Standing during class won't get McQuaid students sent to detention in one of the high school's computer labs.
The school's five labs are on a four-year hardware upgrade rotation, and when one of the labs was up for renovation this year, it was refitted with 30 standing computer stations.
With adjustable monitor and keyboard heights, the stations allow students to comfortably work while standing up.
"There's a lot of research that shows we should be standing about half our day, and we're not," said McQuaid’s Computer Science Department Chair, Scott Simkins. "We're hoping that by standing the kids are more alert and more productive and accomplishing more and paying attention better, and I'm seeing that with some of them."
Contemporary research does suggest people should be standing more often, and medical experts have started referring to long periods of physical inactivity and its negative consequences as "Sitting Disease."
A 2008 Vanderbuilt University study estimated that the average American spends 55 percent of his or her waking time — nearly eight hours a day — in sedentary behaviors like sitting. A 2010 American Cancer Society study that followed 123,216 individuals from 1993 to 2006 found that women who were inactive and sat for over six hours daily were 94 percent more likely to die during the time period studied than those who were physically active and sat less than three hours a day. Men were similarly 48 percent more likely to die.
Though high-school-age teens' primary concerns may not have anything to do with "Sitting Disease," some students, like senior Connor O’Brien, said they have noticed a difference in working in the standing lab.
"Especially during tests I've noticed I've been doing better because you get your mind flowing and your ideas flowing when you're standing up," O’Brien said. "When you're sitting down you're kind of cramped. When you're standing up you're more open."
O’Brien said that, even without a 9 to 5 desk job, students spend most of their time sitting.
"You wake up, get on the bus or drive here and you're sitting. Get to class and you're sitting. You go home, watch TV or play games and you're sitting," O’Brien said. "It's all day sitting. If you play a sport, that's your only standing activity."
Standing during class won't get McQuaid students sent to detention in one of the high school's computer labs.
The school's five labs are on a four-year hardware upgrade rotation, and when one of the labs was up for renovation this year, it was refitted with 30 standing computer stations.
With adjustable monitor and keyboard heights, the stations allow students to comfortably work while standing up.
"There's a lot of research that shows we should be standing about half our day, and we're not," said McQuaid’s Computer Science Department Chair, Scott Simkins. "We're hoping that by standing the kids are more alert and more productive and accomplishing more and paying attention better, and I'm seeing that with some of them."
Contemporary research does suggest people should be standing more often, and medical experts have started referring to long periods of physical inactivity and its negative consequences as "Sitting Disease."
A 2008 Vanderbuilt University study estimated that the average American spends 55 percent of his or her waking time — nearly eight hours a day — in sedentary behaviors like sitting. A 2010 American Cancer Society study that followed 123,216 individuals from 1993 to 2006 found that women who were inactive and sat for over six hours daily were 94 percent more likely to die during the time period studied than those who were physically active and sat less than three hours a day. Men were similarly 48 percent more likely to die.
Though high-school-age teens' primary concerns may not have anything to do with "Sitting Disease," some students, like senior Connor O’Brien, said they have noticed a difference in working in the standing lab.
"Especially during tests I've noticed I've been doing better because you get your mind flowing and your ideas flowing when you're standing up," O’Brien said. "When you're sitting down you're kind of cramped. When you're standing up you're more open."
O’Brien said that, even without a 9 to 5 desk job, students spend most of their time sitting.
"You wake up, get on the bus or drive here and you're sitting. Get to class and you're sitting. You go home, watch TV or play games and you're sitting," O’Brien said. "It's all day sitting. If you play a sport, that's your only standing activity."
McQuaid began the process of transforming the lab last year by introducing a single standing station into the classroom.
"In the beginning, the kids were like, 'No way! I'm never going to do that,'" Simkins said. "By the end of the trial period they were fighting over that computer."
For two weeks at the beginning of this school year, students were required to stand at the new stations while working. Students are now able to lower the station and pull up a chair if they'd rather sit.
Simkins said that, depending on the class, it's usually about a 60/40 split between standing and sitting students.
O’Brien said he almost always stands, except if he has a computer class right after gym.
"I like the change," O’Brien said. "They stand you up and keep you more active. It's new."
Being the first high school in the area to install a standing computer lab has had additional benefits, as well. The narrow stations with their all-in-one computer monitors leave sitting room for lectures and demonstrations in the front of the classroom, and not having chairs all over gives students the space to collaborate more freely.
"I think being an early adopter is kind of fun in a way because other people come and look at this and wonder if it's working, and it gets the ball rolling," Simkins said. "Computer science itself likes to stay on the edge. Things change, so keep up."
