By Matthew Bassett
Part 4 of a 4 part series.
While teachers may find pedometers to be a valuable way to incorporate technology and to provide motivation, there are a few drawbacks. All of these should be considered before purchasing a class set and when developing lessons.
- Accuracy. Pedometers are not always 100% accurate. A pedometer can be fooled into thinking its moving when it is not. Pedometers are not always accurate with counting steps from obese children. This is due to the fact that pedometers need to be perpendicular to the ground for the sensor to work and obese children might not be able to get that position on their waist band.
- Cheating. A student can easily cheat using a pedometer. Students will quickly learn that shaking the pedometer can add steps, even while sitting. Also, a student can tap the top of the pedometer to add steps.
- Expense. Pedometers are cheaper than heart rate monitors but they can still be in the $10-$20 for each pedometer. When this happens it becomes very expensive for a teacher to have a class set of pedometers. This will cause a teacher to need to share the pedometers with groups of students and rotate the groups every class period.
- Missing in Action. Pedometers can be easily lost or stolen. Since they are so small a pedometer that is dropped can be difficult to find. A student can easily walk away with one of your pedometers during class and forget that they had one on.
- Instructional Time. Tracking data can be slow. Even if you get your students to fill out their tracking forms in five minutes, it has still caused them to lose valuable movement time. The first few times they use a pedometer you will be spending time helping to get them attached to waist bands and reminding them how to reset the pedometer.
- Break downs. A pedometer will break or need repairs. Since pedometers are small they will break from time to time with repeated use. They will need to be replaced. Also, pedometers are run on batteries. These batteries lose power and need to be replaced.
Despite these problems, I’ve found pedometers to be useful in my classes. You want to be able to keep your investment for a long time and having thought through these issues will help.
Tags: pedometer, physical education, Technology