First meeting between current and future sports teachers in Bucharest

Bucharest, March 21 The first meeting between current and future sports teachers and digital content creators took place recently at the National University of Physical Education and Sport, within the framework of the European Hopa Sus project – which promotes and encourages the use of sports oriented digital content in classes of physical education. The purpose of this meeting was to bring the future generation of sports teachers and digital sports content developers, as well as education specialists, to the same discussion table. The moderator of this debate between generations, but also between professionals and those who develop mobile applications, was Sorin Bejan – University Lecturer Doctor and associate professor within SNSPA, and special guest, the famous sports commentator Ilie Dobre.

“Today, for you the future sports teachers, to be successful means to succeed through the most attractive means to bring the students to the gym, to make them understand that movement is necessary, and then to convince them to come back in physical education classes. Only then can we talk about real performance, about athletes who bring medals from international sports competitions” declared Ilie Dobre.

The new generation of sports teachers is digital native, therefore introducing and supporting sports classes in secondary schools is a natural step for them. “We came to this debate because we had the opportunity to experience, during a course, some of the online games that involve movement. I admit, I was very skeptical. Although I'm used to downloading all kinds of applications on my phone, in this case I didn’t see the usefulness until after my colleagues started dancing and having fun with the Just Dance application developed by Ubisoft. Now, looking through the eyes of a child, I am convinced that the use of digital technology in sports classes is an added “, said Andrei, a 3rd year student at the National University of Physical Education and Sport.


An example of good practice came from the partner SPORT PSY 1 – a company that brings together a team of specialists in the field of sports psychology and that offers professional testing and counseling services, as well as psychological intervention and development programs such as Sport Psy Profile and the platform BrainIQ.
“Attractive. This should be the characteristic word for physical education and sports classes. We all know that when children enter school they are full of energy and eager to move. Obviously, they are attracted to mobile devices, but they still want to run and play. This may be a good time for PE teachers to challenge them with an exercise application where they have to imitate, in real life, specific fencing movements, for example, or jumping rope like boxers. It’s more challenging than it seems and very fun”, said Andreea Georgescu – sports psychologist within SPORT PSY 1.


The games in digital format are taking over more and more followers, and within the Hopa Sus project they represent a possible solution to make the sports class attractive and current. At the level of the European Union, 4 states – Romania, Serbia, Lithuania and Bulgaria already use a best practice guide for the use of sports oriented mobile applications during PE classes, and through the HopaSus project, a series of game and application recommendations were made to encourage students to do sports at school.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

HopaSus Erasmus Sport Plus project was born out of the need of teachers and youth workers from 4 European countries to develop their digital skills and become more resilient in times of pandemics by using sport video games in their virtual or face-to-face classrooms. The aim of the project is to encourage sport teachers to recognize the potential of video games and sport applications and experiment with new strategies for incorporating them into their gyms and classrooms, and to promote the inclusion of “video games addicted youth” by changing the paradigm of persistent stereotyping of video games as predominantly mindless, violent forms of entertainment, into seeing the potential of video gaming technologies as instructional tools that takes out the children from the desk chair out into the sport field.