{"id":2325,"date":"2019-01-09T10:00:45","date_gmt":"2019-01-09T15:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/?p=2325"},"modified":"2019-01-10T19:48:01","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T00:48:01","slug":"health-tracking-technologies-class-activity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/2019\/01\/09\/health-tracking-technologies-class-activity\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Tracking Technologies Class Activity"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_2327\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2327\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jasonahowie\/8585047526\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-2327\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/files\/2019\/01\/8585047526_37a5bed3ff_z-600x193.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"193\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/files\/2019\/01\/8585047526_37a5bed3ff_z-600x193.jpg 600w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/files\/2019\/01\/8585047526_37a5bed3ff_z-300x97.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/files\/2019\/01\/8585047526_37a5bed3ff_z.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2327\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo of a health app on smartphone. Photo by Jason Howie, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>*~* &#8220;Teach with TSP&#8221; Contest Honorable Mention, 2018 *~*<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I use this in-class activity in the \u201cHealth, Medicine, &amp; Illness\u201d week in my Introduction to Sociology class to engage my students in critical thinking about small changes that can be made to address people\u2019s micro experiences with health issues and inequalities. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I give each of my students a copy of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2018\/10\/08\/the-rise-of-health-tracking-technology\/\">The Rise of Health-Tracking Technology<\/a>,&#8221; an article from\u00a0<em>The Society Pages\u00a0<\/em>blog, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/\">There&#8217;s Research on That!<\/a>&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Students are asked to read the article and then are put into groups of three to discuss the following questions:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">How can we understand health-tracking technologies as part of medicalization?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What are some of the benefits of health tracking technologies?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What are some of the social<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">problems associated with these technologies?<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What are some problems these technologies are intended to help?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What potential problems might evolve from these technologies?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then, students are asked to work in their groups to brainstorm ideas for how they would design their own health-tracking or health\/wellness oriented app to address some of the social problems of health and illness we have learned about that week. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Student groups are then asked to present their app designs to the rest of the class, emphasizing how use of that app would address social inequalities associated with health, illness, and wellbeing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">An example of one proposed app from my student groups was the following:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">An app that would address some of the health inequalities in food deserts through a <\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">GPS based system that would let users know where places to buy food are in their <\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">near vicinity. The app would be connected with store employees so that users would <\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">know when fresh produce and other fresh food items were available in the stores. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The take away discussion after this activity involves talking with the students about how small changes can make a difference in the way that people experience health inequalities in their daily lives, but that we must also be working in an ongoing way to address these inequalities at the macro level too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/lydiahou.com\/\">Lydia Hou<\/a> is an advanced graduate student in the Sociology Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago studying international students and Higher Ed diversity projects. Her work broadly focuses on race, gender, qualitative methods, critical higher education, and pedagogy.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>*~* &#8220;Teach with TSP&#8221; Contest Honorable Mention, 2018 *~* I use this in-class activity in the \u201cHealth, Medicine, &amp; Illness\u201d week in my Introduction to Sociology class to engage my students in critical thinking about small changes that can be made to address people\u2019s micro experiences with health issues and inequalities. I give each of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[113686,113687,110419,993,33,110418,109520,113689,144],"class_list":["post-2325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-classroom-activities","tag-classroom-exercises","tag-digital-health","tag-exercises","tag-health","tag-health-app","tag-health-inequalities","tag-health-tracking-app","tag-teaching"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2325"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2333,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325\/revisions\/2333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}