Students began by recounting their summary of an article they read entitled Am I Working Out or just Geeking Out? by Dan Woodger published in the May 2016 edition of GQ magazine. The article highlights the various cutting edge technologies that have been introduced into world-wide markets concerning health recording devices and indices and gave a critical accounting of the extent to which these devices have significant health benefits for those who use them. Students were then put to the task of summarising, analysing and later evaluating the article after compiling their own findings by putting health trackers to the test and drawing their own conclusions.
Although their results were inconclusive and students drew a null hypothesis as a result of their findings, they did speculate that despite some drawbacks such as hyper-awareness causing undue stress and anxiety among individual users, in general, health indices produced by tracking devices can be of positive benefit over the long term if used properly and consistently.
As a follow up activity, students were also asked to read a second, satirical article about former Olympic decathlon champion Dan O’ Brien to test their ability to think critically. The take away and lesson learned from this reading was that one should not always accept what one reads at face value, particularly in this day and age where certain forms of questionable news are so pervasive and their sources unreliable. Nevertheless, by conducting their own field work investigating health tracking devices, students learned to scrutinize what they read in the first article and to establish and formulate an opinion as it related to the arguments posed by Mr. Woodger based on first hand substantiated experience to supported their points of view.
Lastly, students also presented their research of goal line technology and VAR. They reported that both technologies, despite being controversial and meeting some initial staunch resistance from the more traditional, orthodox contingent of professional sports advocates and associations, to be fair, have been introduced and developed to facilitate the declaration of difficult rulings by referees in which crucial outcomes hang in the balance. Overall, students reported that these technologies have borne out to have an undeniably long-lasting positive impact on the world of sport and have gone a long way to assist sports officials in corroborating difficult and sometimes unpopular rulings.
In short, students found that, regardless of the degree to which the aforementioned devices have a negative, positive or in some cases, negligible impact, these devices and technologies have, without question, revolutionised the way that data, as it pertains to health and sport, is being collected, interpreted and utilised in pursuit of personal, individual health goals and for the professional sports establishment overall. In other words, to coin the phrase from the arena of athletics, whether we like it or not, technology is the new game changer!
(Text: Martin Lipton and Michael Reichstein)