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More Than 1500 Schools To Deploy DDR By 2010
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."
One thing about games is that they go in and out of style... will the kids want to keep playing DDR since it's kind of out of style now and will surely be in another two years or so?
This showed up on the home page as one of the stories without a summary. I thought to myself "DDR... hmm... probably some kind of RAM/kernel module/bash.org engine" I thought I'd make a witty comment about how it could also stand for dance dance revolution. Well I got here, and now I'm disappointed. What use is an editor if they can't create ambiguous headlines?
DDR.
Land mines.
Who says two wrongs don't make a right? Muahahahhahahahahah...
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".
So can I expect to see DDR at the 2022 Olympics as an event?
MABASPLOOM!
There are a few reasons that this may be a good idea. For one, school competitive sports (not counting extra-curricular sports) are soul-destroying for kids who are not athletic. (Ever been picked last? Been mercilessly reviled because you missed a catch/goal/etc.?) What's wrong with also including some physical activities that aren't team-oriented? Note that I said "also"; team sports are vital for building group skills and should not be dropped. Secondly, with the continued pussification of our kids, many schools have banned such staples as dodgeball, floor hockey, flag football, tag, and many others.
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.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Next is various school Wii Sports teams, followed by the Link Fencing Club. School fees will help pay for replacement Wiimotes and video screens.
[Insert pithy quote here]
"They can do it on their own, and they don't have to compete with anyone else"
and they say internet alienates people.
Back when I was their age, we stood up against the bleachers at all dances... AND WE LIKED IT. Kinda. If only Susy would've talked to me... just once. *cry*
The problem with American schools isn't that they don't have enough money, it's (in part) that the money they have is used incorrectly. This is a great example of such waste. What, exactly, is wrong with running laps or playing sports in P.E.?
Le français vous intéresse?
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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 the number of girl/homosexuals around them can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Oh and the few that are, you CAN talk to them you know.
I still thank my mother she made me take dancing lessons. I am ugly, still have zits, am shy and introvert but I could dance. In world of non-dancing male even a geek can have the girls at his beg and call when dancing is involved. It does something to a young man to have women line up for a dance with you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As someone who lost a significant amount of weight playing dancing games and who also hates pretty much every other kind of sport (especially competitive sports) I can only say this - great news!
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!
butter the donkey
This would have been really cool in 2001 or 2002.
"The new physical education is moving away from competitive team sports . . . They can do it on their own, and they don't have to compete with anyone else."
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.
More Twoson than Cupertino
How many people first read this and thought they were going to put Dance Dance Revolution in a bunch of schools.?
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 countries. Kids today, pah!
DDR is fun, and more or less an individual sport that does not immidiatly require atheletic skills. A fat kid can still be good for it (as long as his condition lasts) and score immidiate results. To perform in a team sport requires long hard effort before you get any reward and you will be the loser all the time.
As for the money involed. DDR can be played in the same classroom that regular lessons are given in. What exactly are the costs of a track field and sports equipment. What is the costs of injuries?
I was of the generation still to be conscripted into the dutch army, part of the training were two tests. Running laps in a certain amount of time and a point to point run and judged on the amount of time. My laps were low, because A I couldn't be arsed (dutch military strategy is/was to be nuked by russians to disable navo forces and then to be nuked by the americans to deny russia access to dutch infrastructure, my running lots of laps did not seem to be a vital element in this strategy. B if I was half way across the field when the time ran out, I would still have to run back, so why not just idle at the finish line and save myself some hassle. The point to point run I did run great because the sooner you finished the sooner it was finished and you had to get to the finish line anyway. Motivation, it motivates you.
If DDR gets kids to excersise then just spend a few bucks that you would otherwise waste on underused equipment and get them to burn some fat. It works, what more justification is needed.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
DDR isn't about the game, but rather about the music. Sure, it helps people that can't dance feel good about themselves (with the people that do have rhythm feeling even better) but without the music the game would be pretty dull.
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, happy-psy-core is replacing happycore at raves -- but who in their right mind (read: not on drugs) dances to that anyways? Or even listens to it?
With Emo/Screamo/Crap becoming ever more popular, I don't think that DDR will exist in coming years. Sure they could probably merge ParaPara and DDR to have a stomping windmill game, but the kids wouldn't play it because they couldn't spiral off into a wall while "playing"/"dancing"/acting-like-retards. Not to mention the scores would have to, by definition, rate the player worse and worse so they could feel legit as they cry in a corner -- And no school would promote that.
Emo-trolling aside, I really do think that the style of "game play" in DDR has to evolve some more before it can become timeless enough to catch on in schools. (I think adding "You die of dysentery" to the game-over screen might be enough, but that's just me.)
At least better than the alternative.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When I was a kid, we had the NES PowerPad. It came with this lame-o track and field game that basically involved running in place real fast and jumping up and down on the pad. When our parents told us to get some exercise instead of playing that damned Nintendo, we got out the PowerPad and they wailed and moaned at us that "it's still a video game, it doesn't stimulate everything real exercise would, blah, blah, blah." Basically, "it doesn't count."
So now our lard-ass youth gets DDR machines installed paid for by your tax dollars and because our stupid, fucked up, lazybones, blameless society has slid so far it counts as "exercise" when these kids... Jump up and down and run in place on a pad in time to a video game.
Uh huh. Suuuuure. I want my money back, and my youth while you're at it, god damn it.
Which phrase do you think describes life and society better: "pecking order" or "team spirit"
'The new physical education is moving away from competitive team sports and is more about encouraging lifetime fitness'
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.
If the school board is smart
[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.
+++ATH0
What he really wants to know is how to not be a skinny ectomorph. The answer is "build muscle," not "pack on fat." Cycling will certainly beef up his legs, but it ain't gonna do much for the upper body.
+++ATH0
This is news? I was playing DDR in PE last year! (8th grade, by the way.) It was our teacher's PS2, as well.
You know you're old when you thought DDR meant "Difficult Data Retrieval".
Tom.
--
Ne pouvant supprimer l'amour, l'Église a voulu au moins le désinfecter, et elle a fait le mariage. What a retard, you put French in your Slashdot signature and thought you could get away with it.