FootGaming to a Healthier Brain and Body

It just takes a quick visit to the FootGaming website to discover dozens of reasons that FootGaming helps with cognition, balance, energy and a healthy brain. At school, in the workplace and at home you can easily add calorie-using activity to your favorite computer game fun. We have measured calorie use by FootGamers aged 9-87 in the range of 150-350 calories an hour as they played their way through Peggle, Zuma, Chuzzle and Bejeweled Twist. Little did we know what a game-changing opportunity this could be for gamers in need of a healthier body weight.
Carol McCall — a research actuary at Humana — culled through national health care data and the data from Humana’s members, and here is what she found. On average, the annual per-pound cost of being overweight — that is, the added cost per added pound of the overweight and the obese — is $19.39. The cost increases with age. For 25-year-olds, it averages $10.25 for every overweight pound. By age 64, it increases to $26.32. (On average, overweight people are 29 pounds overweight; the obese are 82 pounds overweight.) For someone age 25, the added annual health care cost is $209 for the overweight and $960 for the obese. By age 64, this grows to $610 extra for the overweight and $2,300 for the obese. Specifically Humana estimates these costs at the following for 2009: · $19.39 in added health care costs for every overweight pound; · $1,037.64 for every overweight individual; · $127 billion added to the national health care bill. Why this impacts the national healthcare crisis There are more than 122 million overweight and obese Americans between the ages of 20 and 65. On average, their additional health care costs are $534 per year for an overweight person and $1,614 for an obese person. Those costs add up to a $127 billion crisis. The increase in obesity prevalence – going from 23 percent to 33 percent between 1994 and 2004 – added $34 billion to the annual health care bill. A person who is 25 and obese today, and remains obese until they’re 65, will average $179,000 more in health care costs (in 2009 dollars, assuming health care inflation of 4 percent a year) over those 40 years. There is a way to get out of this national problem The good news is that Humana’s data also indicates that just a small change – a reduction of 276 calories a day for the overweight – makes a big difference. Cutting that little from each day’s intake would start moving millions of Americans from the category of overweight to healthy. By adding a 10-15 minute Footgaming break throughout the day it's easy to use 276 calories having fun and re-energizing. It's also tough to snack or drink a soda while Footgaming. For most people this means that mindless calorie intake is easily reduced as well. Start FootGaming today!

Cool Game Design Contest - Add FootPOWR

Recently a team of 6th graders from Bend, Oregon entered a state-wide game design contest for grades 6-12. They came in second.
While their game was really cool - they got a LOT of points for their creativer user-interface. They played the game using a FootPOWR peripheral. Horray for the team! And their creative coach Sarah C.
Here is a chance for you to do a similar thing. Once you have a FootPOWR you can re-invent the game play of any game that uses a mouse or select keyboard input. Learn more here.
Please share your stories after you enter this contest at the Learning Games Network.
(This is from Henry Jenkins' blog) From the Learning Games Network (LGN) comes an interesting inspiration for user-generated content. A recently established 501(c) (3) non-profit organization, established by former MIT CMS Director of Special Projects Alex Chisholm, the MIT Education Arcade's Eric Klopfer and Scot Osterweil, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Kurt Squire, LGN was formed to spark innovation in the design and use of video games for learning. In addition to bringing together an integrated network of educators, designers, media producers, and academic researchers who all have a hand in creating and distributing games for learning, they're also bringing forth opportunities for youth to contribute to conversations, research, and development. It's a no brainer for today's students to share their perspectives in a more participatory role as the future of education is shaped.The first of two efforts is a video contest, notable in its invitation to students to help inform educators and designers with their own thoughts on video games as tools for learning. Requiring entrants to create their own two-to-three minute YouTube videos, the contest offers two themes from which students can choose.(1) The first challenge asks them to describe an "aha moment" they've personally encountered: "If you've experienced that spark of realization, that moment of epiphany between an idea from a game and something you learned -- at school, at home, or anywhere else -- tell us about it in your video."(2) The second puts students in the role of teacher or coach, asking them to describe anidea for a learning game they would employ to help others learn: "What kind of game would it be? What would it help players learn? Why would your video game be a better way to learn something? In your video, tell us what challenges players would face and how they would learn from them."Contest rules can be found at http://http://www.aha-moment.org/. Students must be 13 years old and above to enter; there are separate categories for middle school, high school, and post-secondary students. Thanks to sponsorship by AMD, the first place prize for each category is a 16-inch HP Pavilion dv6 series notebook, powered by an AMD Turion™ X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile Processor. Deadline for submissions is midnight on July 31, 2009.

Strong Voice on the Hill

I was fortunate to meet Julia Loughran, a Vice President at iConecto – Gaming4Health.com, at the fifth Games for Health conference last week in Boston. Her session on advergaming caught my interest. More than that, her understanding of how exergaming can help us inspire more people to "choose to move" during formerly sedentary experiences perked my interest.

