Could an online PE class be the start of something new? Photo by Laura Le.by Bethany Pham and Elise Tran, Staff Writers
Fountain Valley High School’s physical education teacher and head wrestling coach Brad Woodbury has introduced a new PE hybrid online class, the first online PE class in the Huntington Beach Union High School District.
Woodbury piloted the class to accommodate students with busy school schedules who would prefer an alternative to attending an hour-long PE class every school day. Students enrolled in the class would have a considerable amount of freedom in choosing what types of activities they’d perform to complete assignments and the time frame to complete assignments typically ranges from one to two weeks.
“Right now, I’m piloting the class,” said Woodbury. “The district has already approved it, so it’s out there. I did the research and thought it looked pretty cool and fun, so I figured why not try it at Fountain Valley? We got good students, we got a lot of kids who have crazy schedules, AP classes, all kinds of stuff. I wanted to give it a go and see what happens.”
Students enrolled in the online PE class will each receive a heartrate monitor in the form of a Fitbit-like watch with GPS from the tech company Polar. These watches are all linked to an interface where Woodbury can oversee the activities that individual students perform. A textbook will also be given to the students. Through Canvas, he will assign tasks for the students.
“They’ll put in their height, weight, age and maximum heart rate. It’ll calculate all the scientific stuff, so say they want to cycle. There’s a setting for that, and they’ll start the timer and program for it. Then, I can see the stats it’s recording,” explained Woodbury.
Throughout his creation of the class, Woodbury has taken into account students that will attempt to cheat his system. He is confident that he will be able to spot cheating thanks to his interface. Nonetheless, he admits that there is little he can do to ensure that his online PE class will be foolproof.
“If [students] do [cheat], I’m going to be able to tell, because you can’t hand off your watch to somebody else to do the exercise… because it’s all programmed to your height, weight, BMI,” said Woodbury. “You can cheat in everything, let’s put it that way, in any class, in everything, so I’m not designing it that way. I’m designing for people are going to sign up and want to be physically fit, live a healthy lifestyle and get credit for it.”
The class is currently scheduled to meet once a week on Wednesdays during zero period, and there are only 40 spots open in this PE class.
“I’m excited about it,” Woodbury said. “I think it’ll be a cool, fun class and we’ll see how it goes.”
