Time was, the only video games kids got to play in school were educational titles like the Western-settlement simulator Oregon Trail.
But now, the school district in Redlands, California, is planning to put PlayStation in the classroom in a big way by adding "exertainment" -- exercise plus entertainment -- to its usual physical-education curriculum.
The classes would see elementary-school children getting their daily workout through popular video games like Konami Digital Entertainment's Dance Dance Revolution and Sony's EyeToy: Play that include active, physical elements.
"One of the things being blamed for childhood obesity is video games, so this is fighting fire with fire," said Sue Buster, the district's director of elementary education.
The proposed program would require space in the school for exertainment, with five to seven different stations capable of handling a full class of 35 children for the 50 minutes they'd ordinarily spend on the basketball court.
Besides Konami's popular dance-pad game and Sony's EyeToy camera games, which let players control the onscreen action with their arms and head, the district is looking into other types of exertainment software, such as products that marry stationary bikes with video-game displays and devices that use special controllers to teach students how to throw a baseball correctly.
Buster and other members of the school district conceived the program in collaboration with nearby Redlands Community Hospital and Beaver Medical Clinic, a local HMO. A nutritionist at the clinic, Dr. Ernie Medina, was interested in starting a gym for kids that would combine physical activity with the video games they love. "It's his dream," said Buster.
The original meetings between school, hospital and clinic were held to brainstorm ideas for preventing childhood obesity. It's a growing concern for physicians and educators, especially in California. A recent University of California at Berkeley study (.pdf) found that 14.1 percent of low-income California children below the age of 12 were obese, compared to the national average of 10.7 percent.
"Our childhood obesity rates are higher than average," said UC Berkeley nutrition education specialist Joanne Ikeda. "Which is surprising, because we have such nice weather. It's not just because we have a larger minority population at higher risk, because looking across racial groups, it's higher in every category than the national average.
"We know what some of the contributing factors are to childhood obesity in general," said Ikeda. "It could be related to the environments in schools -- we sign lots of contracts with fast food chains and soft drink companies to promote the consumption of their products in schools, and we de-emphasize quality physical education."
Ikeda is in favor of physical-education classes that motivate kids to get up and dance. "There's something about music that makes us want to move our bodies, and we should indulge this," she said.
Ikeda sees the beat-the-machine nature of video games as a positive, since children can compete with the game rather than with each other. "It's self-improvement rather than competition. It's not, 'Can I do better than Jane over there?'; it's, 'Can I do better tomorrow than I did today?' That's very worthwhile, because there are a lot of kids turned off by competition.
"They're indulging because they're having fun. And if they continue to have fun, that's reinforcement for exercising throughout their lives."
"The games are engaging because the kids are competing with themselves, or against the game," said Buster. "There's an element of competition -- but it's not humiliating. Dance Dance Revolution is very popular -- any time you go to an arcade, it's always monopolized. And the games are age-appropriate."
The school district is in the process of gathering funding and possible corporate sponsorship for the first exertainment center, which Buster expects to cost upward of $10,000.
The educators are also searching for an elementary school in the district suitable for a pilot program, which they hope to have up and running this fall. If successful, they hope to add exertainment rooms to every school in the district.
"Kids aren't getting enough exercise because they have no place to go," said Buster. To that end, she, Medina and others in the community hope to open a children's exercise center where children can play DDR and lose weight outside of the classroom.
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