Take the time to read a bit on her blog - here's a bit from a recent post:

When it comes right down to it, our health and the reform of our health behaviors rests in our own hands. We have the tools, the information, and now hundreds of health eGames that can help us live healthier and longer lives. Do we need to wait for the U.S. government to prescribe these games (which I understand will take years of slogging through regulatory barriers and miles of bureaucratic paperwork), or can we all just go out and start taking advantage of the great stuff already out there?

I agree wholeheartedly! We can all choose to move, make small choices that bring long term (even fun-to-acquire) change in health, quality of life and abundance of energy.

Please take the time to become a follower of Julia's blog (and this one too!) Our collective voices can create powerful momentum - one story at a time.

Choose to Move, FootPOWRed Health

Are we making unconscious decisions about our health (and that of our families) via the butt-grabbing inertia of our desk-chair, couch, driver's seat and wherever we choose to interact with "screens?" Kathy E. Read recently wrote a thought-provoking piece in the Modesto Bee (4/26/2009). She's taking a strong stance on our collective US choice to eat far from the "heart-smart" ideal and to sit, drive and couch rather than choosing to move.

While a great deal of what I write about in this and the Exerlearning blog connects physical activity with loads of benefits for health, fitness and learning, Kathy adds strong impetus for employers to consider the "choose to move" option, "The U.S. economic output takes a staggering hit when chronically ill workers take sick days for maladies that might have been prevented by eating healthier and engaging in daily exercise.

Their lack of commitment to wellness reduces the available supply of labor, drives up the cost of goods and services, and slashes billions off the gross domestic product. Consider just a few of the deadly consequences:
By midcentury, the preventable impact of the seven deadliest chronic diseases -- diabetes, pulmonary conditions such as asthma, hypertension, mental disorder, heart disease, cancer and stroke -- will cost our country $6 trillion a year.
More than half of all Americans -- some 153 million men, women and children -- have at least one chronic disease.
All told, chronic diseases cost the U.S. economy $1.3 trillion annually and wreak untold anguish and disruption in people's lives. In California alone, the tab is more than $100 billion a year."

If you already suffer from one of these chronic ailments you can attest to the impact it has on your life. Do you still have plenty of reasons for not exercising daily and not choosing a diet full of good-for-you choices?

As I bring the FootPOWR pad to various workplaces I find an array of cultures. Some like the one at ClearChoice in Bend, OR led by a charismatic spark plug, Cynthia Kane, provide daily inspiration, team building activity, energetic walking programs and success! (Do not miss this video)

Other might have a full fitness facility on site, with dust and fewer than a handful of employees enjoying it regularly.

We hope to build a bridge to more activity at work and at home via FootGaming and our resources. There's no cost to join FootGaming for home, school and workplace. Discover a pure-fun way to "choose to move," and set our national "health" snowball rolling.

Kids love FootGaming

Play Casual Games at Work and Save $$$

Given the Chance Would We Choose Activity?

FootPOWR in the Workplace

Give the Detectives a New Mouse!

All the projects I have worked on over the past decade have been focused on connection beneficial physical activity to the mostly sedentary experience of playing video games - especially those delivered by the computer. Generation FIT started the exploration, followed by ExerLearning, and finally the FootPOWR peripheral launched FootGaming.

Video games are a major part of youth culture. Kaiser Permanente developed a game that teaches kids about physical activity. It's a great place to begin - right where kids want to be. I have played "The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective." It's engaging, full of solid information and has games and graphics that kids find compelling.
Kaiser Permanente supports the pediatric recommendation of no more than one to two hours of “screen time” per day, which is why the game automatically shuts off after 20 minutes and reminds kids to get active. This engaging game, with messages about healthy eating and physical activity developed by Kaiser Permanente’s weight-management experts, is an innovative method that hasn’t been tried before. At FootGaming, we can make the game even more innovative.

All junior food detectives get secret training on how to eat right and exercise. They can investigate fun games like Whack A Snack, Soccer, and Zap the TV. The conventional way to enjoy these games is to use the mouse to click the interactive elements in this game.

FootGamers play a wildly different way. By simply plugging the FootPOWR peripheral into the computer's USB port, the gamer can stand and move their feet to move the cursor on the game screen.

Suddenly physical activity happens simultaneously with the game play. Because the FootPOWR pad automatically logs every step the players generate, gamers can see how many steps, miles and calorie loss they log during the game play. It make good sense to play this innovative game collection with physical activity.
We invite your comments and questions. If you are a teacher or a family already enjoying The Amazing Food Detective, we'd love to see photos of you playing the FootPOWR way! E-mail us what you'd like to share.

