Physically active lessons are one way of doing this: promoting understanding of curriculum concepts via physical actions. Integrating physical activity into educational time within classroom environments is one potential way of minimising such barriers for teachers and schools. They frequently involve securing time for PA outside of academic lessons, making them difficult for teachers to implement around academic priorities.
Although found to be largely effective in increasing active time, school PA interventions are often difficult to implement. Schools are an important setting to promote physical activity (PA), allowing a large number of children to be exposed to interventions over a long period of time. Urgent action is needed to make school-time more active. Current school inactivity is also undoubtedly a contributor to high rates in childhood obesity: with 33.3% of children currently overweight or obese. Children additionally do not perform more activity outside school hours to compensate for this inactivity, leading to an inherently inactive lifestyle and children unable to reach the recommended 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise (MVPA) a day. Longitudinal research is needed to assess prolonged effects of active VFTs in reducing sedentary time.Ĭhildren currently spend 7–8 hours a day being sedentary, with most of this time spent in obligatory seated school lessons. This one-day pilot provides early evidence of the ability of VFTs to convert sedentary academic time into active time. High acceptability was found in teachers and active VFT students rated their session significantly higher than sedentary pupils (p < 0.002). No differences in content recall were found between intervention groups: suggesting that adding physical activity into classroom teaching may not compromise attainment. Pupils in the active VFT displayed significantly less sedentary time (p < 0.001), and significantly more light (p < 0.001), moderate (p = 0.01) and vigorous physical activity (p < 0.001) than sedentary VFT pupils. Activity was measured using GT1M Actigraphs, content recall was assessed with a quiz and user evaluations were gained from teacher and pupil questionnaires. Participants (n = 85) were randomly assigned to a) a 30-minute physically active London 2012 Olympics-themed VFT, or b) a 30-minute sedentary version of the same VFT.
This pilot aimed to assess the effects of a developed VFT on physical activity and learning in primary-school children. Virtual Field Trips (VFTs) using interactive whiteboards to explore virtual scenes are a potential method of converting sedentary class-time into physically active teaching. The modern classroom is an inherently sedentary environment.
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