What Your Running Map Reveals: Privacy in Apps

Groups run a route around school grounds while a sports app records it on a class account, then analyze what the map reveals: starting point, time, pace and routine. They learn to set privacy options so they can train outdoors safely.

How to play

1. Warm up with a jog and mobility while you explain the challenge: a cone stands for the front door of a made-up person (4 min).
2. Each group of four invents a route that starts and ends at their "home" cone and runs it continuously for 10 minutes, with a school phone recording on the class account (10 min).
3. Open the activity and answer on the worksheet: where it starts, what time, how many laps, what pace and who could see it (6 min).
4. Set up a privacy zone around the cone and followers-only visibility in the app, and compare how the map changes (5 min).
5. Each group writes three safety tips for training outdoors with apps, then share them (5 min).

Rules

• Always use the class account set up by the teacher, never a personal account.
• No activity is shared outside the group, and all of them are deleted at the end.
• Run inside school grounds with the phone put away while running.
• Each group keeps a pace at which they can still talk.

Variations

Adaptations

• Wheelchair user: designs the route on firm paths and completes it in the chair.
• Visual impairment: runs with a guide and answers the analysis questions orally.
• Autism: the worksheet uses closed questions with options.

Learning goals

• Recognize what personal data fitness apps reveal.
• Set privacy options to train safely.
• Sustain a continuous run at a moderate pace.

Equipment for a class of 25

• tablets or phones: 7
• cones: 10
• worksheets: 7

Teacher tip

Create the class account before class and delete every activity at the end. Remember that many apps make routes public by default, including those of people who run from home.

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