It’s Always a Great Time to Remind Students About the Importance of Exercise and Fitness. The Apps can Help!

App Ed Review is here this month to present you with apps that complement physical education and health classes. Incorporating technology into your classroom can seem challenging, especially for health and gym. The good news is that there are a whole host of educational, productive, and efficient apps for health, nutrition, and exercise. We’ve picked four of our favorites for December’s “Health and Physical Education” Roundup.

1. Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker by MyFitnessPal helps students keep track of their diet, food choices, fitness level, exercise plans, and more! First, users enter their height, weight, age, and health goals. Next, the app creates an individualized exercise and nutrition plan with the inputted data. Goals and benchmarks are calculated by MyFitnessPal, and students can keep track of their progress as well as their eating habits with the Food Diary feature. The Nutrition section of the app shows breakdowns for calorie intake with weight graphs that illustrate progress over time.  Finally, users can log their cardio, strength, and exercise reps and progression with the Exercise Diary feature. Garnering a high 9.1 out of 10 for Design on our comprehensive app evaluation rubric, this app will sure to be a great tool in your fitness classroom. To read the full report, click here.

2. Weight Lifting Videos: Exercise & Workout Tutorials for Men and Women is a fantastic educational resource and personal weightlifting coach. This free app contains an enormous library of instructional lifting, nutrition, and exercise videos to aid students. Use the “Browse” feature to find collections of how-to videos for blasting different muscle groups. Mark videos for later with a “Favorites” feature, and check out the best new videos in the “Trending” section. Students can keep track of all of their progress in-house with the journal function. This app is an effective reinforcement for students and a great supplement to your teaching with the app’s strengths in Design and Engagement. Check out the full review and instructional ideas here.

3. Simply Yoga FREE – Personal Trainer for Quick Yoga Workouts is a wonderful app for introducing a group of students to yoga. The app contains sets of videos that are 20, 40, and 60 minutes in length, and it is a step-by-step guide for engaging in a variety of yoga poses. No matter if your students are yoga masters or novices, the video feature of this app shows students the pose while guiding them through their body placements. With outstanding scores for its ease of use and learner control, students will be able to use this app independently or with classmates as soon as it is introduced. For more ideas related to using this app in the classroom, click here.

4. BMI Calculator% quickly figures out any individuals’ body mass index (BMI) when they enter in their height and weight. Although there is controversy about using BMI as an indicator for maintaining a healthy body image, this app provides teachers and students with a springboard to discuss that topic and more. The key to an app such as this one is that teachers integrate it into instructional units dedicated to body health. By earning high scores for it utility and goal orientation, 5 out of 5 in both categories, this app will engage students immediately, which will allow teachers to integrate it effectively into their classroom. For more ideas for using this app in the classroom, click here.

That’s all for this month’s Roundup. If you would like more information about any of the apps mentioned in this Roundup or that are on the App Ed Review website, please contact us at info@appedreview.com. And remember, apps won’t attain fitness goals, but they can sure help you and your students attain them!