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Monday, February 8, 2010
Seeking Game-Changing Solutions to Childhood Obesity
It seems recently the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture hosted a workshop to gather insight from leading experts in the fields of gaming and technology to inform the development of a nutrition game-design challenge.
The Healthy Kids Challenge is a call to American entrepreneurs, software developers, and students to use a recently released USDA nutrition data set to create innovative, fun, and engaging web-based learning applications that motivate kids, and their parents, to eat more healthfully and be more physically active.
Some of the major design-related themes that emerged from the Workshop are:
Goal - potential for games – powered by nutrition data – to change behavior in our target segment
Incentives - government limitations on the size of the prize ($3000)
Final Products - spectrum of potential final products (ideas, game story boards, working prototypes, and market-ready
“final” products)
Commitment - incorporating nutrition data in already-developed games, faculty assigning class time towards building
nutrition games, or organizations spreading the word about the contest.
The Healthy Kids Challenge is a call to American entrepreneurs, software developers, and students to use a recently released USDA nutrition data set to create innovative, fun, and engaging web-based learning applications that motivate kids, and their parents, to eat more healthfully and be more physically active.
Some of the major design-related themes that emerged from the Workshop are:
Goal - potential for games – powered by nutrition data – to change behavior in our target segment
Incentives - government limitations on the size of the prize ($3000)
Final Products - spectrum of potential final products (ideas, game story boards, working prototypes, and market-ready
“final” products)
Commitment - incorporating nutrition data in already-developed games, faculty assigning class time towards building
nutrition games, or organizations spreading the word about the contest.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
ExerGames: Not Just Another Health Craze!
The author, Katt Mollar in this article, examines exergames and how they can help the global epidemic of obesity, which she refers to as "globesity".
Obesity is a global epidemic and serious public health problem. Research has shown that obesity increases the risks for many diseases from cardiovascular disorders, to arthritis, to sleep disorders and cancer and it can be associated with serious psychosocial problems.
Research was undertaken and revealed that children were six times more likely to take to exercise if it involved a video game.
There have been several studies examining exergaming in the past couple of years, some key findings included:
(1) Calories burned and heart rates increase after engaging in exergames when compared with seated video games.
(2) The amount of energy spent doing exergames is equivalent to doing moderate-intensity walking.
(3) Although the energy spent in exergaming doubles that when doing seated video gaming, the former does not equal the energy used to doing the sport itself.
(4) Little movement is better than no movement.
But a very important point the author makes in her article is - if the choice is between moving and not moving at all then the alternative of exergaming is indeed preferable.
Obesity is a global epidemic and serious public health problem. Research has shown that obesity increases the risks for many diseases from cardiovascular disorders, to arthritis, to sleep disorders and cancer and it can be associated with serious psychosocial problems.
Research was undertaken and revealed that children were six times more likely to take to exercise if it involved a video game.
There have been several studies examining exergaming in the past couple of years, some key findings included:
(1) Calories burned and heart rates increase after engaging in exergames when compared with seated video games.
(2) The amount of energy spent doing exergames is equivalent to doing moderate-intensity walking.
(3) Although the energy spent in exergaming doubles that when doing seated video gaming, the former does not equal the energy used to doing the sport itself.
(4) Little movement is better than no movement.
But a very important point the author makes in her article is - if the choice is between moving and not moving at all then the alternative of exergaming is indeed preferable.
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