The Coronavirus pandemic challenged the schools worldwide and forced them to educate their students from a distance. Some school subjects adapt to this situation faster and better than others. Physical education (PE) is one of the subjects that relies on social contact and doing things together as a team. That is why distance education challenges all the PE teachers to invent new ways to teach their subject without real life social contact.
The potential use of ICT as a teaching and learning aid in PE has not been widely investigated, but after this pandemic we are hopefully going to have a lot of research on this matter. The benefits of using digital video in PE has been traditionally pointed out to be the positive impact on the learning process of playing a moving picture backwards and forwards, highlighting correct technique, and to the benefits, in terms of student observation and analysis, of using software that enables two images on a split screen. These ways of using digital video in PE have been combined with face-to face teaching, but in this current situation we do not have the benefit of face-to-face contact. That is why PE teachers are inventing new ways to move with their students, using all kinds of different learning technologies.
Teachers in Konnevesi have built PE teaching on videos made by themselvs or other PE teachers or professionals via Microsoft Teams. The videos include challenges for students to try and to inspire them, teaching different techniques for learning skills, examples and ideas of what to do, e.g. outdoors. These videos have also been one way for the students to show how they have done the tasks that they were given. Additionally, teachers in Konnevesi are using Teams in the beginning of every class with their students. Using Teams offers a possibility to meet all the students, move with them and get the kind of social contact that is the closest one to real life.
After this pandemic, it is important to recognise the impact of ICT technology on pedagogical practices in PE, so that in the future we have knowledge about how to positively affect students’ learning through ICT.