More Than 1500 Schools To Deploy DDR By 2010 110
The New York Times is reporting on the popularity of Dance Dance Revolution in augmenting school gym programs. Adopted by educators as a way to fight obesity among young people and encourage participation, the article states that by the end of the decade some 1500 institutions will be using the game in classes. "As Leighton Nakamoto, a physical education teacher at Kalama Intermediate School in Makawao, Hawaii, put it: 'The new physical education is moving away from competitive team sports and is more about encouraging lifetime fitness, and D.D.R. is a part of that. They can do it on their own, and they don't have to compete with anyone else.' Mr. Nakamoto said that he had used the game in class for four years and that his school had also installed the game in its "Active Lifestyle" room, where students are allowed and encouraged to play in their free time."
In and out of style (Score:5, Insightful)
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Here's where you went wrong... (Score:2)
[voice type = "Alex Trebek"]Oooooh. Sorry.[/voice]
Count on this to be mismanaged from the start, and for the school administrators to bang their heads against the wall when they see the potential for this to be really helpful but can't use it to its fullest potential.
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There's always going to be some asshole, or group of assholes, on the school board opposing any change, in any direction, for any reason (or no reason at all).
Talk about redoing the fitness program because all the kids are obese, and they'll be pushing to go back to naked showers and dodgeball, because "that's how things used to be."
They're generally ignorant, shortsighted folks who have some sort of appeal to the knee-jerk reactionary set, and thus always get a seat or two on any local
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Re:In and out of style (Score:4, Interesting)
DDR Universe released recently for the Xbox360 and I bought it.
The in-game calorie counter says I've spent about 5000 calories on it(That's about 1.42lbs of fat). I weighed 195, and about a month later, I weigh 193(5'10, 15% bodyfat). So I'm pretty happy with the result of losing weight from playing a videogame. I already have an active lifestyle(weightlifting 3-4 times a week) and a healthy diet. So the 2lbs of weightloss is being added to a high level of weight maintenance(I weigh 230+ if I live normally).
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DDR? (Score:2, Funny)
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East Germany, Germany, advertising causes need (Score:1)
Two wrongs... (Score:2)
Land mines.
Who says two wrongs don't make a right? Muahahahhahahahahah...
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Land mines.
Who says two wrongs don't make a right? Muahahahhahahahahah...
No, DDR doesn't have mines. That's ITG [itgfreak.com].
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I bought a custom-built hard pad for $250. It looks great, works great, and I've lost weight as a result.
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You put left foot in, and you shake it all about...."
Man, there's got to be an faster and easier way to clear a minefield!
(Stolen from an old Ruminations [ruminate.com] post.)
Not a bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I still see kids lining up to play this in the malls, arcades, etc. Dozens of people standing around watching. Sometimes you just can't help it. I think it's a great idea, at least it beats sweeping the gym. As for combating obesity, good luck with that. Call my skinny ass when you've figured out how to make people with metabolisms in the stratosphere GAIN weight. I care not for this "obesity epidemic".
Re:Not a bad idea (Score:5, Funny)
Get a salaried position coding. Spend 6am to 9pm in cube coding, eating from the vending machines.
done.
-nB
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done.
Errr... Perhaps that actually requires effort, I forgot. Sorry.
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The ggp asked how to get fatter. cycling is healthy and will burn fat.
Not really (Score:2)
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Not to mention I am required to go to work in formal attire (that would be shoes, tie, dress pants, etc.) which don't mesh well with a bycicle. However, I do walk to work everyday, and I'm still overweight (but nothing like some Americans I've seen, hell, I'd be considered average to slim there).
Re:Not a bad idea (Score:4, Funny)
Call my skinny ass when you've figured out how to make people with metabolisms in the stratosphere GAIN weight.
I wondered the same thing when I was younger, then I found the answer - it's commonly called "your 30's".
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This guy managed to weightgain. It's doable. Don't expects results quite like him since he's got a pretty vicious regimen, but you can get something.
