Online Physical Education

Being a future P.E. teacher, just the thought of Online Physical Education boggles my mind. Physical Education has been advancing greatly in recent years away from just a team or individual sport based system to teaching more about fitness and physical activities that can be used throughout a person's lifetime. Having an Online P.E. course seems to be counterproductive and I feel it negatively impacts the progression of P.E. to become a more valid and necessary school subject. Also, since obesity is on the rise with the advancing of technologies, sitting kids behind a computer for their Physical Education class only further adds to the fact that kids are inactive. These students wouldn’t be able to receive the same benefits as those who are in a normal P.E. class because they don’t have the same interaction with the teacher. They receive no face to face time with the teacher so if they are actually doing any activity there is no guarantee that they are doing it correctly or to the intensity/duration that they say they are.

The main issue I see with Online Physical Education is that there is no guaranteed way that a teacher can really check to make sure their students are actually putting in the work that they claim to be doing. Unless the teacher is physically seeing the students being active, they can’t be sure that activity is actually taking place. A lot of the Online P.E. classes require students to have parents sign a paper or confirm via email that the students are doing the stated work-outs. However, I know there are many parents that are either too concerned about grades and would forge the activity sign-off or other parents that aren’t as involved in their child’s life so it’d be hard to get them to put in the effort as well. Furthermore, many Online P.E. classes require equipment such as heart rate monitors or pedometers. The first problem with that requirement is that most school’s budgets don’t have the proper funding to allow a full class on Online P.E. to have those gadgets and run effectively. Additionally, these pieces of equipment can be used by other people and not necessarily the student and the teacher would have no idea that the student is not doing their work. All in all I think Online Physical Education is a horrible idea that negates away from any progress that P.E. has made in recent years towards becoming a better school subject.