Here is a safe, high-tech way to safely enjoy the fireworks this coming holiday weekend. :-)

Posted: June 30th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

OK. I am guilty of jumping all over exertainment being introduced into schools without having a full understanding of it.

I received a thoughtful comment to my earlier blog post , from Ernie Medina, Jr. of the Beaver Medical Group and XRtainment Zone LLC, who is actually involved in the project in the Redlands School District and works along side Sue Buster.

An exerpt from his reply:

The kids I see through my work, however, are a different story. They are overweight, which makes it difficult for them to participate in these kinds of activities. They usually don’t have the skills to do well in these sports.

The proverbial “fat kid” is always picked last on any team-related sports like baseball, soccer, or basketball, thus further depressing their self-esteem and confidence.

…

Not only that, many schools are reducing PE time to barely once a week. And just recently, there was a news article about how during recess time, many schools let their kids eat their snacks instead of playing and being active.

…

The best thing to do is play them for yourself, and see kids–especially overweight kids–play them, and compare it to their participation in traditional PE, and you’ll be amazed at the difference that will soon be obvious. We’ve seen that in our clinic with our own Kid Fit class, and now we want to see it happen in our school setting so we can reach a wider range of kids, especially those who are unfit and overweight.

It’s worth reading his entire rebuttal. One thing that may have come out of this discussion is that Ernie has apparently created a Blogger account and has posted his comment as his first post in his own blog. I hope he keeps on blogging his experiences and progress for all of us to follow and learn from.

I hope that he continues to have the success that he claims so far. If indeed kids do like this game and if it does make them lose weight and be healthier then that is certainly a good thing. If these kids do become more confident and if it teaches them to enjoy more outdoor and team sports, then that’s an even greater thing.

Posted: June 27th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

Nothing original to say in this post, but here are some interesting links.

When ‘digital bullying’ goes too far (CNET)

How the Web changes your reading habits (Christian Science Monitor)

24/7, Teens Get the Message (LA Times) (about kids always being connected)

Hat tip to Net Family News for all three of those links.

Posted: June 25th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

From a story on CNet,

A 13-year-old girl has become the youngest author to be published in South Africa’s main medical journal for her research on “PlayStation thumb”.

Safura Abdool Karim interviewed 120 of her former schoolmates for a science project about whether they suffered problems after playing computer games.

Symptoms of “PlayStation Thumb” include blisters numbness and tingling, mainly in the thumb, she wrote.

…

She said she herself did not own a PlayStation because they were a “waste of time”.

This put a smile on my face. It’s pretty funny. I can’t want to see the look on my son’s face when I show him this news! I look forward to reading the whole paper.

If anybody finds it online, please drop me a not or comment here. I can’t seem to find it, so it may not be available online yet.

Posted: June 24th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2

Typically when you read a story like this, it’s because the parents are drug addicts and were too busy tripping to care for their child. But in this case, online games was the drug of choice.

Infant Daughter Dies as Parents Play Online Game

Insane…

I’m not implying that online games are the problem here… But what on Earth happens to people who so completely lose themselves in the game that they forget about reality? About 8 or more years ago, I had a copy of Doom, and after I was too tired to work on my studies, I would occasionally fire up Doom. Hours later, I would realize that I had to get up the next morning and go to work. It would be 2:30AM. What was I doing!

Posted: June 23rd, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 3

Redlands, California school district bringing in PlayStations into the classrooms for exertainment. Why?

“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.

Does Ms. Buster also blame food for the obesity problem? Seems that kids like to use video games and eat food. So let’s bring in more video games and also more food. Of course not. Video games aren’t deserving of blame. The problem is that kids spend too much time playing video games.

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.

…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.

They’re going to replace traditional physical education with video game-based exertainment. I think that’s insane. A stationary bike can provide aerobic exercise, but it doesn’t do anything for developing coordination, agility, and physical skills that you can get by playing basketball, baseball, tennis, kickball, hockey… It’s simple aerobic exercise combine with the mind-numbing qualities of video games.