It's based on eating a ton of clean calories(not just random junkfood calories, actual nutrious food). About a 40% protein, 40% carb, 20% fat balance in your diet. You want a large caloric excess, combined with weight training. Wait at least 3 months into the regimen before giving up.
For a weight training regimen,
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Call my skinny ass when you've figured out how to make people with metabolisms in the stratosphere GAIN weight. I care not for this "obesity epidemic".
Muscle weighs more than fat. To gain muscle mass in your upper body, try curling up in a ball, pulling your shirt over your knees, crossing your legs, putting bag gloves on your hands, and walking on your hands and bottom. Then after you've gone a quarter mile that way, have a few whey protein shakes. Or are you already training and eating big [bodybuilding.com] and still not gaining?
DDR Event (Score:3, Funny)
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DDR is just a workout tool, although I am not sure how it will prepare you for ballroom dancing. Stamina, perhaps.
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Stamina, perhaps.
More so than you realize. When I first started playing Stepmania last summer, I had difficulty climbing more than one flight of stairs. It's a year later, and now I've got more energy than I know what to do with. I've walked the two miles to and from school, rather than take the bus. I almost always prefer the stairs over the elevator.
When I started, I'd get cramps in my legs for a couple days after each play. I haven't had that in seven, eight months now.
Tap Dance Revolution? (Score:2)
Well, if you work out and watch your diet (Score:2)
If you do NOT work out and do NOT watch your diet. Well just google "obesity related diseases", if you can muster the energy that is.
15 years is a long time and it is a safe bet that a lot of people reading this won't make it. Especially those kids in the article. While none of them were at the extreme there were more fatties then there were when I was in school. In my day the fatties were the minority, in this picture they are the majority.
DDR won't safe them.
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Well duh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not necessarily a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
One big downside, IMHO, is the cost of a standard DDR machine, including upkeep. Heck, the ones at the arcade are falling apart after just a year or so. I can think of better uses for the money that would still accomplish the stated goal.
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You know how you get better at sports? Practice. Play more and you get better.
Allowing a kid to sit out a sport because he doesn't think he is any good just contributes to self-victimization, plus the kid loses out on both the health benefits of physical activity and the social benefits of learning to function as a member of a team. Plus it helps teach that your actions carry consequences.
Dropped a ball and your team lost t
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I'm the same way with kids too... sorry kids
Re:Not necessarily a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
You know how you get better at sports? Practice. Play more and you get better.
I was always mediocre at sports in school. Good enough to get by, not bad enough to be traumatized. I mention this so you know that I'm not just offering bitter gripes based on negative personal experience in school-time sports.
That said, my school did not teach kids how to play sports. They didn't even teach them to get better at sports (excluding extra-curricular). What they did was divide the kids into two groups and say "Ok, now go play baseball (or football, or dodgeball, or etc.)" We didn't play any one sport enough to get better and we received no coaching with regards to game skills. The goal was to get the kids to excersise. There were many kids in my classes that simply didn't know how to play baseball, and yet they're thrust into this unfortunate situation where they're expected to know all the rules, and they are publicly lambasted and humiliated by fellow students (and sometimes coaches) for failing to immediately excel. It's easy to say "kids will be kids" and that's true, to an extent. It's all part of the growing-up process. I am not trying to demonize team sports in schools.
I'm just trying to say that there is nothing wrong with diversifying your school PE offerings. You don't have to eliminate team sports (or even significantly curtail them), but what's wrong with also providing physical activity opportunities that are not team-oriented?
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No, it's motivation to hate whatever game it was and want to never play it again ever.
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No one ever got better at anything by sitting on the sidelines. Sure some people may be hurt by their inability do perform, but the better lesson to learn is to try and fail.
