Member Article

Edtech app gets young people moving in Canada as first school comes on board

Children in Canada will benefit from a more positive relationship with physical activity after the first school in the country signed up to use an innovative app developed by UK edtech firm miMove.

Meadowridge School, in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, is on the way to increasing levels of engagement around pupil physical activity by introducing the ground-breaking app, which is being rolled out around the globe by the London-based company.

Staff at Meadowridge, an independent, coeducational International Baccalaureate (IB) World School for pupils aged four up to Grade 12, will from the start of the next academic year, begin encouraging young people to be active through the implementation of online platform miMove, which is used by children to log physical activity in and out of school.

They intend to use miMove as a long term programme for ensuring as many pupils as possible are helped over physical activity.

miMove gives schools the chance to capture student voice through a one-way messaging feature, which enables teachers to support and motivate pupils, as well as having access to a dashboard of headline data. In real time, teaching staff can view and analyse the data of different cohorts through miMove, which is now being used by more than 200 schools in 22 countries around the globe.

Nathan Horne, Physical & Health Education Department Head at Meadowridge, is introducing miMove said: “Meadowridge is excited to be the first school in Canada to use miMove with our community to help us connect with and celebrate our students’ physical activity journeys. The miMove platform will enable us to identify areas where we can improve our physical education offerings and create a more meaningful physical education experience to our students and families.”

miMove founders Greg Dryer and Marcella Griso have drawn upon extensive experience in education and working with young people to shape miMove, which they created to address high levels of child physical inactivity, one of the world’s biggest problems.

More than 50,000 children around the world are benefitting from a more positive relationship with physical activity in schools, thanks to miMove, which is backed by investors including Heimir Hallgrimsson, the coach who led Iceland’s victory over England at Euro 2016.

Greg Dryer welcomed Meadowridge School becoming the first school in Canada to come on board. He said: “It has been fantastic to see miMove continue to break new ground by making an impact at our first partner school in Canada. We are passionate about motivating more young people around the world to be active so we commend Nathan for being proactive and seeing value in the app.”

Marcella Griso added: “Thanks to user feedback and our own data analysis, we are continuing to refine miMove with upgrades to encourage activity and improve its impact. With users in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America, we are building a strong user base while helping more children to get involved in physical activity.”

The international successes include the work of Jordan Manley based in the US state of Kentucky. Teaching physical education at STEAM Academy in Lexington, he used miMove to support a goal of ensuring all their students develop a positive relationship with activity. The partnership resulted in Jordan winning 2021 Kentucky Physical Education Teacher of the Year.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Chris Leggett .