Active Play PALA+ Challenge for #exergames

The President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition has updated its physical activity logging to include #exergames. In its recent announcement the PCFSN "ESA member companies will incorporate PALA+ promotional features into some of their most popular active video games to educate video gamers on how they can use technology to get physically active and earn PALA+." 


Click here to read the rest of the story on ExerGame Lab


Remember ...The 8th Annual Games for Health Conference in Boston, MA at the Hyatt Harboside Hotel is June 12-14 -- under one month away! Register today at: http://www.regonline.com/gbew2012

Additional Games for Health Keynotes! Constance Steinkuehler Squire, senior policy analyst for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will discuss the opportunities for videogames to address national challenges, including those in health, health care, and biotechnology. Bill Crounse, MD, senior director of worldwide health for Microsoft, will present “Connecting & Kinecting Health and Health Care,” which will explore how Microsoft and its partners are merging its information and game technologies to create global solutions for personal health and professional health care. Jane McGonigal, New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of SuperBetter Labs, will highlight the design and release of SuperBetter, a game-based social application designed to help people boost personal resilience and lead healthier, longer, and more positive lives.

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Study: Exergaming shown as an effective tool for engaging PE Students

Research undertaken at the University of South Florida Active Gaming Research Lab in Belle Witter Elementary, FL, has been published in the Journal of Applied Behaviour Analysis demonstrating how exergaming may be able to motivate hard-to-reach kids in PE.

The study was lead by Victoria Fogel, MS in an Active Gaming (exergaming) room set up by Dr. Lisa Hansen in 2008, examining “inactive” children’s behavioral responses to exergaming. The data collected included the physical activity of the kids while using exergames in class and contrasts this with regular PE lessons.

The results demonstrated that exergaming produced substantially more minutes of physical activity and more minutes of opportunity to engage in physical activity than did the standard PE lesson. When exergaming the student showed an average of 9.2 min of physical activity per session, while in the PE class they achieved a lower 1.6 min average of physical activity.

The publication of this study adds to the evidence base supporting the appropriateness of using exergaming in the physical education classroom. Because many different exergaming activities were involved in this study, the results show the variety of the genre and the ability of exergames to engage kids. The study can be accessed via PDF download at The Exergaming Network’s wiki site, filed under Exergaming Evidence Base, here.

USF’s College of Education uses the Active Gaming Labs not only for research, but also to demonstrate modern, innovative physical activity approaches to future PE teachers, government departments, and health specialists. Representatives from The President's Council for Fitness, Sports and Nutrition recently visited the research facilities; click here for videos of the exergames in action.

President's Council on Active Gaming!

1-21-11: This is the FIRST time I can recall that I've seen active gaming (aka exergaming) blogged about on the Dept. of Health & Human Services website!

President's Council on Sport, Fitness, & Nutrition's Executive Director Shellie Pfohl recently authored a blog on the benefits of "active gaming" and the intersection between the use of this cutting-edge technology and the national objectives outlined in Healthy People 2020. To read Shellie's blog and/or post a comment, please visit http://www.health.gov/paguidelines/blog/.

I had a chance to meet with Exec Dir. Pfohl after her presentation during the Fitness Tech session at CES a couple of weeks ago, and we had a good talk about how the President's Council can be more involved with active gaming. (It didn't hurt that I was able to mention that it was our work (Dr. Haddock and I) that got the Wii Sports listed on the President's Challenge list of exercises!).

We talked about the National Active Gaming League (NAGL), and she seemed enthusiastic about it, so I look forward to collaborating more with the President's Council when we launch the NAGL in May!

Ernie Medina, Jr.
Exergaming Evangelist/Interventionist

The Modern Solution for Healthy People 2020

Fitness and weight goals set by the Healthy People 2010 campaign have been missed and the evidence shows that America is moving in the wrong direction!

The Exergame Network (TEN) has found that objectives set for Americas health, weight management and fitness are being missed and cannot be met by traditional health interventions alone. TEN says that technology needs to be embraced as a friend, not a foe for today’s healthy lifestyles.

TEN Supports the methodology of Exergaming; the combination of exercise and multimedia technologies, for a role in reaching the Health People 2020 objectives. Exergaming seeks to change sedentary screen time to active screen time, thereby bringing activity levels within the recommended guidelines for moderate to vigorous physical activity levels (MVPA). National studies have shown 97% of children play video games daily and the average age of gamers is 34 years old. Video game technology that underpins Exergaming is proven to be engaging and sustainable for everyone.

“Exergaming is an exciting genre in the video game space,” said Jennifer Mercurio, Vice President & General Counsel of the Entertainment Consumers Association. “It can be used for physical therapy and team building, as well as fitness. Healthy People 2020 should embrace Exergaming as an important component in getting Americans more healthy.”