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Take me, for example. I started playing DDR when it originally came out in the States. My younger brother was world's better than I was, and something of a show-off. A few years after he shipped off to the Navy, I started playing Stepmania on a hard pad at a local gaming center, in an effort to lose weight. It was s
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I remember getting tired after about 30-40 minutes of play and stumbling through 3-4 step songs. Now I can combo almost all the 6-step(highest difficulty is 9 step) songs in DDR Universe, and play pretty much all day. After a grueling 1-hour non-stop battle against the CPU(the random bonus modifiers kept getting assinged to the CPU...truly bad luck) I finally won and was proud to see how much better I'd gotten at the game. I expe
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Next (Score:2)
human, ai or ui? (Score:1)
and they say internet alienates people.
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Pffft. When I was a teenager, I always did it on my own. There never were any competitions that I knew of. Wait, what were we talking about again???
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Back in the day, I remember there was a kid, two years younger than I was, in high school band, who "won" such a competition, and became famous for it. Y'see, it was a race. Ever since then, people called him "two stroke." And no, it wasn't an engine reference.
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Dancing? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Susy's reply (Score:2)
Back when I was their age, we stood up against the bleachers at all dances... AND WE LIKED IT. Kinda. If only BMonger would've talked to me... just once. *cry*
Note to everyone, the opposite or same sex is just as nervous to make the first move. The difference between successfull people and well us, is not that they got the lines, or the looks, or the money or the charima, it is that they moved first. Oh and didn't spend all their time around sexes you are not attracted too. Remember computers are fun but
American schools (Score:3, Insightful)
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Ever hear of a song called "The Wall"? There is NO reason school can't be enjoyable. Learning *IS* supposed to be enjoyable, which is what makes it happen.
You make it suck, kids don't pay attention, they don't learn, and all you have is a damn state sponsored day care center. No thanks, I think finding creative ways to have kids enjoy learning and exercising is a better alternative.
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I never said school can't be enjoyable; I simply said that that wasn't the point of schools. For an academically interested student (which, let's be honest, isn't everyone), learning can in fact be quite enjoyable. The problem occurs when the learning is sacrificed for the "funness" of lessons, and teachers dumb down their plans to appeal to everyone. Making students stop learning, and turni
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P.E. stands for Physical Education. Of course the idea is learning. Many schools teach Sex Ed in PE as well. I learned how to play several sports and how important exercise is. In my old age (over 40) I still play many of the games I first learned in P.E.
I'm a bit old for dodgeball and fieldhockey, but I know how. Basketball, flag football, kickball, wrestling, etc. were all learned in P.E. I
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They want to do team sports like football and such, make it separate from actual school. It's no wonder our schools aren't worth crap for actual education; we focus more on w
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Oh, by "our society" did you mean America?
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Teamwork isn't a bad thing, and P.E. is also good for blowing stress and frustration for kids. There wasn't real competition anyway, as each day you were on a different team, unlike organized sports.
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Fast Track Calculus at Rose-Hulman (Score:1)
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Everyone else hated it, guess it's because I didn't come from their neck of the woods.
-uso.
Boring, competitive (Score:2)
While I agree with the "kids these days" element I can also see the value in this. The fact is that even decades ago kids hated to run. But we did because if you didn't you got in trouble. Times are different now. Is that bad? Perhaps but if the old people did everything better how come they had two world wars while today's youth can barely get a decent escalated police action going. Come on, iraq, afghanistan? Where is the carpet bombing, the agent orange eh? There ain't even any secret bombing of other co
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I hated PE. Running in laps was boring as hell. Boring. BORING. I hate doing boring stuff. And I hate doing stuff I'm not good at and have no intention to get good at. Jumping over some pieces of furniture is not my kind of pastime. And waiting for it for 10 minutes ain't in my books listed as "exciting" either.
So I didn't run if they didn't force me to do it. Worse, yet, I started forging excuses to skip PE. And until now, working out isn't really on top of my list when it comes
Great! (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always said (based on my own experiences) that the biggest problem with P.E. is that it fails to actually catch children's interest. Pretty much every young child I've seen loves to be physically active, but the rigid structure of school sports and the emphasis on achieving goals that takes all the fun out of being active also seems to destroy this love for activity in most children very quickly. Putting the fun back into P.E. can only be a good thing, and should also help with the USA's rampant obesity problem.
