Taking Your Gym Class Online

Surprises

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.