High School Gym Dance Revolution?

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DDR is taking over! What?  The popular arcade game Dance Dance Revolution will now be a part of high school education in Hawaii.  Well, its not a whole class, but it is part of the gym curiculum.  They are hoping that this will help student see value in other exercises than just the traditional team sports.  Here is what they are saying about this:

"For a lot of kids, team sports are not meaningful," Maeda said. "A lot of kids don't participate because of old-school rules that only the best can play, and if you're not skilled, you sit out or you're the last to be picked. It's not appropriate anymore. Physical education is not just for the athletically gifted kids."

DDR is donating their equipment to over 284 schools in Hawaii as part of this concept. 

I am unsure about this idea.  On one hand, I think it is good that the high schools are recognizing the gap in between the sports kids and the non sports kids, and trying to bridge that problem.  On the other hand I dont think a video game is the answer to this problem.  Most likely the kids who are good at dancing, or at least good at the video game will start to take attention in this activitie and still leave the other kids intimidated and reluctant to play the game. 

Also, the equipment needed to play Dance Dance Revolution is quite bulky, and it is unlikely that many kids would want this at their home.  So to me, it almost seems that the class is just training kids to play more video games.  Kids will probably just be more amped up to play a non-physical video game when they get home.  Not to mention that I feel that all these video games are hurting people's attention spans and general thought processes. ha. That can't be too good for a school.

And why do they need a video game to experience dancing as a physical activity anyway?  Why don't they just get the kids to learn dancing.  Like a co-ed dance instructional class.  Real life dancng can be a great workout, and it could help some of the more anti-social kids come out of their shell a lottle bit and learn to feel confident in themselves.  I dont think any of this can be accomplished by isolating one's self in a video game. 

I would be curious to see how this pans out.

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