So therefore, let me say it again: great news indeed!
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This is good news. Get the kids moving, but it's only a pebble in the lake of the problem. So, toot your horn but remember playing DDR is part. Putting down the cheetos is the other.
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People will yell about this being a waste of money, but if using technology in this way can help curb the obesity issue in this country, it will well more than pay for itself as the number of over weight adults taxing the health care system with weight related health complications will be reduced as these children grow up.
-Rick
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the rigid structure of school sports and the emphasis on achieving goals that takes all the fun out of being active
So specifying exactly where your each of your feet must be (one of 5 places) at any given time to earn a particular score is not rigid structure and/or goal oriented?
The interesting situation here is that it can be conducted with very little equipment (only need a TV and a few square feet of space, on the scale of treadmill/exercise bike/etc), so compared to outside competitive sport it's much more achievable. DDR has been a benefit to a lot of people in the home because it provides *more* feedback on the
A Blast from the Past (Score:1)
Competition (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's part of PE, it won't be on their own. Moreover, DDR players are extremely competitive regarding levels and songs their peers can complete while some can't. (I'm inside that crowd so I'm very much pot-kettle-black.)
I don't think using a video game for fitness is going to be a magic bullet to get kids bad at sports enthusiastic. Speaking as an ex-fat kid*, team sports and PE performance IS about drive and confidence and when you don't have confidence you can't have drive and you can't be excited about physical activity. DDR is just going to set another watermark for children who are already on the vector to obesity to never be able to obtain; children who already can't: perform one pull up, perform one sit up, run a quarter mile, touch their toes, or pass other basic fitness tests.
*Full disclosure: DDR *IS* how I lost weight. And the main factor in being brave enough to even start was the nearby arcade which was completely empty of all spying eyes during my lunch break. If I was around peers I'd probably would have snickered a lot and given up way sooner.
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Man, I cant wait til video game consoles for HOME are invented in the late 70s! That'll show the prying eyes!
(And isolate us more...)
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That is, the above is what I would say IF I knew you weren't kidding since that's a pretty uninformed statement.
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back on topic, I agree with your assessment about DDR. I feel at home playing team sports, but getting on a DDR machine in front of my peers? No thanks.
DDR (Score:1)
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DDR isn't about the game (Score:1)
With that said, the challenge of the devs is to keep up with music trends in order to release subsequent games. However, the problem here is that most of the music in DDR happens to be Electronica-based and the forms we are familiar with now are dying down in popularity. Granted,
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DDR is old. Granted. But still better. (Score:2, Informative)
Kids want to do exciting things. And if they can't, they'll settle for "at least not too boring" things. And if nothing else, DDR qualifies for the latter.
It may not be on top of the fads anymore, but it is still fun. Even if you're not too good at it. A team game that you suck in invariably makes you unwanted. You're the last one to be picked. What should fuel "team spirit" actually fuels a pecking order.
Sure. (Score:1)
So now our lard-ass youth gets DDR machines installed pai
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Maybe this will result in fewer tax dollars being spent on Medicare in 40 years time. Maybe.
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I agree with your thesis that this is a waste of money (see my posts above), but you're using a silly argument to support it.
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Sounds like you have no idea what you're talking about. I played very heavy DDR for about 2 or 3 years (average 2 hours a day or more during any given week). I stayed at a healthy 145 pounds at 5'8", with calves the size of cantaloupes.
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Hippo-critter-potamus? (Score:1)
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Ne pouvant supprimer l'amour, l'Église a voulu au moins le désinfecter, et elle a fait le mariage.
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DDR is old news but... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is great news. Somehow I doubt it though. I seem to recall that everything athletic was made into a competition or became one. If they are doing excercise the students will be competing on how many push ups they can do. If you use DDR then they will compete on DDR scores.
Difficult Data Retrieval (Score:1)
Tom.