TEN Recognises that not every exergame is suitable for improving health, a headline study into Wii Sports by Liverpool John Moores University suggest that Wii Sports, while fun, cannot be recommended due to the low level of energy expenditure. However, the results of a 2008 study into Dance Dance Revolution and Eyetoy Kinetic exergames by SUNY Cortland University showed that some exergames can contribute to the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity. To help guide the public, TEN evaluates exergames using its Rating System, at http://exergamenetwork.blogspot.com/p/exergame-experience-rating-system.html, to support those exergames that have genuine exercise components.

Teachers play a large part in our children’s physical activity - 65% of school children’s activity is solely derived at school. The educators role is to raise children’s awareness of healthy practises and to demonstrate how exercise can be fun, engaging and become an everyday part of their lives. Exergaming is one route to achieve these goals.

George Velarde is a PE educator with a vision to move PE from traditional practises to the “New PE” which integrates technology. His experiences are a testament to the power of Exergaming, and his results for Sierra Vista Jr. High are a testament to the effectiveness of appropriately applied health and fitness technologies.

The Sierra Vista PE Department’s efforts in “New PE”, that includes over 50 Exergaming stations, started in 2003 and has subsequently improved the schools fitness scores. In 2003 the school scored 33.4% for the 6 fitness standards. After six years the school scored 55.4% in the number of fitness standards achieved. With George’s enthusiasm, Sierra Vista is a school that embraces Exergaming and bucks the national trend by moving in the right direction for health and fitness.

The evidence from Sierra Vista is not an isolated experience, schools and universities are finding their own path towards healthy lifestyles through practical trials and research with exergaming. Last month the executive directors of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, Melissa Johnson and Shellie Y. Pfohl, had first hand experience of Exergaming at the University of South Florida’s Active Gaming laboratory in Tampa.

The goal of Exergaming is not to replace traditional exercise, but to replace sedentary behaviour, and as an effective method to increase participation in traditional exercise - The ‘Gateway’ Effect. The public opinion of the best gateway exergame, and other worthy categories of exergaming, are the subject of The Exergame Network Awards, which is currently open to public vote at http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/421003/active-gaming-awards.

The objectives for Healthy People 2020 are due to be released to the public this month, and while technology, principally increased screen time, is having a negative effect on our health, the evidence points to a need for guidelines supporting the positive benefits of exergaming.

TEN promotes the advantages of healthy video games, through it’s collaboration with health professionals, academics, leading manufacturers, distributors, students and advocates. TEN’s resources include a wiki site (http://exergaming.pbwiki.com) and a blog site (http://exergamenetwork.blogspot.com). TEN is also established on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with queries directed to: info@exergamenetwork.org

Call for QUALITY PE!

7-29-10: Check out what the new Exec Dir. of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition says about the need for quality PE. She didn't mention exergaming, but you can see how it could fit in several areas of PE.

Ernie

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Fighting Childhood Obesity

Posted: 28 Jul 2010 05:22 AM PDT


As the Executive Director of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition I am profoundly aware of the importance of making physical activity and nutrition accessible and affordable for all Americans, especially children. This is a multifaceted problem, and I’ll address several dimensions of this issue in this discussion.

Availability of facilities that provide healthy, affordable food in our communities is a necessity. If we do not have facilities within our neighborhoods where we can obtain fresh fruits and vegetables at affordable prices, then kids are going to continue to buy the Twinkies. We’ve got to incent our retail establishments to be able to come into communities. I think we’ve seen success where we’ve put forth the effort in this area.

The school environment has a strong influence on whether physical activity and nutrition are accessible to children. Kids spend a good part of their days, weeks, and years in school. We’ve got to continue pushing for policy change as it relates to physical education and school meals.

In many cases we are going in the wrong direction. Physical education is being cut out of schools, and it is so very important. Many states are passing policies mandating physical activity. This time could be recess, before or after school programs, or physical education. The unintended consequence we are hearing from school officials is “we are doing our 15 minutes of recess and then kids are walking between classes, so we are just going to cut PE because nobody said we have to do PE.” Physical education is a curricular area. It is an educational area that should be taught by a certified physical education teacher. It is not recess.

When advocates like myself come in and say we need more physical education, what we are really saying is we need more quality PE.

We know it can be done. Often we hear that test scores are the priority and we only have so many minutes in each school day, but we have examples of schools that have made it a priority where kids are getting 30 minutes of physical education every day and their test scores are increasing. For more information regarding this, reference the Centers for Disease Control and the National Association for Sport and Physical Education report on academics and physical education. There is an increasing body of research that shows definitively that kids who are physically active perform better academically. It can decrease their delinquency and behavioral issues, as well as help them concentrate so they tend to perform better on tests.

Has your organization worked to improve access to the health of America’s children through physical activity and nutrition? How? To learn how you can get involved, visit www.presidentschallenge.org and become a President’s Challenge Advocate today.

Note: The President’s Council’s name was recently changed by Executive Order from President Obama to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition (PCFSN) in recognition of the fact that good nutrition must go hand in hand with fitness and sports participation in order to achieve a healthy lifestyle.