As a former PE/Sport Science lecturer, I think the iPad is a wonderful tool.
One problem with the default camera app on the iPad or iPhone is there is a time lag between pressing the button to take a photograph and the photo actually being taken, which in the world of sport is annoying as the action you wanted is often missed.
One app that I am finding really useful which overcomes this problem is Burst Mode – https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/burst-mode-high-speed-camera/id393131664?mt=8. What this does is take a set of photographs in rapid succession, you then go through the set of images to select the one or ones that you want to use.
- Delay between pictures.
- Self timer delay (if filming yourself).
- The number of pictures taken.
- Low light Boost.
- And various others options.
If you use the delay between pictures you have a range of options between 0.5 seconds and 5 minutes, it is a shame there isn’t a smaller increment (e.g. 0.1 seconds) which would be more useful for carrying out scientific movement analysis, however If you have no delay, the frequency of capture will be very quick – but will vary depending on the situation (e.g. low light will take less photos). This is not as accurate as a specialist camera or software – but with it being cheap and easy to use, means that each student can use it – rather than just one at a time.
If you do want to use the system to work out speeds of movements, you would need to know the frequency that the photos are being taking. It doesn’t give us this information automatically – but one way round this is to either have another iPad in shot which itself has a stopwatch running – or immediately before capturing your action, you capture another device (I often use my phone for this) that has the stopwatch running – then you can estimate the time gaps between frames. This is always going to be an estimate – but for a teaching perspective is adequate.
There are various other similar apps out there – with a range of prices, and there may be one better than this, but of the ones that I have tried I have found this to be the easiest to use, with the best quality of image and well worth the cost. Some people will tell me that I could just use the video tool, and then use one of the apps that takes a still image from a video sequence, but I have found with these – the image quality isn’t as crisp – which for sport is essential.
If you want to use an app like Burst Mode – it works very well with the device being hand held – but if you want to use this for more scientifc analysis then I would recommend a bracket to attach it to a tripod – as I discussed previously – https://davefoord.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/device-to-attach-an-ipad-or-tablet-to-a-standard-tripod/
If you work for a school or college, and are interested in me coming in to run a training session on how to use iPads in the teaching of PE and Sport then please get in touch.
Filed under: CPD and reflective practice, How do I...?, m-learning, Tablet Tagged: | analysis, Burst, College, high, iPad, iphone, Mode, movement, PE, photo, rapid, School, science, shot, speed, sport, teacher, training