An Iowa school has started requiring its students to wear heart monitors during gym class.
Teachers will be able to monitor their students' heart rates through a web-based program, Westport News reported. The point of the program is to give the Dubuque Community School District teachers to assess the physical activity levels of their students.
The students tie straps containing heart monitors around their chests to collect data on their heart rate; this information will be projected on a screen or wall during the class. The application used by the school system is called Polar GoFit. It also has the ability to show a student if they are reaching their target heart rate.
"I no longer have to grade students just by looking at them," Jackie Hart Weeber, a health and wellness teacher at the Eleanor Roosevelt Middle School,told Westport News. "Now I know if they are really working."
The information taken from the heart monitors will be factored into the students' report cards.
"It will be a large portion of their grade, because we want to grade them on what they're actually doing in our class," Dubuque Schools Athletic and Wellness Director Amy Hawkins told ABC News.
"It really takes the opinion out of things," she said. "You know it's not really 'I think your kid is doing this and this in class.
Hawkins said the program's goal is to keep students active and to increase their levels of exercise. The school was inspired to start using the technology after they saw it in Cedar Rapids schools.
"The district's goal it to put an emphasis on how important health and fitness is to our youth and to our whole community," Hawkins told Westport News. "By making the kids more aware of their fitness levels, I think it will motivate them to want to continue improving those levels."
WATCH:
Watch more news videos
