School pupils encouraged to get active thanks to award-winning app miMove

Young people at a leading independent school have been encouraged to get more involved in physical activity by using award-winning app miMove.

Year 7 pupils at Elizabeth College, St Peter Port, Guernsey, have embraced innovative software developed by edtech company miMove to increase their levels of activity and build a positive relationship with physical activity.

Teachers at Elizabeth College hope that by encouraging young people to feel comfortable taking part in all kinds of sport and physical activity, from those who are already active to students still to develop a connection with physical activity, they can set attitudes and behaviours for life.

Adopting the latest version of the app, used by more than 80,000 young people across the world, students have been set challenges to become active, which when completed result in rewards.

Young people use miMove to record and share their physical activity in and out of school, helping teachers capture previously inaccessible data on their pupils’ levels of activity. It also allows them to capture student voice, together with a one-way messaging feature.

The latest version gives new features to reward, incentivise and motivate users to be more active.

Elizabeth College, founded in 1563 by Queen Elizabeth I, is a selective day school with a broad ability range located in St Peter Port in Guernsey for children aged from two and a half to 18. The miMove implementation has been so successful that there are plans to roll it out across Years 8 and 9.

Tom Eisenhuth, Head of PE and Games Faculty, said:

“We wanted to introduce a tool which could allow us to gain a real reflection of our students’ attitude towards physical activity so we can help them to enjoy being active, growing their confidence as they move more.

“Students are reminded to log their activities in school and then tell us about their activity outside school, which we may not hear about otherwise. Through anonymous submissions, it allows the students to express themselves and give us feedback which we have used to shape teaching plans and groupings in class to ensure greater inclusion.

“We would recommend miMove as a wonderful resource to help young people feel more positive about activity and receive a wealth of information to improve teaching.”

miMove was designed to address child physical inactivity, a major global issue, whilst encouraging young people to have healthy relationships with themselves, their bodies, other people and activity.

Founders Greg Dryer and Marcella Griso, who drew upon their wide experience in education to develop miMove, have seen the app bring unprecedented benefits to schools and gain support from education organisations in more than 200 schools in 22 countries worldwide.

As well as giving teachers access to a dashboard of live data, miMove enables them to view and analyse different cohorts’ progress. London-based miMove have continued to develop the app while supporting an increase in levels of activity among students from the USA to the Philippines.

Marcella Griso said: “We are delighted to see miMove make such an impact at Elizabeth College, where the team have really embraced the concept and seen the potential to change behaviours. The plans to roll out miMove to more year groups is an endorsement for its benefits and will help us enable more young people to flourish from being active.”

Greg Dryer said: “Collaboration is central to the development of miMove so we have enjoyed working with Tom Eisenhuth as he is a deep-thinking practitioner in developing colleagues to be better teachers. Educators like Tom really get the benefits of miMove to help students develop.”

The progress at Elizabeth College comes after miMove and Birmingham-based Aspire Active Education Group won the Tech Collaboration prize, ahead of fellow finalists from the Universities of Birmingham and Wolverhampton, at the West Midlands Tech Awards in recognition of their the impact in encouraging young people to be active.