Movement Assessment Tool-Return of the MAT!

Movement Assessment Tool-Return of the MAT!

 Youth Sports Trust

Available from App Store for €2.99

The best 3 quid you will ever spend.

For all the talk out there about Fundamental Movement Skills and Motor Skill Development and their importance there is a paucity of assessment resources out there, particularly ones that can be used in a convenient fashion with a whole class or team. This excellent app sponsored by the “Youth Sports Trust” goes along way to fixing this. True there are other apps out there like the excellent app from The 60 minutes kids club but in terms of ease of use and set up it is hard to rival the MAT.

The Start to Move Movement AssessmentTool enables primary teachers or coaches to measure record and track the Fundamental Movement Skills of children aged 4-7years. However it can be used at any age to assess Movement Skills. A follow up app for older children is also promised.

Developed by movement experts at Sheffield Hallam University in conjunction with international educators it has the look and feel of a very comprehensive and well planned app.

It assesses 14 Movement Skills grouped under stability, object control and locomotor skills. 

Each skill comes with videos and instructions on how the skill should be assessed. It also comes with a handy recording option within the app to allow recording of an individuals movement for later assessment.

To begin you can add your student/players names and whatever details you seem necessary in a very straight forward way.

To begin you just click on a skill and you are presented with an introductory skin and a short video of the skill in question. The main teaching points are also listed. 

To begin you click on Begin Assessment. Each skill has 3 milestones and each has a video of the movement competency of that milestone attached. The milestones are Emerging, Developing and Established. 

To begin you simply click on the child you are assessing from the drop-down list. Click on each of the milestone videos to see which one is most closely aligned to the child. You then click on the body parts (arms,body and hands). This gives you the main points to look for with that body part and the milestone involved. For instance if assessing when you click on arms you can see whether your observances for arms, hands or body, correspond to expected emerging, developing or established movements. 

The instructional videos loop and pause with one click. They are very clear and easy follow and they really lend themselves to be using on an ipad. What I really like about it is that you can see each skill milestone in the one place which makes it very easy to grade a class\team of young people quickly. It is not click intensive and retrieval of recorded information is also very straightforward. 

You can observe your whole classes results in one easy to view location and results can also be exported.

Nobody needs to be an expert to use this app and I think it is a great starting point for any group to being planning their athletic activities at the beginning of a term/season. Don't let the fact that it is not free deter you it is a seriously good value for money app and I cannot wait to see the next apps in the series. Well done to all involved and it was a great starting point for me as someone who is in the process of doing the same type of app development for a sport specific app.