In my own experiences at several different elementary schools across Calgary, the most significant mobile technology has been the iPad, as the overwhelming majority of our students at the K-4 grade level do not own phones nor bring them to school. We currently have a district wide mobile technology contract that students and parents need to read through and sign before permission can be granted to individual students to bring mobile devices to school. Some of our grade 4 students bring their phones to school, but they turn them off during the school day and only use them at the end of the day to communicate with parents or friends. Truthfully, the schools that I’ve taught at over the years have been very well equipped with iPads and laptops, and the students haven’t demonstrated much interest in using their phones during class time, despite the fact that they would have permission to do so while under teacher supervision. With regular access to iPads and laptops across the school, our students don’t seem to feel the need or see the benefit in using their phones to complete tasks and assignments that could just as easily be completed with our school owned mobile devices.
As far as my own practice is concerned, mobile technology has been an important part of my teaching practice in Physical Education. While I don’t often make use of laptops in the gym, iPads have become a part of our shared experiences in daily physical activity. In particular, even a single iPad in the gym can be implemented in a variety of ways to support student learning and achievement while encouraging collaboration and feedback. Compared to other curriculum areas, Technology and Physical Education are not quite as readily connected with each other, despite the fact that there exists tremendous potential for the use of mobile technology, including iPads, in daily physical education classes. With the demand for focus and funding in other curriculum areas oftentimes being driven from administration or district levels, teachers are often left lacking the knowledge or support to connect technology with Phys Ed. Nevertheless, teachers can integrate mobile technology into daily physical activity to help enhance and support student learning, progress, and achievement.
A single iPad in the gym, especially when connected to a projector, becomes a powerful means of presenting or displaying information to students. This could include demonstrating skills, instruction of new games and activities, sharing of goals and objectives, and communicating information and ideas in ways that get students excited, motivated, and engaged about physical activity. The use of iPads offers opportunities to utilize a wide variety of instructional videos and game demonstrations to provide visual support for student learning. Scoreboards and timers are no longer required tools in physical education sessions, as iPads offer a wide variety of apps for use in keeping score in games or timing student performance. These scores and times can be saved and documented as part of daily formative assessment in Phys Ed.
With an iPad on hand, teachers always have a camera to photograph or video record student activity and document progress. According to Ciampa (2013), students enjoy having their efforts and achievements recognized by others, and in order to make this learning visible, an environment must be created that allows for the engagement of motivation through recognition. Mobile technology, including iPads, provide affordances for this type of collaboration and recognition, and students’ ability to learn and perform motor skills increases with the use of tools such as digital video. By recording students performing a skill or task, teachers have a means of providing meaningful formative assessment directly to students to help guide their learning and development. Through the opportunity to watch themselves performing these skills or tasks, students are able to analyze techniques and self-reflect to guide further progression in Physical Literacy. Collaboration becomes an important component of video analysis, as students are able to watch and critique the work and progress of their peers, while providing constructive feedback to help guide reflection and further skill development. Videos may also be used as a method of summative assessment to document student achievement at the end of a particular unit, or while performing a routine or planned series of skills. Numerous apps are available for use in Video Analysis, with many of these allowing for complex and detailed examinations of skills and techniques, including those utilized by athletes and coaches at high levels of competition.
With the ultimate goal of promoting student motivation and increasing overall participation and engagement, iPads can be used to infuse gamification into daily physical activity. Apps that guide or instruct students in learning skills and movements can enhance teaching and learning in Physical Education, and these can be utilized by individual students, small groups, or during whole class activities. Augmented Reality offers exciting new possibilities in delivering engaging physical activity to students. The use of iPads in physical education can help support and enhance student knowledge, motivation and skill development, while providing teachers with opportunities to engage in varied methods of documenting student progress and achievement in formative and summative assessment. When implementing technology in Physical Education, it becomes essential that lessons follow the guidelines outlined in Bates’ SECTIONS framework (2014) and continue to be based on achieving a maximum level of student activity, rather than focusing on the skill of using the technology. The use of iPads offers students and teachers significant benefits while requiring minimal time to learn and implement during Physical Education lessons.
References
Bates, J. (2014). Teaching in a digital age, Chapter 8. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/
Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation.Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf
