TPCK
Chapter 10 The Role of TPCK in Physical Education
Kim Fuller
3/14/09

The role of technology has been a large part of the research, Olympic and profession athletic training. It is slowly trickling its way down to application in the area of physical education training of teachers and for assisting children in learning new skills.
This relates to the idea of digital divide and how different schools and districts allocated funds for adding technology to the area of physical education. In my building that is an elementary school, our students do use devices to monitor their heart rates and these help them understand how to adjust their physical output to maintain the healthy heart zone. Our Physical Education teacher also utilizes management programs to organize and share information with students and parents.
My experiences with physical education are limited to a couple volunteer coaching positions, one in soccer and the other in tennis. My experience in soccer was many years ago and I utilized books, posters and a couple videos to assist me with instruction and my students in learning basic soccer skills. My role as a tennis instructor was more recent and I utilized videos, DVDs and video taping to help the students. The challenge as stated in this chapter was having time and the equipment to give the students immediate feedback on their attempts at each skill. I certainly used the Internet as well to get fun ideas for our practice sessions. This was a volunteer position so that too limited what I could access on my own. What I was able to use did improve my coaching skills and helped communicate things to the kids that I was having difficulty communicating.
There are many new programs for the Wii which promotes physical activity and I hear my students talking about these frequently. This technology is important as our nation faces the rise in obesity rates. I also see Phys. Ed. Teachers using these programs to motivate their students to move. I see this as a first step in reaching the larger populations. I hope it works!