Benefits of FootGaming in the Classroom and Computer Lab (and at home)

Our bodies are very much a part of all our learning and learning is not an isolated "brain" function. Every nerve and cell is a network contributing to our intelligence and our learning capability. Exercise triggers the release of BDNF a brain-derived neurotropic factor that enables one neuron to communicate with another. Students who sit for longer than twenty minutes experience a decrease in the flow of BDNF. FootGaming is one way students can trigger sharper learning skills. ExerLearning can save you time and FootGaming delivers ExerLearning without adding additional lesson plans or time burdens.
Crossing the midline integrates brain hemispheres to enable the brain to organize itself. When students perform cross lateral activities via use of FootPOWR peripherals, blood flow is increased in all parts of the brain making it more alert and energized for stronger, more cohesive learning. Fun- always a motivator, we can easily add student-incentive and fun to your learning environment.
Examples of how FootGaming via a FootPOWR peripheral connected to a classroom PC can increase both physical activity, fitness and academic success are as follows:
Bilateral movement; Opposition; Spatial Awareness; Movement in different levels; Proprioception; Jumping and Landing; Dynamic balance; Patterning; Spatial concepts These concepts aid the brain in placing words on a page, reading words from left to right, and writing patterns in sequence.
Coordination of the auditory, visual, and kinesthetic senses; Eye tracking for visual-motor control; Development of core muscles to strengthen neural pathways; Sequencing of complex motor skills; Patterning; Problem solving; Directionality. These concepts aid the brain in following the flow of words, sequencing patterns in math and reading, solving problems, and sorting information.
Vestibular Development: Development of inner ear to coordinate of the auditory, visual, and kinesthetic senses; Spatial Awareness; Body control; Dynamic balance; Locomotor skill development; These concepts aid the brain in putting numbers or letters in sequence, discriminating different sounds, placing letters and words in a page, and writing letters in proper proportion.
Tracking of a moving object; Eye-hand and eye-foot coordination; Development of visual fields; Cross lateralization; Patterning; Targets; Joint compression; Dynamic balance; Sequencing of patterns; These concepts aid the brain in processing thought, organizing thoughts in sequence, discriminating likenesses and differences, discriminating sounds, and advancing to higher level thinking.
Higher level of dynamic balance; Complex motor control; Practice and reinforcement of academic content while balancing and moving actively-whole body. Theses concepts aid the brain in anchoring information and improved memory retrieval, preparing the brain to take a test, and combining many skills for higher level thinking.

Sk8ter Families and Active Leisure Fun

Battling a national childhood obesity crisis, educators and curriculum creators have been working hard to structure physical education around activities kids can take home with them and do after school in lieu of spending hours texting and surfing Web sites virtual world and social networking sites.

That philosophy inspired both ExerLearning and FootGaming, Generation FIT and a decade worth of work by fitness leader and educator, Judy Shasek. With young people (and their parents) sitting and enjoying online and computer-based leisure fun for upwards of 9 hours a week, physical activity needs to meet the "digital native' generation where they spend their time. By simply adding a FootPOWR peripheral to a PC adding 30-90 minutes of activity daily is child's play - quite literally!
"Kids are more likely to stay active if they're introduced to a sport or activity they like," said Eric Klassen, who cofounded Skate Pass, the Colorado-based firm that helped start a skateboarding curriculum program used in many schools around the country. Right on Eric!For about $3000 equipment for 20 students can be purchased, often with matching community grants. That's a far cry from the usual reaction to skateboarding teens in a town. It is critical that as we invest in school-based activity programs we consider what kids - and their families- self-select as leisure fun. By adding physical activity to that time we make a huge step forward in the "energy in/energy out" equation that threatens our collective national wellness.

"We're seeing much more [of families skateboarding together] at municipal skate parks," said Miki Vuckovich, executive director of the Tony Hawk Foundation, based in Vista, Calif. The foundation supports the creation of public skate parks in low-income communities across the nation.
"People in their 30s or 40s, many of them grew up skateboarding, and many of them are bringing their kids. We've had to adjust our strategy," he said. "Rather than presenting skateboarding as a youth-oriented activity, we're showing that it's a family activity."
He said a generation of skaters who came to the sport during an explosion of its popularity in the 1980s still consider skateboarding a lifestyle, not a hobby. "Young people today are being introduced to it as readily as soccer or baseball," Vuckovich said. "It's become part of the mainstream. Today, we have parents, business owners, city council members who are skateboarders. As a result, more skateboard parks are being built."
He cited statistics saying that 65 public skate parks existed in the United States in 1996. Today, there are around 2,500.

What does your family love to do for active fun - and what healthy choices in your eating might that inspire? Even if you simply replace a sugary soda with a nice glass of water after your active fun you can save more than 200 calories as a bonus to the active play. (Great RWJ article you'll enjoy) Choice and balance - please share your story with us.