Graduate Research Papers

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Open Access Graduate Research Paper

Abstract

Since the mid 1980's, childhood obesity population in the United States has increased consistently each year (Flegal, Carroll, Ogden, 2002). A new initiative has been made by The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, to promote physical activity and quality physical education in schools. The CDC recommends that children obtain 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per day (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2008). The current study was conducted to analyze the opinions of middle school students and their master teacher on a new activity monitor created to calculate a child's activity throughout an extended period of time. This new activity monitor system has been created to help students and teachers have a better understanding of activity levels and patterns in middle school aged students. The activity monitor is a wrist unit and the system includes product support materials to assist teachers with the implementation and use of the wrist unit. Overall, the results showed that the middle school students had a favorable opinion of both wearing the watch and its usefulness in monitoring their own activity. Students also found that the monitor seemed to have inspired them to be more active than prior to wearing the monitor and students felt that they believe they would continue to be more active after the wearing of the monitor ceased. There was no difference in responses across grade levels or across gender, which is important if the product is to be versatile for different students in different levels. The master teacher responded that the activity monitoring system supported the Physical education curriculum and saw value in all of the products provided to assist teachers with the use of the system. This new activity monitoring system appears to be the next step in the technology evolution developed to assist physical educators with providing the most relevant instruction to students, to promote increased activity levels in their students.

Year of Submission

2010

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

School of Health, Physical Education, and Leisure Services

First Advisor

Ripley Marston

Comments

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Date Original

2010

Object Description

1 PDF file (45 pages)

Language

en

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