Video Games in PE?
Yes, children of America have actually become THIS lazy and dependent on technology. I was never a fan of gym, but at least the activities we did forced us to go OUTSIDE! What ever happened to kickball, hopscotch, four-square, handball, basketball, tetherball, flag football, or even the dreaded line dancing classes? Now it’s Dance Dance Revolution.
Children don’t often yell in excitement when they are let into class, but as the doors opened to the upper level of the gym at South Middle School here one recent Monday, the assembled students let out a chorus of shrieks.
In they rushed, past the Ping-Pong table, past the balance beams and the wrestling mats stacked unused. They sprinted past the ghosts of Gym Class Past toward two TV sets looming over square plastic mats on the floor. In less than a minute a dozen seventh graders were dancing in furiously kinetic union to the thumps of a techno song called “Speed Over Beethoven.”
Bill Hines, a physical education teacher at the school for 27 years, shook his head a little, smiled and said, “I’ll tell you one thing: they don’t run in here like that for basketball.”
It is a scene being repeated across the country as schools deploy the blood-pumping video game Dance Dance Revolution as the latest weapon in the nation’s battle against the epidemic of childhood obesity. While traditional video games are often criticized for contributing to the expanding waistlines of the nation’s children, at least several hundred schools in at least 10 states are now using Dance Dance Revolution, or D.D.R., as a regular part of their physical education curriculum.
Based on current plans, more than 1,500 schools are expected to be using the game by the end of the decade. Born nine years ago in the arcades of Japan, D.D.R. has become a small craze among a generation of young Americans who appear less enamored of traditional team sports than their parents were and more amenable to the personal pursuits enabled by modern technology. Read the rest here
Source Tags: dance dance revolution, pe, school
2 Comments
[...] So either flipping your thumbs around burns a whole lot of calories, or the argument that Wii gets kids active is complete bull. Parents, please take notice. If your couch potato child is begging you for a Wii this Christmas claiming that this is what will finally get them exercising, don’t believe it. (The jury is still out on Dance Dance Revolution) [...]
Have you tried this? Try this and then tell me you really think hopscotch is more fun. You’ve got to be kidding. This can get your heart going, sharpen your mind/body coordination and can be extremely challenging. It’s exercise that’s NOT boring. I just wish they had more choice of tunes..