GOMF - Super Star

One of the GOMF teens, Neil, is working hard to continue his education at film school. Writing a mystery-adventure screenplay keeps him partially engaged, but his mind is always working on new ideas for our project collection. Recently he suggested a "live" series of improv-type events that would star a giant carrot hero vs various junk food characters.

The actors will be from Team GOMF and the event will take place during Summer "Munch 'n Music" in Bend. Podcast viewings of the live action willl be broadcast and the "best of the best" series will be developed into a DVD we can share with teachers via our GOMF Creative idea site.

NEED: Costumes! Does anyone have a carrot, a candy bar, an apple or other "food" costume that would fit a 5' or taller person? If so, please let us know. We will buy or borrow!

Please help us make progress in our mission. It is complex, take a look at recent news from RWJ Foundation:

New Mexico lawmakers are considering a bill that would add a 1 percent tax to television sets and video game consoles. [We rally behind a different direction and suggest that video games can be played in a way that active exercise is part of the process - do you wonder how that might happen? Please e-mail us and request information on the NRG Mat]

The state would use the resulting tax funds to support outdoor educational programming through a state "No Child Left Inside" initiative. AMNews reports that experts say that obesity is a far more complex problem than smoking and laws targeting obesity have faced significant opposition by critics who cite the dearth of evidence supporting legislative interventions. For instance, Kelly Brownell of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University notes that tobacco involves just one product and few companies, while obesity involves thousands of companies and products, making it "hard to know exactly how to change" (Elliott, AMNews, 3/24/08 )

Please take a look at what teens hope to accomplish - by changing awareness and the actual culture surrounding CHOICES that could reduce overweight and impact wellness.

Exergames and Brains

Every day we get more and more e-mails from teachers who have discovered how and why to add exergames to the classroom learning environment. It might be valuable to have a community site where you all can exchange ideas andquestions - re-inventing Exerlearning together. We created a Wetpaint site - it's very easy to add your own webpages, class websites, questions, comments and ideas with a simple click and type.

Visit now - http://generationfit.wetpaint.com/

It's just as easy to e-mail us through this website as it is to e-mail info@generation-fit.com . We respond quickly either way.

Stand UP and LEARN!

Since the advent of TVs, VCRs and computers, we have seen an increase in anxiety and affective disorders that mirror the ADD / ADHD increase. It's not just kids - adults have been affected as well. Movement and balance appear to be the key to appropriate brain development. Physical activity and cognition are essentially the same process, as we shall explain later.
We are faced today with children - and grown-ups - who appear unmanageable or unresponsive. They fail in school, can't sit still, can't spell and won't listen. Many parents would prefer that their children not take medications, but are at a loss as to available and effective alternatives.
What makes humans really unique is the fact that we stand upright and the fact that we have a large brain. So our ancestors seven million years ago had this large human brain! But they didn't speak, they didn't use tools, they didn't have complex social groups or families at the time.
Why did they grow a large brain when they really didn't "need" it?
The brain is receptor driven. This means the brain operates and develops in response to stimuli, such as sound, light, pressure and temperature. The majority of these receptors are found in the muscle spindles of the postural muscles, especially the intrinsic muscles of the spine. They are stretch receptors that are stimulated by the effects of gravity, especially by upright movement under gravity. Gravity is the only stimulus that is constant over time. It does not change.
Walking on two feet is very difficult. It takes a lot of balance, coordination, synchronization and timing of muscles. It takes a tremendous amount of motor control to be able to do that. It takes constant output from the brain and constant feedback to the brain. When we are in an upright position these receptors constantly fire back to the brain. They stimulate the brain. It appears that as we stood in an upright position or as we became more and more upright, our brain grew larger and larger in response to this constant stimulus of gravity.
Decreased stimulation from postural muscles to cerebellum and brain, anything that takes us away from standing and being upright, will affect our brain in an adverse way. It will slow down the temporal processing speed of the brain, or parts of the brain, with resulting "clumsiness" and cognitive developmental delays. Generation FIT and ExerLearning’s foundation is solidly built upon the need to get students out of the desk or chair and working in an upright, standing position.

Let us hear your comments and questions - the solutions are both cost effective and easy to implement.

$14 Toward Better Math and Fit Kids

Why add MORE screen time for today's screen-hungry students? It seems counter intuitive especially in the wake of a recent article by Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (RWJ) A study in the March issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine suggests that limiting screen time can help overweight children reduce their calorie intake and move toward a healthier weight status. Please read the summary below - but continue on for our $14 solution.


To study the impact of controlling children's screen time, researchers from the University at Buffalo assigned 70 overweight children ages 4 to 7 who watched television or played computer games at least 14 hours a week to either an intervention group or a control group. For the intervention group, researchers installed a monitoring device on participants' televisions to gradually reduce weekly screen time by 10 percent each week until their screen time was reduced by 50 percent.


Researchers did not limit screen time for children in the control group, but did give their parents tips for reducing TV viewing and computer use. After two years, the researchers found that children in the intervention group had reduced their screen time by nearly 17.5 hours per week, while children in the control group had a reduction of only 5.2 hours per week. Although the researchers found no difference in physical activity levels between the two groups, children in the intervention group lost more weight than those in the control group. Specifically, 30 percent of the intervention group achieved a healthy BMI by the end of the two-year study, compared with 18 percent of the control group. The researchers speculate that cutting screen time reduces eating prompted by television ads, as well as mindless eating. (Reinberg, HealthDay/Yahoo! News, 3/3/08; Steenhuysen, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 3/3/08; Epstein et al., Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, March 2008


The $14 solution: Go buy Tetris for the Gen FIT PS2 you've got in your classroom. Select 3-4 students who are "wiggly", maybe those who love to draw and doodle, and also have a tough time in math. Plug in the FootPOWR peripheral NOT the conventional game controller.

1. Give these student 10 minutes a day for two weeks to play Tetris while using the FootPOWR pad


2. Have them note comments about difficulty of playing the game that way and what their top scores are


3. It's best if they practice Tetris regularly before their math lessons


4. After two weeks have a "reflection" discussion with the students


5. Notice comments from parents


6. Prepare to be amazed - why will you be amazed? That's Exerlearning - for full research paper e-mail us. For Exercise and Cognition: Short Summary, e-mail us. For more about FootGaming and Teacher Resources

Briefly: A bit of an overview on why this strategy works:

Spatial Awareness
Spatial awareness is, very simply, an organized awareness of the objects in the space around us, and also an awareness of our body’s position in space. Without this awareness, we would not be able to pick food up from our plates and put it in our mouth. We would have trouble reading, because we could not see the letters in their correct relation to each other and to the page. Athletes would not have the precise awareness of the position of other players on the field and the movement of the ball, which is necessary to play effectively.
Spatial awareness requires that we have a model of the three dimensional space around us and it requires that we can integrate information from all our senses.

Studies have suggested a link between a well-developed sense of spatial awareness and artistic creativity, as well as success in math. It can also be important in the development of abstract thought. The ability to organize and classify abstract mental concepts is related to the ability to organize and classify objects in space. Visual thinkers, in particular, will tend to use their visual imagination to organize abstract thought.
Because spatial awareness is so important in all activities of human life, from the most basic to the most advanced, deficiencies in spatial awareness can hold people back from achieving their true potential. However, because spatial awareness requires integrating the information from the different senses into the three-dimensional model of the world provided by the vestibular system, activities which refine the vestibular system and develop sensory integration can refine all aspects of brain processing.