When they talk of special controllers to teach sudents how to throw a baseball correctly, I’m simply floored. When I was a kid, we had coaches and phys. ed. teachers that fulfilled this role very well.

“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.

So… what do the schools do… Let’s hook them up to video games indoors, and put them on exercise bikes.

“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.”

…”could be related“. Gee… Do you think? Why schools are signing these contracts is a whole other topic that I won’t get into here.

Schools are actively bringing in junk food and putting less emphasis on quality physical education, and now they’re going to spend over $10,000 to bring in video games for exertainment.

Onto another aspect that I think is missing the point:

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.”

“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.”

But competition is healthy in many respects, and it’s most certainly a significant component in the real world. When you apply for a job, or are bucking for a promotion, you’ll be competing. Businesses compete. There is global competition. Competition gives us better products and innovation. By helping the kids to avoid competition and the disappointment of failure that accompanies it, they are missing a valuable lesson in how to accept defeat and learn how to deal with it with a positive attitude, and then go on to work harder, or find another area of their life where they might be more successful. You’re also taking away from the students the thrill and pride that they might feel with succeeding and winning. Those are all important experiences. (For a real hoot, read this article on some schools that are replacing red correction pens with purple ones, because red is too frightening to some kids and harms their self-esteem)

This story covered in Wired News.

UPDATE: After hearing from one of the people involved with the Redlands School District, (see the comments on this entry), I have posted a followup in Exertainment Expert Responds

Posted: June 18th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 3

“…the largest group of new users of the Internet are children 2 to 5.

“Young students don’t differentiate between the face-to-face world and the Internet world,” said Susan Patrick, who oversees technology for the department. “They were born into the age of the Internet. They see it as part of the continuum of the way life is today.”

AP article via the Indy Star.

Posted: June 13th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

While this entrying isn’t specificly about families, it is an interesting look at how technology might affect us all in the future.

My friend Brian forwarded me a link to a very interesting Flash presentation about “Epic 2014“. It is very intriguing.

I’m not convinced it will take 9 years though.

Posted: June 13th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

Well little Johnny, I guess it’s OK for you to get Grand Theft Auto 3, since
Amazon thinks that it’s a family game…

Of course, Grand Theft Auto 3 is a game that’s full of adult themes, violence, guns and blood. Somebody made a mistake at Amazon apparently. Hopefully they fix it before too many parents unsuspectingly allow their younger teens and smaller kids get this one. It’s currently #4 in the Kids & Family category.

Update on June 10: It’s now at #3 in the list. I did submit a note yesterday to Amazon that I didn’t believe it was an appropriate product for that category. I haven’t heard back yet.

Update on June 27: It’s now at #2 in the list. Still not response or action from Amazon on my suggestion that they pull it from the category

Update on July 10: Back on the 27th, I submitted a second “alert” to Amazon. Today, it’s still at #2 in the list. Either those submissions on the bottom of the page are going into the bit-bucket, or they just don’t care.

Update on August 18: Well, sometime back in July, Amazon did finally remove GTA from the “Kids and Family” listings… Hopefully that has some effect on reducing the number of “kids” who will end up with their hands on the game. At least it will eliminate the purchases by parents who mistakenly think that because it was in the list that it was sanctioned as being good for kids.

Posted: June 9th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

Another hat tip to Question Technology.

I am going to get a copy of
Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv, to add to my summer reading pile.

[...] in the last 30 years, says journalist Richard Louv, children of the digital age have become increasingly alienated from the natural world, with disastrous implications, not only for their physical fitness, but also for their long-term mental and spiritual heath.

Louv argues that
sensationalist media coverage and paranoid parents have literally
"scared children straight out of the woods and fields," while promoting
a litigious culture of fear that favors "safe" regimented sports over
imaginative play. Well-meaning elementary school curricula may teach
students everything there is to know about the Amazon rain forest’s
endangered species, but do little to encourage kids’ personal
relationship with the world outside their own doors. And advances in
technology, while opening up a wealth of "virtual" experiences to the
young, have made it easier and easier for children to spend less time
outside.

Link to Salon interview with Richard Louv

Posted: June 5th, 2005 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 11