THIS IS SOME US SHARING OUR NEW POLAR PROGRAM WITH THE COMMUNITY ON STEAM NIGHT! SOME ADDITIONAL PICTURES OF THE GRAPHS & REPORTS FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS ARE BELOW!
We were fortunate enough at William Penn this year to acquire a classroom set of 32 Polar H7 heart rate monitors. I read and heard about them on Twitter and Voxer for over a year, mostly from Jarrod Robinson, "The PE GEEK." (Thanks Jarrod!) At the same time, our Math Analytics Club advisor, Mr. McNulty had expressed an interest in acquiring a team set of heart rate monitors to use for a research study about player contributions and fitness levels. Luckily, my PE order from our bid list, accidentally was lost before placing, and we were able to order this program instead! I cannot tell you how pleased and eager I was to get the program up and running, too eager... and I made some critical mistakes along the way that cost me time. Knowing what I know now, I felt the need to share out with so many that are interested in the program, but aren’t exactly sure what to do. I will attempt to share the "Dos and Don’ts" here to help others make informed decisions!
DOs:
1. Do: Consider if you need an entire classroom set. With a partial order of heart rate monitors (HRMs), and the free apps provided there is a wealth of data to collect and analyze. The "big ideas" are still apparent. I love having a full classroom set, but the additional cost of the site license at PolarGoFit.com and the straps is something to consider. It might be a good idea to start small and add to the program v. getting it all at once and not being able to afford or manage the program. Note: Polar provides extra batteries with the classroom set, and after a month and a half use are still near 100% full. You can monitor them from the Polar Beat Apps (more for the individual user). More about the apps later.
2. Do: Budget in enough money for additional straps. I have just the basic number that comes with the classroom set, and I find myself doing wash every night by hand. If you can absorb the cost by requiring students to buy their own, that would be ideal. Possibly make that as part of the school uniform. If not, the teacher would appreciate the additional straps to avoid the extra laundry. Polar recommends that you wash the straps by hand, but may machine wash occasionally. I have washed the Polar straps by hand over 25 times, and they are holding up well. The last idea would be to buy enough for every student, make it their responsibility to wash daily and return at the end of the term. I'm afraid to do this for fear of not being able to afford to replace the lost or ruined straps.
3. Do: Find out the cost of the addition tech support and training. When a district purchases the program, there is an additional fee for tech support. I will have to say the Polar Company was fantastic to me as I was a single purchaser and kudos to them for helping me with this process!! My rep was amazingly helpful and patient getting me through a few of the rough spots, but tech support and help with the initial set-up would have been fabulous.
4. Do: Check to see if there are any allergies students may have to soaps that clean the straps or to materials that make-up the strap. I did have one young lady that was allergic to Tide.
5. Do: Know that my visually impaired students have apps that can read the printed heart rate graphs that Polar allows us to print out and that all students can view their digital charts and information about their exercise sessions right within the program. Each student gets a login and username.
6. Do: Know that three different Polar Apps work with the program. The PolarGoFit is the paid app comes with the site license. The Polar Team App that coaches and teachers could use. The last app is the Polar Beat App that an individual can use if they purchase the product on their own which also allows a social aspect of connecting through the app with other users.
Team App and Polar Beat Apps are free and provide plenty of data.
The Site License is filled with all the bells and whistles and has a yearly cost of $350.00 (I will double check this figure when I get to school tomorrow & make change if need be).
7. Do: Involve other content areas for cross-curricular activities.
Don'ts
1. Don't: Rush through and think your way would be best! Lol! Read the manual and listen to the reps. I decided to go against my rep's suggestion of importing from the spreadsheets. I ended up doing the same process twice. Once it was evident my way of hand adding each student by hand wasn't going to work, I had to re-enter the info via a spreadsheet! (I did this to avoid dealing with excel and the importing process in fear of it not working). Just fight through it or see if you tech support person at your school can assist.
2. Don't: Buy cheap replacement straps on Amazon. I did this in hopes to avoid doing laundry as often, but these replacement straps only lasted two washes before the plastic transmission piece began to peel away from the strap. Extremely disappointing, but eye opening as to how well the Polar products are!
3. Don't: Import class lists too soon in a new semester. Wait until your class lists are firmed up and semi-accurate. Since my data and reports are my own and not connected to the district, I was able to create adapted names for new students and not mess up the assigned sensor numbers. Even with the assignments remaining the same, so often, students forget their numbers or grab the incorrect sensor which leads to incorrect data.
