I have to admit that I have very little experience with advanced technology. I’ve always struggled with technology and it has kept me from trying new pieces of equipment out. But, I do have some experience.

AR Experiences

I attempted to use the AR games, but I couldn’t get it working. I played around with a few apps, but I never really got the feeling of AR. I will embarrassingly admit that I have played the Pokemon Go game for the iphone before. I found the concept kind of cool but the allure was wasted on me. To me it just seemed like a super imposed image on my screen rather than myself being immersed in the environment. I had the same feeling when I played around with some AR trivia games. It just seemed like the images were superimposed on the screen and did not really elevate the experience for me.

VR Experiences

I have played some video games on VR and thought the experience was really cool. Before playing, I was skeptical of how real it would feel but it really makes you feel as you are there. For example, I have played a game that included being on a roller coaster but in actual fact you are sitting in a stationary chair. During the game play I felt all the feelings of being on a real roller coaster. It was really interesting having that feeling of being there without actually being there. Here I felt more a part of the environment than I did with the AR games.

Wearable Tech

Wearable tech is more for me as PE teacher. I owned a Nike Fuel band when they first came out and loved it. I enjoyed being able to see my heart rate and track my fitness. I really enjoyed the daily fitness/movement challenges that you can program into the watch. Since then the fuel band has been discontinued, but other companies have followed suit. There are not FitBits, Apple Watches and Samsung has a Tech Watch as well.

As a PE teacher, wearable tech is something that I want to use more of. In the PE we teach lots about monitoring your exertion rates in different activities. Currently, in order to do we teach them how to find their pulse, and count how many times it beats in 15 seconds. Then we teach them that you have to take that number and multiple it by 4 because our heart rate is based on beats per minute. This way of finding your heart rate is completely fine and beneficial to students, however it’s old school. It also takes away from teaching/activity time and sometimes I forget to tell the students to do it. Having a set of heart rate monitors for the class would be great as it would make it easier to check and I wouldn’t have to remember to remind them as much. We could also use the watches to monitor stress/anxiety levels of students when they take tests or do presentations. From there we could find ways to help them perform better. The options are endless.