In a previous AIESEP flash blog we mentioned that we had launched one of the largest school-based PA intervention project in Asia – “Fun to move @ JC” (https://funtomove-jc.hk/en/). As a quick recap, the Fun to Move @ JC project is a research driven community project that aims to increase primary school children’s PA. While most existing school-based interventions tend to focus on students only, students and teachers only, or students and parents only, this project takes on a whole-school approach. What’s unique about this project is that it was designed based on the social-ecological model whereby we aim to initiate positive behavioral change at school policy, (perceived) environment, interpersonal, and intrapersonal levels. In other words, we are targeting not only students but also the school environment, parents (e.g., workshops, activity classes and talks for parents only), teachers (e.g., teacher workshops), principals and school organisation leaders. Key components and activities of the project include comprehensive school reviews, professional training for teachers, objective physical activity monitoring, objective assessment of fundamental movement skills, activity classes, embedding school routines, provision of easy sport equipment, interschool events and parent seminars. This project is expected to reach 35 Hong Kong local primary schools (i.e., 30000+ students and their parents, 1000+ teachers)
The Fun to Move @ JC project features two pieces of state-of-the-art technology aimed at capturing students’ movement quantity (physical activity; PA) and movement quality (fundamental movement skills; FMS).
Capturing movement quantity
The first piece of technology is an in-house developed activity tracker and online big data platform. Specifically, all participants (i.e., consented students, parents and teachers) will be entitled to receive a free wrist-worn physical activity tracker to measure their activity levels. Additionally, all participants will have access to their physical activity through a website or mobile app (students and parents), or through school-administered data portals (teachers and principals). The online big data platform stores all incoming data and employs big data analytics to discover physical activity trends and patterns.
Capturing movement quality
Another state-of-the-art technology component in this project is the fundamental movement skills (FMS) rater. Traditionally, the assessment of FMS relies on professionally trained individuals such as PE teachers in a school. The new piece of technology (i.e., FMS rater) developed in this project moves away from this traditional practice and sets a new scene for FMS assessment. Specifically, sport scientists, educators, biomechanics experts and computer science programmers have been working closely to develop a computer program that allows users to objectively assess FMS objectively via the capture of movement using a motion capturing camera.
We firmly believe that forms of monitoring technology and motion detection devices have huge potential in becoming powerful tools for PA promotion in school-based interventions. Therefore, we are very excited to see how these technologies will change the momentum of PA and PE promotion in Hong Kong local schools. Stay tuned for further updates!
