News

› POLAR INTRODUCES NEW EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY FOR SCHOOLS

POLAR INTRODUCES NEW EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY FOR SCHOOLS

Montreal, Quebec – October 1st, 2010 – Polar, the market leader and pioneer in heart rate training technology, will transform the way health and physical education is taught, providing teachers with tools that inspire students in and out of the classroom. The new, easy-to-use activity products from Polar, will help motivate students, teaching them the benefits of living a healthy and active lifestyle – now and in the future.

Polar has strong expertise in health and physical education having provided heart rate monitors for schools since the early 1990s. Today, roughly 10,000 schools in Canada and in the United States are using heart rate monitoring and fitness assessment technology as an integral part of their health and PE classes, helping teachers objectively evaluate and grade their students. In addition to pioneering heart rate monitors, Polar is now launching advanced activity monitoring products for schools. Living a healthy lifestyle, at any age, includes exercising and getting enough daily activity. According to ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) children and young people should participate in moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity at least 60 minutes per day. Polar offers new convenient and motivating solutions to schools to measure and monitor all this activity.

Polar activity monitoring is based on body movement, so it can tell in a simple way how active the user is. Students wear an activity monitor that has a built-in accelerometer to measure their daily activity. As they start moving, the activity monitor automatically starts measuring their activity level. The Activity bar in the new Polar Active activity monitor counts and displays achieved time in ‘moderate’ to ‘vigorous+’ activity zones, so teachers and students can easily track when the daily activity targets are fulfilled.

In addition, the Polar Active shows how active the students are through the day. It tracks precisely the quantity and quality of students’ daily activity and displays that information with an animated figure. All this makes activity measurement suitable for kids of all ages and gives teachers an objective way to measure and assess their activity. Students are free to enjoy their lessons and teachers have an easy way of motivating them towards a healthier lifestyle. Polar Education Technology gives motivational and instructional easy-to-use tools for learning how to exercise properly, thus shifting the focus from competition to personal improvement and individualizing health and PE classes where students can perform at their own level. In addition to the Polar Active activity monitor, Polar will launch the polargofit.com web service and several guides and teaching material – helping teachers introduce activity monitoring into their classes.

Polargofit.com is an online web service for teachers and students to follow the physical activity. The timesaving and flexible web service allows for easy documentation of all activity data, tracking daily and long-term progress, and sharing reports with students, parents and administrators. This all helps to encourage students to engage in a healthier lifestyle. Tangible activity data also makes it easier to assess students objectively, ensuring that they are getting a fair evaluation of their own effort and results.

Rick Schupbach, Physical Education Department Chair at Grundy Center Elementary School says: "Polar offers information about student effort at your fingertips and data can be retrieved related to student achievement. With this technology, we're now able to grade on effort and can produce printouts that show measurable improvement specific to the student."

Polar offers solutions for health and PE classes that suit the needs of any school. Polar will work with schools to help obtain the most suitable solution and combination of Polar products to achieve their goals. The new Polar activity products will be available from November, 2010 in Canada.

About Polar Electro Canada

Polar Electro Canada Inc. provides innovative, personal technology solutions that help improve people's quality of life through physical activity. Headquartered in Lachine, Quebec, Polar Electro Canada is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Finland based Polar Electro OY, which invented the first ECG accurate wireless heart rate monitor, under the Polar name in 1977 as a training tool for the Finnish National Cross-Country Ski Team. To learn more about how the wide range of Polar products and services can help you achieve your training goals and make your fitness story a success, please visit www.polarca.com.

- Ends -

For further information contact:Alain Bovet Commercial sales and new business manager, Polar Electro Canada 888-918-5043 / alain.bovet@polar.fi / www.polarca.com 

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.