A vision creates a winner: a new Interactive Fitness Center could improve reading and overall student achievement.

WHEN PRINCIPAL PATRICIA Monaco of Mohawk Elementary School in rural Pennsylvania asked Lou Ann Miller and Larry Carr, both physical education teachers and wellness instructors, if they had a use for a storage room at the school, they immediately saw potential. Formerly a racquetball court, the room had been used as a computer lab before it was converted to a storage area last school year.

"We jumped all over it," recalls Miller, who has taught at the school for two years. "Our idea was, OK, we're going to put a fitness center in there. We didn't know how we were going to do it. We just had the vision."

That vision was an Interactive Fitness Center, equipped with fun technologies that would motivate elementary students to exercise, such as the popular video game Dance Dance Revolution that has students performing dance moves.

When Miller learned the district won the X-Factor award she was so excited and appreciative that she cried. Miller and Carr are excited about their plans for the new fitness center, hoping not only to improve the students' physical fitness but help struggling readers improve academically.

Fit to Read

Studies show that physical activity can improve cognition, self-esteem and academic performance, Miller says. The Mohawk Area School District in Bessemer, which has about 2,000 students between the K6 school and the Mohawk Junior/Senior High School, lies in a rural community about 60 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. The district plans to conduct a study to see whether increased physical activity using the new fitness center will help improve the academic performance of a group of "reluctant readers"--those students who score in the lowest quadrant on schoolwide reading assessments.

"We are hoping physical activity is not only going to improve their academic performance but is going to be related to higher levels of self-esteem and lower levels of anxiety and stress," Miller says.

But all students, not just those in the study and including those with disabilities as accommodations can be made, will use the Interactive fitness Center. Today's tech-savvy schoolchildren, who have grown up playing video games, need more interactive fitness technologies to capture their interest, Miller says. Too often, entertainment technologies, such as video games, contribute to a sedentary lifestyle as students spend large amounts of time after school sitting in front of a television with a game controller. The idea of the fitness center is to use similar technologies that typically encourage them to sit to get kids excited about physical activity, she says.

Running of riding a stationary bike, which are more adult-style disciplines, are "boring" for tech-savvy students, Miller says. "They are not going to want to do that," she says. "We are going to try to make it fun."

Helping Reluctant Readers

This fall, the school plans to randomly select two groups of "reluctant readers," each with about 20 students for the study. Both groups will participate in physical education, but those in the experimental group will be using the fitness center more frequently than those in the control group, she says.

Although the schedule has not been firmed up yet, the experimental group may use the facility three to five times a week, while other children will use the equipment once a week or once every other week. And depending on scheduling, it's possible that there could be some before- or after-school opportunities for those in the experimental group to use the center as part of the study, she says.

Assistant Superintendent Kathleen Kwolek says that students' body mass index (BMI)--an indicator of obesity--also will be tracked. "The research says there is a link between physical activity and achievement, so we are going to put it to the test," Kwolek says.

The 850-student school uses internal reading assessments at the beginning of each school year and continues testing about every nine weeks. The hope is that the students will improve their reading performance over the course of a year, Kwolek says.

Although BMI is not part of the criteria by which students in the study will be selected, the hope is that the students' BMI will decrease as a result of the center's 21st-century activities.

The district is enlisting the help of selected students from the adjacent Mohawk Junior/Senior High School to serve as "fitness buddies" to mentor and motivate the children in the experimental group as they use the fitness facility, says Kelly Hoffman, a health and physical education teacher at the high school.

The high school students, drawn from an advanced health and wellness class and an independent-study physical education course, will give positive reinforcement to the young children and record data for the study, including, possibly, the children's heart rates to help gauge exertion and ensure that the rates are within the recommended ranges under what constitutes physical exertion.

Looking to Technology

The interactive facility, which will be designed to accommodate up to 25 students at a time, will feature technologies such as the popular video game Dance Dance Revolution. Students perform dance moves by stepping onto electronic pads in response to arrows that appear on the video screen. The arrows, which are synchronized to music, tell players what to do, and the computer keeps track of how well the students' feet keep up, via electronic sensors embedded in the pads. It takes concentration and coordination.

Another interactive technology that entails physical activity is the popular video game system Nintendo Wii, which uses wireless, handheld controllers that respond to students' movements. Unlike traditional joystick games, in which children only exercise their fingers, the Wii games are played through active body movements. If students are playing a Wii tennis game, they would hold the wireless Wii controller in one hand and make the same swinging motion they would if they were hitting a ball on a tennis court.

Sports games like tennis and boxing on the Wii definitely give users a workout, says Mohawk Assistant Principal Lorree Houk. "The boxing game is incredibly strenuous," she said. "It's pretty incredible."

The school, through fundraising, has already purchased one $4,000 Dance Dance Revolution machine and two Wii consoles that together cost about $800, including accessories, Miller says.

Miller hopes to purchase another Dance Dance Revolution machine using some of the $13,000 it raised last school year. She plans to use the $30,000 in X-Factor grant money to purchase additional interactive fitness equipment, with the aim of having the entire facility in place at the end of January.

Although the school is still deciding which technologies to purchase, it is considering buying a Sportwall, a large panel equipped with blinking lights and a digital timer, Miller says. As part of a game, students race to touch the illuminated lights while being timed.

Another device being considered for purchase is the Makoto, she says. Manufactured by Makoto USA, Inc., the device features a triangular arena with three 6-foot, vertical steel posts standing at each point in the triangle. Each of the three posts is equipped with many touch-sensitive lights and is able to produce sounds. Assisted by the sound effects produced from each post, Makoto players use their hands, feet or a stick to hit as many lights before they turn off, testing the students' response time.

The Ultimate X-Factor

Without the X-Factor grant money, it would have taken a few years of additional fundraising to realize the school's vision for an Interactive Fitness Center, according to Mohawk Superintendent Timothy McNamee. "This grant will be wonderful and very timely in that we will be able to kick this project off much sooner," he says.

As part of a remodeling, the district is expanding the room from its current 20-by-30-feet dimensions to a 20-by-40-foot size to provide more space for the various activities. The room is situated between the gym and cafeteria.

Workers already have installed a door between the gym and the fitness room to allow Miller and other physical education teachers easy access. The district also has installed a one-way window between the facility and cafeteria. Although kids eating lunch will be able to watch the children using the equipment, those students using the fitness room won't be able to see into the cafeteria. This will minimize any distraction from being observed, say, for example, while they're hamming it up with Dance Dance Revolution.

The idea is that the students eating lunch will see how fun the equipment is and look forward to using the fitness center themselves, Miller says. And the district plans to lower the high ceiling in the former racquetball court to improve acoustics, she says.

The hope is that the Interactive fitness Center will ignite students' interest in physical activity and teach them about many different ways to keep fit--a lesson that could follow them into adulthood, says Hoffman, the high school teacher who will help coordinate "fitness Buddies."

"We are hoping that these kids will realize that they can do a lot of different things to stay in shape," Hoffman says, "not just go outside for a run, not just jump onto ah elliptical."