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Video Games in Gym Class - DDR 101?
Saige writes: "When I was in school, gym class was basketball, running laps, and icky locker rooms. Today, kids get to play video games - and get credit for them! No, it is not as bad as it seems. Apparently, someone has become clued in that Dance Dance Revolution promotes physical activity, and a school in California is making use of that. Can I go back and retake gym?"
Just to be informative ;-) If you don't know what DDR is, it's a Japanese Game in Konami's Bemani Series. Bemani games are games that usually involve music and some sort of strange peripheral. Others include Beatmania (turntable) and paraparaparadise (hand sensors). DDR is probably the most popular one and is now on it's 7th mix. I'm really surprised this made Slashdot today. I just read it on www.ddrfreak.com 10 minutes ago.
When I first saw ddr I said "That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen". Then I danced. Don't be afraid to play this game. Just go to the arcade and do it.
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In gym class in elementary school, we learned how to square dance. Every year. We also learned some other dances.
Playing Dance Dance Revolution for a significant length time seriously kicked my butt before I got used to it. Good for your lungs!
one of the few I have seen girls playing in arcades. We need more games that have a broad appeal like that.
Strangely when I was at school I was the only boy in the gymnastics class (an attempt to keep fit). It seems strange that no other boys thought of the benefits of this class!
People are getting fatter all the time (I certainly am) so we need to encourage fitness, but I would be disappointed if this replaced something good with queues for the machine.
Since Q3, my backflip hasn't been equaled in ANY gym class.
Have you ever seen someone jump around like a rabbit for 45 minutes and ending with a tripple backflip into a canyon, while shooting a 3pointer upwards, carrying 150pounds of armour ?
Ha, I can't wait till this shit gets approved for the olympics !
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
The arcade version has a solid metal "dancefloor", while the mats would probably break once every week or so under this heavy usage.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
The principles are easy; you pick a dance track to listen to, and as the song plays, steps scroll up from the bottom of the screen. Your controller is actually a gigantic platform with four directional arrows on it, which you step on in time to the music. All you have to do is match the right arrow to the one scrolling by on screen. Easy, right? I mean, come on, we've all got incredible hand/eye coordination due to all our years of video gaming! No problem.
Here's the mandatory link to DDR Freak, which has some basic information on the game. And for the Python friendly out there, check out pyDDR, a DDR clone for Python.
This is not that much different than the "mat" for the track and field game that used to be available for the origional NES (Nintendo).
:-)
Used to be pretty good excersize. I remember working up quite a sweat as a kid on one of those, I can see why it may be used gym. After two days of using it, my parents made me take in down the basement to play it.
Ahh, the memories...
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Personally, I like this idea a lot better. Not that I like or dislike punk music, but it just seems so right.
Back when I went to school (Melbourne High, FWIW), we had to take a sport activity. One activity briefly offered was Phasor Strike, i.e., laser-tag. Students would run around in a darkened room with backpacks shooting infrared beams at each other.
This was canned after a year or so after protests from parents. (The fact that a former student of the school made news by going postal and massacring some 7 people may have had something to do with it; OTOH, the mass murderer attended the school before Phasor Strike, and was a product of the culture of militarism in its cadet corps, which nothing was done about. *shrug*)
As for me? I took golf as a school sport. It was a decent excuse to have a leisurely stroll, rather than wrestling in mud with 10 other blokes or something equally unpleasant. Even at the cost of lugging a set of cheap, decrepit-looking golf clubs back and forth on the peak-hour train.
DDR type games are one of those inventions that seem lame, but when you think about, are actually killer apps. For example. I hate dancing, it makes you look like a right prat. I don't see where the enjoyment comes from. But DDR is fun. I know this could be taken even further, with rows and rows of machines in clubs/discos etc. and with different variations on the theme. For example, virtual-DDR, where you use a vr-helmet to shut you out from the fact that people are staring at your bad dancing. The helmet shows you a crowed of people cheering you and if one of them boos or laughs at you, the game will allow you to either draw a virtual pistol out and shoot them in the head, or simply kick them across the room matrix style :) The _real_ crowd watching your virtual view on a monitor, will be to scared to mock you on PH34R of death.
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Women don't like to be referred to as 'broads'.
:one of the few I have seen girls playing in
:arcades. We need more games that have a broad
: appeal like that.
This video game thing is pathetic. This country goes more downhill every year.
I hated gym class too. Golf, softball, dodgeball and all the other crap they had you do was a joke. I was the captain of my XC team, and gym class destroyed my season junior year b/c of an @$$hole in gym class blindsiding me playing basketball and fracturing my foot.
Sports are great. H.S. gym has always been lame. Video games just add to the lameness. My opinion is if you participate in a sport, you should't be required to take gym class at all. Oh well.
