Post by letshavetea on Oct 14, 2006 8:58:02 GMT -5
Howdy ya'll
I have been using Getupmove.com as a source to help push this project of mine for four years now, so I thought it'd be fitting to post my project here.
Background on this project.
It all started freshman year (I'm a senior now) and I used DDR in a presentation in health class on obesity and how video games can reduce this issue. Shortly thereafter I helped my Health teacher pick out a good setup for the Junior high school in the area and some good cheap pads.
Sophomore year. My health teacher asked me a lot of questions about DDR and I made up a small paper on how DDR is good for you and such. He submitted it to the school board and then the school board was aware of this game. They shrugged it off thinking it was just a fad. Towards the end of my sophomore year I made another paper, we went to the school board and explained that this game has been around for several years and has a promiseing future (in the console market atleast). It's a good idea to have in schools and such. They considered it, and added funding to the health department so they could supply one of the Elementry schools with a setup. During this year I also Did a report on DDR for my English class. The English teacher was amazed by the game and he saw a lot of good things coming out of it. He let us play DDR during class for about an hour that day.
Junior year. Again my health teacher and I went shopping for a setup. We got a slimline PS2 and DDR Extreme (it has more kiddy songs... so I figured it'd go well for elementry school...) It's now part of their gym class in some way. We had to replace one of the pads at the Junior High. Suprisingly that pad lasted two years. Towards the end of the year my health teacher asked me to actually show DDR to the school board so that they would have a better understanding of the game and be able to see it first hand. I also held a "Game Night" at school where it was primarly Halo 2 LAN. The school librarian helped me out with the idea and Game Night was a success.
Senior year. The school board approved me to display the game to them, however we dont have a date set yet. They are very interested now because of the emails and such they have been getting from the gym teachers at the elementry school on how fun it is and how the kids enjoy it. The school librarian said that she wanted to have another Game Night and have more active games this time rather than just Halo 2. I told her about DDR and gave her some links to different websites with information (mainly www.getupmove.com and www.ddrfreak.com ). She thought it would be an amazing idea and she was all for it. She got a few parents involved and we had a game night tonight. We had 3 DDR stations set up, 3 Xboxes with Halo 2, and a gamecube going with Super Smash bros Melee. The DDR went over very well tonight. Almost everyone in the room tried it (we had a turnout of 25, 10 more than last year's game night). One girl that was there played it constantly all four hours of gamenight. There was almost always 3-5 people playing it at a time, aside from when Pizza came and such. My librarian and the other parents were all thrilled with DDR and would defenately promote us infront of the school board.
That's about everything with this project so far. I have made a lot of progress with this project and I'm really glad to see how well this is working out for me. We have to replace another DDR pad now though at the Junior high (3 year old pad). It's really cool though, to actually know that something I'm doing is effecting the schools in my area. Even if it's something small like this, it's just neat. I've never really cared to improve our schools, but freshman year I set a goal to get DDR into the schools in my area. It looks like it's finally paying off.
I have been using Getupmove.com as a source to help push this project of mine for four years now, so I thought it'd be fitting to post my project here.
Background on this project.
It all started freshman year (I'm a senior now) and I used DDR in a presentation in health class on obesity and how video games can reduce this issue. Shortly thereafter I helped my Health teacher pick out a good setup for the Junior high school in the area and some good cheap pads.
Sophomore year. My health teacher asked me a lot of questions about DDR and I made up a small paper on how DDR is good for you and such. He submitted it to the school board and then the school board was aware of this game. They shrugged it off thinking it was just a fad. Towards the end of my sophomore year I made another paper, we went to the school board and explained that this game has been around for several years and has a promiseing future (in the console market atleast). It's a good idea to have in schools and such. They considered it, and added funding to the health department so they could supply one of the Elementry schools with a setup. During this year I also Did a report on DDR for my English class. The English teacher was amazed by the game and he saw a lot of good things coming out of it. He let us play DDR during class for about an hour that day.
Junior year. Again my health teacher and I went shopping for a setup. We got a slimline PS2 and DDR Extreme (it has more kiddy songs... so I figured it'd go well for elementry school...) It's now part of their gym class in some way. We had to replace one of the pads at the Junior High. Suprisingly that pad lasted two years. Towards the end of the year my health teacher asked me to actually show DDR to the school board so that they would have a better understanding of the game and be able to see it first hand. I also held a "Game Night" at school where it was primarly Halo 2 LAN. The school librarian helped me out with the idea and Game Night was a success.
Senior year. The school board approved me to display the game to them, however we dont have a date set yet. They are very interested now because of the emails and such they have been getting from the gym teachers at the elementry school on how fun it is and how the kids enjoy it. The school librarian said that she wanted to have another Game Night and have more active games this time rather than just Halo 2. I told her about DDR and gave her some links to different websites with information (mainly www.getupmove.com and www.ddrfreak.com ). She thought it would be an amazing idea and she was all for it. She got a few parents involved and we had a game night tonight. We had 3 DDR stations set up, 3 Xboxes with Halo 2, and a gamecube going with Super Smash bros Melee. The DDR went over very well tonight. Almost everyone in the room tried it (we had a turnout of 25, 10 more than last year's game night). One girl that was there played it constantly all four hours of gamenight. There was almost always 3-5 people playing it at a time, aside from when Pizza came and such. My librarian and the other parents were all thrilled with DDR and would defenately promote us infront of the school board.
That's about everything with this project so far. I have made a lot of progress with this project and I'm really glad to see how well this is working out for me. We have to replace another DDR pad now though at the Junior high (3 year old pad). It's really cool though, to actually know that something I'm doing is effecting the schools in my area. Even if it's something small like this, it's just neat. I've never really cared to improve our schools, but freshman year I set a goal to get DDR into the schools in my area. It looks like it's finally paying off.
