This week, we brought in Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) into our classroom as a class reward for our Intermediate students as well as for our daily physical activity (DPA) requirements.

We’ve been thinking about bringing in Dance Dance Revolution into our classroom since last summer, but didn’t actually start to research specifics and the benefits of having DDR in our school until October.

Although we’ve used Dance Dance Revolution in our programming before at a teen drop-in center / community center, yesterday was the first time we actually played DDR with our students in school.

Dance Dance Revolution is a music video game where players move on a dance platform and score points by stepping on the correct arrows on the dance mat by watching the screen and listening to the music.

In Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party for the Nintendo Wii, the background visuals zoom in and out on the ensemble of dancers, but players are focused on the column of dance moves floating up the screen. (It’s like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, but with dancing.)

We brought in Dance Dance Revolution for our students as a class reward, but also to see if it would work as DPA (daily physical activity).

We ran the DDR game as a competition. Students were randomly placed in order and played against each other four at a time. The top two students progressed to the next round. Everyone had to play, but towards the end, only one or two reluctant students still had reservations about playing. Most other students seemed to get into it.

It’s a high-interest, low-skill physical activity that appeals to the video game generation and has caught the attention of some teachers for the following reasons:

As a class party game, Dance Dance Revolution allows you to have up to 4 players going at the same time. (Compare that with other games that only allow two players.) Four players means that it’s easier to get through your class quicker.
You’re physically active when you play Dance Dance Revolution. It doesn’t compare with running a marathon, but it’s considerably better than just sitting down. Several students commented on how much they were sweating after playing DDR in the class.)

It’s popular. Over half of the class had played DDR at home or at the arcade before. Kids could recognize songs and were humming along on both DDR Hottest Party 1 and the sequel, Hottest Party 2.

In our Gr 7/8 classroom, we projected the Wii Dance Dance Revolution game onto the wall and played the music through our stereo system. We had four dance mats (one wired mat and three wireless) and both the original and the sequel Hottest Party Wii DDR game.

We teach using a data projector so we’ve already permanently set up our digital projector to our computer. The LCD projector sits on top of our filing cabinet and we’ve taped white paper onto the wall to create a giant 8 foot by 12 foot screen beside our blackboard.

We’ve also created podcasts in our classroom using audacity, so we had already brought in an old amp and sound system to hook up our computer to.

All we had to do was bring in a Nintendo Wii, the Dance Dance Revolution video game, and four mats and we had an instant class party / DPA activity.