Wednesday, May 12, 2010

“Cops, kids and fingerprints” plus 3 more

“Cops, kids and fingerprints” plus 3 more

Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Cops, kids and fingerprints

Posted: 12 May 2010 04:09 AM PDT

USDA Partners with IGDA, Numedeon in Apps for Healthy Kids Contest

Posted: 11 May 2010 01:59 PM PDT

 The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it has partnered with the International Game Developers Association and Whyville creators Numedeon for the Apps for Healthy Kids game development competition.

The contest, part of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign to end childhood obesity, encourages game developers and students to create learning games that promote healthy food choices and active lifestyles.

The IGDA will host a series of game jams on the weekend of May 21st through 23rd in several major U.S. cities, as a joint initiative of the Games for Health Project and Health Games Research. Participants in each event, working individually or in teams, will have 48 hours to produce prototype games for the Apps for Healthy Kids competition.

Numedeon will use its virtual world Whyville.net as a testing site for Apps for Healthy Kids projects. Whyville's users will play, rate, and submit feedback for each contest entry, and will receive in-game rewards for their input.

"Ending our childhood obesity crisis within a generation will require the help and support of innovative partners like Numedeon and IGDA," said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

"The Apps for Healthy Kids competition is a great way to harness the combined creativity of game developers, local youth and adults to work collaboratively to produce fun, innovative games that promote healthy lifestyles. Both partnerships will have a tremendously positive impact on the competition and on improving the health and nutrition of kids across the nation."

Are kids lazier than they used to be?

Posted: 12 May 2010 07:00 AM PDT

Saxon Elfend, 9 (in black jersey, left) of Friends Christian works the ball against Tarbut V'Torah in the S.C.O.R.E. Shootout final. Below: Jacob Furry, 10, reacts after scoring a goal in Friends' 6-5 win, their third straight title. Photos by Kevin Sullivan/The Register

Last Saturday was throwback jersey day at the Honda Center. Give 330 kids hockey sticks and watch them chase an orange ball around for hours and have a blast doing it.

I spent the day at the Anaheim Ducks' S.C.O.R.E. Shootout for fourth-graders to find out what we can do to get children active and moving again. As we wrote last January, the childhood obesity rate has leveled off in the past decade, but it remains too high — about 17 percent, triple what it was in 1980.

You can blame a lot of factors: Some people say the obesity rate started climbing right around  the time high-fructose corn syrup became widely distributed. Soft drinks are much more prevalent, with many more choices as far as size and flavor, than they used to be.

But the words of a parent at the hockey tournament ring true, and this guy knows what he's talking about. Larry Furry (love that name) not only coached the team that won the cup, Friends Christian School of Yorba Linda (including his son Jacob, who scored three goals in the championship game against Tarbut V'Torah of Irvine), he's a physical therapist who runs his own shop, ActivBody, in Huntington Beach.

"The times have definitely changed from when we were kids," he said. "I can't remember ever sitting inside and watching TV or playing these games they do now."

I know what Furry means when he says "when we were kids." He's 44, and I'm 40. A lot of the parents at the Ducks event are also Gen-Xers, born in the 1960s or early '70s. We're the last generation to have an analog childhood. There were no cellphones, no Internet. We had video games, sure, but Odyssey and even Atari weren't cool enough to obsess over (this was well before the devil invented the current crop). During the summers we played outdoors until we dropped, or until our parents ordered us inside after dusk.

Of course, there's the safety issue. With headline-grabbing stories making the world seem more dangerous than it is, it's hard to imagine parents letting their kids roam for miles, unsupervised, as we did. Last fall then-Supervisor (now Assemblyman) Chris Norby was mocked for saying bike helmets may prevent kids from exercising, but maybe we parents have indeed become too protective.

Furry says some of his clients are overweight kids who have overweight parents. The adult obesity rate soared in the 1980s and '90s along with the child and adolescent rates, and we aren't exactly leading by example when it comes to turning off our electronic distractions.

But with the weather we have, there's no excuse. "Southern California is the best place in the country when it comes weather," Furry said. "You can do just about anything outside, and you're not seeing kids do that."

OK, parents: What games filled the summer days of your childhood? And how do we get kids (and ourselves) moving again?

Meantime, here are more stories about parenting and obesity:

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Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Kids compete in annual Jesse Owens Games

Posted: 12 May 2010 01:30 AM PDT

By For The Madera Tribune

A beginning level track and field competition drew about 80 children Saturday to Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.

The competition included 50-meter and 100-meter runs, a long jump and a softball throw.

Some participants were newbies, but many, including staff members of the 23rd annual Jesse Owens Games, knew the competition all too well.

"The games helped me and it helps the children a lot to learn a lot of discipline and a lot of structure. It makes you want to do more in school," said Porshe Lacy, who competed in the games nearly 20 years ago.

Note: The above article has been shortened from its published form in The Madera Tribune newspaper. For information about an online subscription, view http://maderatribuneredline.com/online-subscriptions/

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