School To Battle Obesity
There could be a new way to combat obesity while learning. One project that's still in the research phase includes getting rid of the traditional classroom and replacing it with a gym-like environment.
With a look at Your Fitness, I'm Nancy Gay.
A place without walls or a single desk could be the school of the future.
Mayo Clinic researcher Dr. James Levine said: "Is it possible to create a learning environment where children learn in a more dynamic, exciting, fast moving way? And yet are healthy?"
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic wanted to find out, so they filled an athletic club with a bunch of elementary school children in Minnesota and surrounded them with cool gadgets.
Children wore monitors to measure how many calories they burned and to see just how much they moved while learning.
Students chose how they wanted to work in "sitting bays," stand up, kneeling, or even getting on the floor.
Laptops and iPods played a big role, and walls were set up for streaming video.
"Now you have this huge space, you can draw, you can write," Dr. Levine said.
Students were able to dance around on their lunch break, and get behind the wheel for mini-breaks throughout the day.
"Learning is fun and the fact that you get healthy doing it, we'll take that too," Dr. Levine said.
Levine says once the price of technology comes down, a deskless school wouldn't be hard to do anywhere.
Article 
Linear Mode
