Tardiness Declines After School Implements Dance Sessions At Start Of Each Day

USA Today (10/11, Hellmich) reports that Conlee Elementary School in Las Cruces, New Mexico uses the Nintendo Wii video game Just Dance "at the start of every school day." Each morning, "The dance activity is broadcast into classrooms that have TV monitors." When the ritual began last year, teachers noticed that "tardiness went down." The daily morning dance activities were inspired by "researchers at New Mexico State University who are investigating the use of active video games as part of an obesity-prevention project funded by the US Department of Agriculture." The first part of the study focused on game-play "at a laundromat in Hawaii, an after-school program in Connecticut and a low-income community program in Delaware." For the next part, researchers will test "whether doing an active video game before math and spelling tests improves performance."