Youth and New Media – Technology to get moving

New media can help dance to play a useful role in engaging young people with exercise and learning, suggests Teri Laing.
It?s undeniable that most kids spend too much time watching telly and playing computer games but Scottish Youth Dance (YDance) is achieving great things by using what young people know to get them moving and expressing themselves creatively ? bringing dance education well and truly into the 21st century.

As the National Youth Dance Agency for Scotland, YDance has developed the use of CD-Roms to encourage young people to take up dance. CD-Roms offer an interactive alternative to teachers? packs, using images and examples to enable pupils to see how moves are performed correctly before copying them, whilst giving everyone something to look at in order to stimulate ideas of their own.

In schools, dance is generally sidelined. In Scotland, for example, it forms just a small component of the Physical Education (PE) curriculum. We?ve learned from experience that many PE teachers feel uncomfortable teaching dance, some schools offer no dance participation at all and the number of pupils taking Higher Dance in Scotland is low. We?re keen to demonstrate that dance is not simply about fitness, but that the personal creativity of each young participant can be encouraged and nurtured through dance. We hope to make dance education easy for teachers and make pupils aware that dance is a viable career option.

The first CD-Rom that YDance produced, ?AnyBodyCanDance? (ABCD), includes an advice bank, workshop ideas, games, choreographer?s biographies, a dance combinations tool, a music-making tool and photographs. By offering downloads on the YDance website, supplementary games and programmes are available. A second CD-Rom, specifically for 4?7 year-olds, is hosted by Gorf the dancing frog. It features simple dance warm-ups, games and class exercises, which encourage the development of motor skills, co-ordination, creativity and self-confidence.

Following the success of these CD-Roms, YDance was approached by The Place, the London-based Dance Agency, to develop a third resource aimed to teach science through dance. ?Science?Physical? features spoken raps and music to illustrate games and workshops and offers a refreshing approach to learning science. We?ve proved that you can teach science teachers to dance? even in a Physics lab!

Introducing interactive resources to dance education has had an immense impact on YDance. Over the past six months, our core staff numbers have more than doubled, making us the second largest dance employer north of the border. We?re currently working with the Scottish Executive Health Department on the Dance in Schools Initiative, taking dance to every Local Authority area in Scotland over the next three years. Each school has been sent an ABCD CD-Rom and will receive in-service training and workshops, specifically targeted to the needs of the local authority.

While it?s heartening that dance classes have moved on from reluctant girls and boys having to be peeled away from opposite sides of the room and forced to do the Gay Gordons, there?s still a long way to go. We?re developing our links with teacher training institutions to ensure dance training is instilled from the word go, as well as providing help and advice to enthusiastic teachers who lack the confidence to get started. By keeping on top of changes in technology we hope to keep dance relevant and exciting, producing innovative new resources that will, hopefully, educate and inspire.

Teri Laing is Marketing Manager at YDance.
t: 0141 552 7712;
w: http://www.ydance.org