4. Don't: Allow the students to leave the gym area before collecting all the heart rate monitors. Every time I get comfortable that we have the system down someone will walk off to their next period class wearing a heart rate monitor. Most often it's accidental, but none the less a hassle.
5. Don't: Create an entire Standards Based Unit around a standard without a genuine understanding of that standard. I will save that for a new blog post!
DOs:
1. Do: Consider if you need an entire classroom set. With a partial order of heart rate monitors (HRMs), and the free apps provided there is a wealth of data to collect and analyze. The "big ideas" are still apparent. I love having a full classroom set, but the additional cost of the site license at PolarGoFit.com and the straps is something to consider. It might be a good idea to start small and add to the program v. getting it all at once and not being able to afford or manage the program. Note: Polar provides extra batteries with the classroom set, and after a month and a half use are still near 100% full. You can monitor them from the Polar Beat Apps (more for the individual user). More about the apps later.
2. Do: Budget in enough money for additional straps. I have just the basic number that comes with the classroom set, and I find myself doing wash every night by hand. If you can absorb the cost by requiring students to buy their own, that would be ideal. Possibly make that as part of the school uniform. If not, the teacher would appreciate the additional straps to avoid the extra laundry. Polar recommends that you wash the straps by hand, but may machine wash occasionally. I have washed the Polar straps by hand over 25 times, and they are holding up well. The last idea would be to buy enough for every student, make it their responsibility to wash daily and return at the end of the term. I'm afraid to do this for fear of not being able to afford to replace the lost or ruined straps.
3. Do: Find out the cost of the addition tech support and training. When a district purchases the program, there is an additional fee for tech support. I will have to say the Polar Company was fantastic to me as I was a single purchaser and kudos to them for helping me with this process!! My rep was amazingly helpful and patient getting me through a few of the rough spots, but tech support and help with the initial set-up would have been fabulous.
4. Do: Check to see if there are any allergies students may have to soaps that clean the straps or to materials that make-up the strap. I did have one young lady that was allergic to Tide.
5. Do: Know that my visually impaired students have apps that can read the printed heart rate graphs that Polar allows us to print out and that all students can view their digital charts and information about their exercise sessions right within the program. Each student gets a login and username.
6. Do: Know that three different Polar Apps work with the program. The PolarGoFit is the paid app comes with the site license. The Polar Team App that coaches and teachers could use. The last app is the Polar Beat App that an individual can use if they purchase the product on their own which also allows a social aspect of connecting through the app with other users.
Team App and Polar Beat Apps are free and provide plenty of data.
The Site License is filled with all the bells and whistles and has a yearly cost of $350.00 (I will double check this figure when I get to school tomorrow & make change if need be).
7. Do: Involve other content areas for cross-curricular activities.
Don'ts
1. Don't: Rush through and think your way would be best! Lol! Read the manual and listen to the reps. I decided to go against my rep's suggestion of importing from the spreadsheets. I ended up doing the same process twice. Once it was evident my way of hand adding each student by hand wasn't going to work, I had to re-enter the info via a spreadsheet! (I did this to avoid dealing with excel and the importing process in fear of it not working). Just fight through it or see if you tech support person at your school can assist.
2. Don't: Buy cheap replacement straps on Amazon. I did this in hopes to avoid doing laundry as often, but these replacement straps only lasted two washes before the plastic transmission piece began to peel away from the strap. Extremely disappointing, but eye opening as to how well the Polar products are!
3. Don't: Import class lists too soon in a new semester. Wait until your class lists are firmed up and semi-accurate. Since my data and reports are my own and not connected to the district, I was able to create adapted names for new students and not mess up the assigned sensor numbers. Even with the assignments remaining the same, so often, students forget their numbers or grab the incorrect sensor which leads to incorrect data.
4. Don't: Allow the students to leave the gym area before collecting all the heart rate monitors. Every time I get comfortable that we have the system down someone will walk off to their next period class wearing a heart rate monitor. Most often it's accidental, but none the less a hassle.
5. Don't: Create an entire Standards Based Unit around a standard without a genuine understanding of that standard. I will save that for a new blog post!
The images above are those provided by the Polar Program, and the images below are some that were generated by our Math Analytics Club. More to come I'm sure!!