I forgot to mention this in my previous post-
I attended public high school (back in the last century). Our gym equipment was pathetic, particularly the weightlifting equipment and the sports balls. They even had lacrosse sticks that appeared to be made out of bamboo. Public high schools should buy basketballs that still bounce and soccer nets without holes in them before they spend $8000 on a video game.
I'm sorry, but high school sucks enough without arrogant liberals like yourself trying to suck every last pleasure out of life. Come on, being able to get a freakin SODA POP at school shouldn't be a controversy.
"raise money for the school (and large companies)."
Or maybe they are there because people enjoy drinking soda. Please stop seeing life through a narrow Marxist lense. Gosh, Heaven forbid people buying things and enjoying them. Must be a conspiracy...
Brian Ellenberger
Konami (the same people behind Dance Dance Revolution)has been putting out quite a few games that can burn some calories.
Police 911 uses an image tracking system to move your on screen character based on your actual body position. In order to reload during the otherwise typical gun game you need to duck behind something. In order to duck, you have to squat/duck in the real world.
MoCap Boxing has you put on a pair of weighted gloves and actually punch and block in a first person boxing match. This will tire out more than just geeks. I've watched as macho buffed guys with their girlfriends walk up to the machine and brag about how easy it will be. Within minutes they are barely able to keep their arms up.
If game designers can keep coming up with creative and well done games like these maybe the arcade is not as endangered as it has appeared.
Once more unto the breach dear friends...
Depends on the county. Where I went to HS it was against county rules to have a publicly accessible cola machine (ok, it's Atlanta - Coke machine. Anything else would've been heresy). There was one in the teacher's lounge, but that's it. Rules may've changed in the past decade or so, but that's how it was at my school. Several neighboring counties didn't have the prohibitions though - I recall going to some school competition at another school and envying their availability of Cokes.
Frankly, however, "flavoured sugar water" or no there's a serious issue with phys ed in schools today. I'll admit I never really enjoyed it in grade school or high school, but I still understood the need for it then, and I see it even more so now. Many schools have dropped the daily physical education class for a regular classroom course, some have eliminated PE entirely. This is not only sending the wrong message to kids (ok, I question how many "messages" we should expect schools to send as opposed to parents, but still), but it also eliminates one of the few outlets for kids to cut out stress from the school day.
I've never seen, much less played, DDR, but if it gets kids to want to excercise and is effective, more power to the teachers innovative enough to make use of it.
I will be impressed when someone develops a "Running Laps" game that kids are fighting to play.
Exercise and diet both play important roles in overall health. School can limit a child's options as to what they can eat at school in way of school lunches or vending machines, but that's about it. For the most part, good eating habits, and learning to eat healthy foods is learnt at home.
As for exercise, that can be taught at school, by quality Physical Education instructors. (Which are in short supply I think). It's sad that too many PE teachers treat PE as not much different than slightly organized recess. PE should be used to teach kids to pursue active lifestyles and to enjoy recreation. Even those that aren't in the best current phsyical shape can learn this.
Anyway, diet is something that is mostly learnt at home, and probably at a very early age. Physical activity can be taught in many places.
What?
DDR is definitely a workout -- at least when you're doing the 3 or higher level songs. It's also the only excercise in which I ever bother to engage. When I was working part-time and taking late afternoon classes I would play DDR for one hour a day three days a week. I lost weight (I'm not overweight, but I'm approaching an undesirable heaviness) and I noticed that I was getting significantly less winded when running from the parking lot to class.
Unfortunately I'm working full time now and my DDR playtime has dropped to zero. Recently some friends were over and the mat got pulled out and I found myself winded after just three songs.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
It's probably more expensive, but has anyone seen that pedal-plane game? (You fly a plane around a course - The twist is that you have to pedal it to keep flying!)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
They need to be taught that it is something they need to do their whole life, not just in gym class. Look at the percentage of kids from your gym class that still have a highly active lifestyle? Especially those that aren't involved in sports anymore? It does make a difference.
In elementary school, it will be hard for the kids to see the value of it aside from having fun, but in middle school/high school, they can understand the value of an active lifestyle.
What?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
...further efforts by the same school to trick children into getting their education include a recent announcement that the films they show in their Sex Education classes will be produced exclusively by Vivid Video. Additionally, Asia Carrera has been hired by the school to teach a few computer classes.
~Philly
the starting position for wrestling pretty much looks like a gay buttfuck
or in your case, a visit with grandpa.
Don't attach your negative perceptions to a group. I'm sure you feel equally offended by my imagery.
If you are "sitting" in front of DDR then you are not playing the game properly.
Sure, there are "hand-held" controllers for the game, but that really defeats the purpose of playing.
OTOH, I suspect that you actually have no idea how DDR works and instead you are spounting off garbage based on your ignorance rather than actually bothering to learn about the subject because doing so would actually require effort.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!