An Active, Healthy Body-Learning Success!

I am forever grateful to the relevant news article sleuthing of Phil Lawler - he continues to enlighten me with great news feeds. The most recent article he sent is from a great article by Cynthia Bowers, "Teach A Healthy Body, Get A Healthy Mind."

The article describes the use of a fitnessgram in schools as part of a Texas experiment that mandates daily physical education and annual fitness tests for the state's 2.4 million kids ages 8 to 18. We wish every District could enjoy the standards now in place in Texas.

“Now that they have those standards, it’s like a wake-up call for them,” said George Nunez, a P.E. teacher. “That gives them an incentive to push.”

Like many such activity mandates and initiatives, the inspiration was soaring youth obesity rates. In fact - that was one inspiration for our program, Generation FIT that inspired Exerlearning.

Like we found, the Texas study set out to prove physically fit kids make for better students - and the results are in. "After just one year officials say Texas school kids are performing better on standardized tests. And as fitness rates rose, absentee rates dropped, and so did reports of discipline problems. And there is a direct correlation between more cardiovascular activity and better grades. At the top performing schools - where at least 90 percent of the kids pass the state assessments tests - 80 percent of the students are fit. And at the poorest performing schools? Only 40 percent make the fitness grade."

Texas educators now believe the harder they can push the kids to become more physically fit, the harder the kids will push themselves in the classroom. Try it - like the team at Naperville High using Learning readiness PE - the results change lives in many ways.

Funds (Finally) for Title I Programs

Delivering programs that guarantee success for struggling students is not a simple matter.

“It’s a really complex problem, and no single thing ... is guaranteed success,” said Caitlin Scott, who has studied states’ school improvement efforts for the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based research and advocacy group that is tracking implementation of the NCLB law. “There’s not just one thing you can purchase.”
For schools, purchasing anything is a tough road in these budgetary times. We've worked hard and have developed quantitative research that proves ExerLearning works (ask us for the full research summary). We're pleased that the school improvement section of the NCLB law will receive a sudden infusion of money that many in the education field could not have expected before the nation’s economy fell into crisis, prompting the stimulus package.
The new measure appropriates $6.5 billion in fiscal 2009 and again in fiscal 2010 for the NCLB law’s Title I program, which serves schools with high numbers or percentages of disadvantaged students. In each fiscal year, $1.5 billion is reserved for the so-called school improvement program under Title I.
Take some time to explore exactly how ExerLearning via a "plug and play" computer peripheral, the FootPOWR pad can change the paradigm of what learning looks like in math and reading classes.

Stemming the tide of dropouts will require turning around our low-performing schools,” President Obama said in a March 10 speech at a meeting of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. We can provide an effective and extremely economical solution to delivering at-risk students in grades 5-12 who are "ready to learn." When these students adopt FootGaming (the easiest Exerlearning solution) in 10 minute sessions each 2-3 hours we find that:

• Attendance and engagement increase


• Leadership and confidence increase


• Stress, anger and depression decrease


• Teachers can do what they do best for at-risk students when they are ready to learn, the FootGaming way

[Steps toward success could include] using school interventions that have proved successful elsewhere, said Alex Medler, the vice president of research and analysis for the Colorado Children’s Campaign, a Denver-based advocacy group that helps run school improvement programs. Our five years of field studies using Generation FIT and its ExerLearning processes lead to the FootPOWR peripheral. It's a tech tool worth exploring as you create your 2009-2010 technology, reading, math and PE mandate strategies.

Funding For Exerlearning

Finally - the time is right for teachers to grab some of the stimulus funds and re-invent what learning looks like in a 21st Century ACTIVE classroom. Too often we look for funding for physical activity in the very limited (even non-existent) PE budget. The FootPOWR peripheral changes the paradigm completely. (Resources for Teachers)

“If you think this is the time to get ahead of the curve and to show education technology can be creative, then there are opportunities” in the stimulus package, said Keith R. Krueger, the chief executive officer of the Washington-based Consortium for School Networking. “If we don’t do this, then shame on us, and we’re going to get rolled over.” ExerLearning via the FootPOWR peripheral is one way to be highly creative - and tremendously effective.

The $650 million in the Enhancing Education Through Technology fund will be added to the program’s current $267 million budget for fiscal 2008 and will be spread over two years. A minimum of 25 percent of that money must be spent on professional development; the rest may be spent on the program’s goals of improving K-12 student achievement through technology.

In a time when we work so hard to use conventional tools to impact student success why not take some time to step back and connect some new dots. Brain research clearly demonstrates how academic success, more productivity, increased engagement and addressing the needs of our most challenged students requires more physical activity daily and regularly throughout the learning day.

We can help you with a customized solution. Simply CONTACT US now.