CenturyLink Iowa

CLARION-GOLDFIELD COMMUNITY SCHOOLS PHYSICAL EDUCATION DEPARTMENT WINS $8,000 FROM QWEST FOUNDATION

“Heart Healthy Kids” Helps Students Find Out How Activity Affects Students Performance In The Classroom Using Technology

DES MOINES, IOWA, May 12, 2008 – The CenturyLink Foundation and the Iowa School Boards Foundation today announced that Clarion-Goldfield Community Schools Physical Education Department has won $8,000 from the CenturyLink Teachers and Technology grant program.

The department plans to use the money to study the affects of increased activity on students’ performance in the classroom. The department will use a set of Polar PowerPak heart-rate monitors to provide formative data and a program called Fitnessgrams for the summative data.

“This is the second year that CenturyLink has initiated this very important program, and we are so pleased to reward teachers around our state for their innovative ideas, “said Max Phillips, CenturyLink Iowa president. “CenturyLink is proud of the educators at Clarion-Goldfield for coming up with this idea, and I thank them for their important work.”

The Heart Healthy Kids project encourages students to adopt healthy lifestyles and monitors of student health and wellness through middle and high school.  Through this project, the department would like to see improvements in three components of physical fitness identified as important to overall health: aerobic capacity, body composition and muscular strength.

“This project’s visionaries believe that providing data on student health and wellness in relation to academics is virtually impossible without the use of technology,” said Mary Delagardelle, executive director, Iowa School Boards Foundation. “Their proposal takes that notion a step further, and has the potential to change the historical view of physical educations as organized playtime into a curricular area of a well rounded education.”

The purpose of the CenturyLink Teachers and Technology grant program is to recognize and reward public school teachers who use innovative technology in the classroom to improve the educational experience for students.