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Fit And I Know It (almost)
May 28, 2008

Are you Fit? This latest add-on to the Nintendo Wii is taking the world by storm. The combination of friendly software (Wii Fit) and the Wii Balance Board provides a great extension to the already rather active Wii experience. Now your gameplay really is exercise.

Wii Fit focuses on four areas of development: aerobics, strength training, yoga, and balance games. The Fit experience is heavily geared towards that final concept of balance; at every stage the program provides feedback on your balance to raise body awareness. A great feature is that the software is built around the standard "unlock" style of gaming. The more you play Wii Fit and the better you become, the more items are unlocked. In this case, the mechanism provides a nice way to ramp up the level of activity for your exercise.

Let me stress that Wii Fit is indeed exercise. I am using it to help me get in 20 to 30 minutes of exercise a day - and it yells at me if I miss a day! I must warn you, however, that the Wii Fit program is built around honesty. If you are overweight, it will tell you.

So how does this fit in schools? I think that this is a great opportunity for libraries to provide a curriculum support resource for physical education teachers. There are some concerns about the Fit's ability to correctly identify body mass index (BMI) for children who are still developing, but Nintendo claims it is quite capable. It will be interesting to see how this goes forward and how it is accepted by the medical community as an accurate (?) measurement tool.

In July, our system will be buying a Wii along with Wii Fit and the upcoming Rock Band for Wii. We want to be able to provide this to our member libraries and districts as an opportunity to research the potential for this great new technology.

Posted by Chris Harris on May 28, 2008 | Comments (0)