Filed under: 14-18, 19-39, 30-45, diagnostic, environmental, gaming, lifestyle, motivation, movement, personal, research, science
Computer game translates physical activity into video games |
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Filed under: 14-18, 19-39, 30-45, 45-60, 5-9, gaming, lifestyle, motivation, movement, play, prevention, research
Video Games: Good for the Body, Good for the Brain
Mon Oct 1, 2007 5:48PM EDT
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Treadmills and stretching are out: Physical therapists are turning to the Nintendo Wii to help the injured and infirm get their grooves back while increasing flexibility and strength. Click on over to see a video of a 70-year-old patient looking awfully spry as he hits a few balls in Nintendo’s Wii Sports tennis game… all part of a medical therapy regimen. (more…)Filed under: 14-18, gaming, motivation, movement, object, play, prevention, research
P.E. Classes Turn to Video Game That Works Legs
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Children don’t often yell in excitement when they are let into class, but as the doors opened to the upper level of the gym at South Middle School here one recent Monday, the assembled students let out a chorus of shrieks.
In they rushed, past the Ping-Pong table, past the balance beams and the wrestling mats stacked unused. They sprinted past the ghosts of Gym Class Past toward two TV sets looming over square plastic mats on the floor. In less than a minute a dozen seventh graders were dancing in furiously kinetic union to the thumps of a techno song called “Speed Over Beethoven.”
Filed under: 14-18, 5-9, barriers, cultural, gender, movement, overcoming, play, research
“COMPLETE FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT”: VIDEO GAMES AS GENDERED PLAY SPACES
by Henry Jenkins
[Download PostScript version for printing] A Tale of Two Childhoods
Sometimes, I feel nostalgic for the spaces of my boyhood, growing up in suburban Atlanta in the 1960s. My big grassy front yard sloped sharply downward into a ditch where we could float boats on a rainy day. Beyond, there was a pine forest where my brother and I could toss pine cones like grenades or snap sticks together like swords. In the backyard, there was a patch of grass where we could wrestle or play kickball and a treehouse, which sometimes bore a pirate flag and at other times, the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy. Out beyond our own yard, there was a bamboo forest where we could play Tarzan, and vacant lots, construction sites, sloping streets, and a neighboring farm (the last vestige of a rural area turned suburban).
How does play develop, and how does verbal language become part of it? How does a verbal communicator participate in society, enjoy social events and offer their skills to society? The answers are probably easier to convey when a child is apparently developing, having mastered the very verbal environment in which they exist, or at least, feel that they are mastering it.
This page presents descriptions of many of the elemental forms of play – “patterns of play.” Like the periodic table of the elements organizes all matter into an understandable framework for chemistry students, this page presents seven patterns of play – that to most people are unrelated behaviors – as elements of a larger, holistic framework.
Science and Human Play
The NIFP is following what nature wants us to know about play. We are looking to what the biological, social and physical sciences can tell us, so we can help unlock the transforming power of play. Play is as basic and as pervasive a natural phenomenon as sleep. Like sleeping and dreaming, it is ready to be examined as a whole. This page overviews how we will go about this task and what we expect may emerge from that work.
