Active Gaming Workshop: Fun and Educational!

Active gaming (Exergaming) continues to grow in popularity and more and more schools are beginning to implement these modern physical activities. It is essential that teachers educate themselves on how to appropriately use active gaming in their physical education classroom to maximize learning. There is finally a hands on, education workshop all about active gaming. The workshop will take place on March 1st, 2012 at the Chicago Bulls Sox training academy in Illinois.

Here is a brief description:

This Professional Development / Exergame Education Workshop shows you the exciting possibilities of how using technology, combined with games and physical activity, can enhance and enrich the lives of generations.

Teachers who attend the pre-conference will hear information from leaders in the field about how exergaming can help educators to be even more effective in reaching our youth. Participants will find this full-day ExerGaming pre-conference fun, educational, and invaluable in helping to promote high-quality physical education and physical activity to maximize the educational experience.

Topics include:

Medical view on how a sedentary lifestyle is impacting our children with life-long disease.

A successful School and Community Model overview, showing results of improved academics, improved disciplinary incidents, and improved health and fitness scores.

Implementing Technology and Exergaming in your facility. Putting knowledge into practice.

How do we prove it is working? Using technology to revolutionize physical education.

Time in vs. Time Out. Help students with ADHD and other behavior issues decrease impulsivity and improve learning. Explains the physiology of the attention system.

Quality teaching in a Physical Education setting, which meets the NASP standards and promotes lifelong fitness.

You can find more information about the workshop including registration at http://www.motionfitness.com/Articles.asp?ID=269

So You Think You Can Dance?

I often find that dance is one content area that many teachers do not enjoy teaching for a variety of reasons. Dance is an essential part of the physical education curriculum, but what are you doing to make it fun and interesting? Why not consider implementing dance related active games such as Dance Dance Revolution or Just Dance (1, 2, or 3) that is compatible with the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect. These active games are appropriate tools that can assist physical educators in teaching rhythmic, folk, creative, etc., dance concepts. These games offer various genres of music from reggae to hip hop which provides the teacher with numerous opportunities to create diverse dance lessons for students. Additionally, students are exposed to different forms of music and are able to learn the history as well as different forms of rhythm in the music.

Implementing technology driven games (active games) is a desirable solution for children to be motivated to engage in exercise. These activities are also affordable and user-friendly. Teaching dance in physical education can be enhanced by using what this generation of students finds appealing and fun. So, do you think you can dance? Try it and let the game be the test!

Active Gaming: Making Exercise a New Year's Resolution?

It's that time of the year - the beginning! Where we sit and think about what our New Year's resolution is going to be. For many, in the past few years a resolution has been to exercise more consistently or to simply begin to exercise. While I certainly appreciate adding more exercise to your daily life, I would also like to suggest we DECREASE sedentary screen time. Sitting in front of computers, televisions, cell phones, iPods, etc., has become a habit - one which is hard to break. The national recommendations suggest recreational screen time (RST) be less then two hours a day. On average RST in society today is over 40 hours a week! If we are going to using screens, at least reduce the sedentary behavior and suggest a more active approach such as active gaming.

Although the benefits of traditional exercise are well known, for some reason as adults we decrease our level of physical activity and then our children do not have role models at home to follow. Physical education teachers need to encourage children to get up and move and provide them with ways to do so at home. Discussing active gaming and implementing it in your curriculum is a great way to show children how exercise can be fun.

Do yourself and your children a favor this year and reduce the amount of sedentary time you spend in front of a screen. Get up and move - if you enjoy video games and technology, active gaming may be one great solution to help you keep your New Year's resolution!