Originally posted By Scott Lillis on March 24, 2019
Hi everyone!
For my A3 forecasting project I took a look at motion capture technology and its use in gaming and more recent adoption into sports. I imagined that in the not-so-distant future we could harness the technology through sensors in clothing, gloves, helmets, etc. much like is current practice, but could put the capturing technology into the hands of physical education teachers, coaches, and trainers so that we can target younger athletes and ensure that they are learning correct techniques as to improve skills but also to ensure that they continue to develop properly as they grow without possibly hindering their physical growth and avoid injury.
My proposed mobile app, TRAIN – keeping student athletes on track, is intended to make tracking progress simple and accessible – check out my idea on Adobe Spark Page. While the page works on any platform it has been optimized for viewing on a mobile device.
Scott
If you haven’t seen Sports Science on YouTube that combines motion capture technology with professional athletes, I highly recommend it. This technology has a lot of potential in education but the biggest barrier to implementing it in the education system is cost. In addition to how costly the technology is, in most cases that I’ve seen, it is only used on one person at a time which would make this infeasible for teachers as classes have upwards of 20 students. However, if we can put cost aside, this technology would have its merits in the education system. Aside from physical education, this technology would also be useful in Science and Film-making classes. In Science, motion capture technology can track how the body moves during different actions. Students can study how their own physiology combined with form affects how they move. Is the way they are moving causing them to feel pain/soreness? For film-making, students can now incorporate animated characters into real world settings (Andy Serkis as Gollum in Lord of the Rings for example). Are there any other subject areas that this technology could fit into? Is this technology reserved for high school and up, or could the younger grades benefit too?