway. Overall, it sounds like this program could afford more opportunities for kids to be involved in activities they really enjoy doing.
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  • identicon
    dorpus, 2 Aug 2005 @ 1:33pm

    Come on Where is the Choking & Bullying

    What's a gym class unless you've fallen off the climbing rope, had classmates dunk your head in the pool? Gotta have that ex-marine gym teacher or 300-lb white trash woman act totally insensitive to the bullying.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    COD, 3 Aug 2005 @ 5:37am

    http://odonnellweb.com

    The whole of idea of monitoring bodily functions and turning that data over to the school system is just creepy. Do you really want the government to have a database of your pulse rates after exercising? That kind of data could be used against you in employment or insurance situations.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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