The Football Academy - Make a kick strength data logger

micro:bit - the next gen

In the CBBC series The Football Academy, Raf used a prototype kick strength data logger to see who had the most powerful kick. Watch the video below with your class to see the results and then have a go at a similar project.

You'll also find teacher notes on this page along with a link to a video on the Micro:bit Educational Foundation that explains the activity.

Teacher notes

Before watching

Introduce sports data science, the BBC micro:bit device and the MakeCode programming platform

After watching

Discuss what Raf was trying to discover using the kick strength data logger

Visit the project page on the Micro:bit Educational Foundation website and work through the steps to:

• Complete the coding project
• Go outside with the micro:bits and collect the kick data
• Come back inside and study the data on your computers

After completing the activity

Discuss what you discovered during the project e.g.

• Did you find that penalty kicks were stronger than passes?
• Was the kick strength consistent between the kicks?
• How can we use data like this to improve our game?

Write up an evaluation of the project - you could use screenshots and photos to annotate

Extension activities

• Add an audible or visual alert if your kick strength goes over a certain value

• Use the micro:bit to measure the strength of arm swing - for tennis, cricket and other racket/bat sports

• Create a glossary to explain key vocabulary and technical terms used in the project

• Write an instruction manual for the micro:bit for younger children

• Create an advert/marketing campaign for the kick strength data logger device

• Write a story (using the CBBC characters or their own characters) where the micro:bit is used to solve a problem

• Think about how else to use the micro:bit in sport (evaluating performance, celebrating, recording data)

• Write a postcard to their favourite football player telling them what you did with the micro:bit today

• Write a list of other sports skills you could try to record or improve using micro:bit accelerometer data

• Think about how this project could be adapted to be used by a wheelchair basket ball player - what would change? What would stay the same?

Extension ideas for pupils with special educational needs

• Sequence photos of the kick strength activity in the correct order – cut and stick

• Make a simple jigsaw using an enlarged laminated image of the micro:bit device cut into pieces

• Create a visual dictionary for key vocabulary with pictures/symbols – drawn by pupils or cut and stick

• Complete gap-fill descriptions and explanations about the project using word-banks of key vocabulary

• Match images and simple descriptions/labels of the micro:bit device

• Label printed photos of the kick strength activity with simple annotations and key vocabulary

Download as a PDF: Computing topics covered | Cross-curricular links and activities

Educational context - sports data science, speed, acceleration and force

Sports teams and players have always collected data about their own performances and results as well as comparing themselves to other teams and players. This helps them to improve team strategies and individual skills. Computers have made this much easier as they can analyse huge amounts of data very quickly.

The latest wearable technology uses Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to track individual player movements and activity, allowing them to look back at their performance in great detail, and see where they need to focus their training. Analysing this kind of data has become an important part of modern sport and is sometimes called Sports Data Analytics or Sports Data Science.

Speed
Speed is a measure of how fast something is moving. It tells us how far an object will travel in a specific period of time. If the speed of a car is 50 miles per hour - it will travel 50 miles in one hour if it stays at the same speed.

Acceleration
Acceleration is a measure of how speed changes - is the car speeding up (accelerating) or slowing down (decelerating)? Acceleration usually needs a force to make it larger or smaller. One way of measuring this change in speed is to compare it to the acceleration an object gets from the force of Earth’s gravity. We call this measurement ‘g-force.’ The higher the g-force, the more the object is accelerating. As you might expect from the name, the accelerometer on the BBC micro:bit measures acceleration. It does this by measuring how much force was used to change the speed - to make the micro:bit go faster or slower.

You can watch The Football Academy on CBBC or on BBC iPlayer

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