Education
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Mattel drops new details on I Can Play educational guitar
While the most of us get our shred on via one version of Guitar Hero or another, Mattel is trying to preserve our offsprings' minds a little while longer with a more educationally-inclined toy axe. Originally mentioned at the International Toy Fair, the I Can Play instrument is slated to land this August for $99.99 and will boast the Allegro Multimedia Guitar Wizard Method for learning licks. Furthermore, the guitar will come bundled with a cartridge featuring "six popular songs" to play along with (additional ones will be $14.99 apiece), and rather than just single buttons being placed on the fretboard, the more complex sensor layout is said to be more akin to a real-world six-string. Notably, Mattel and Allegro both assert that this device can be used by kiddos as young as six years old, but we see no reason why those struggling through a mid-life crisis can't relive their own rock fantasies once the children head off to bed.[Via Electronista]
Study: Gamers read, study less but still socialize
The latest scientific study of gamers is kind of a wash for the image of our favorite hobby. On the plus side, adolescents who play games were shown to spend just as much time socializing with family and friends as non-gamers. On the downside, adolescent gamers were found to spend less time reading and doing homework than non-gamers.The University of Michigan study asked nearly 1,500 10- to 19-year-olds across the country to report how they spent their time during the 2002-03 school year. The roughly 36 percent of the sample that played games spent 30 percent less time reading and 34 percent less time doing homework than their non-gaming peers. Interestingly, the reading deficit came mostly from male gamers while the homework deficit was caused mostly by female gamers, according to a Reuters story on the study. It's not all bad news though; the study also concluded that "gamers and nongamers did not differ in the amount of time they spent interacting with family and friends."Before you go off believing that gamers are more likely to be lazy ignoramuses, understand that reading and homework time are not direct measures of intelligence. The study author herself admitted to Reuters that "there have been some studies that show that high academic achievers spend less time doing homework." In other words, perhaps gamers have just been trained to work smarter, not harder.
College librarians urged to think like gamers, play more games
During the annual meeting of the American Library Association, a packed room of crusty academic librarians received some new-fashioned advice: Play more video games. Speakers urged fellow bookworms to bridge the divide between today's students ('digital natives') and themselves ('digital immigrants') by playing games, developing organizational systems that don't require training to use ("We should never read before we play"), and hosting after-hours LAN parties. Solutions remained conceptual, and attendees were encouraged to return to the murky depths of their university stacks and start experimenting.This just in... three undergraduate students are thought to be missing after entering a mysterious green pipe; installed in the east wing of Yale University Library early Monday morning. A handwritten note taped to the pipe reads: To Level 8-1. Elsewhere, a University of Texas sophomore claims to have encountered a spike-shelled, fire-spewing creature guarding the school's Rare Book archive, though she later admitted to ingesting a large mushroom found stashed behind some Mycology texts. When asked why she ate the mushroom, the young woman said she was told it would help her reach the books on the top shelf. A campus official noted that librarians had recently removed all stepladders from the premises. [Via /.]
MacArthur Foundation funds NYC school to teach 'Gaming Literacy'
This past week, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced a $1.1 million grant to the Gamelab Institute of Play, to design and create a new 6-12th grade public school in New York City. The school will teach critical thinking skills and media literacy, using game design and game-inspired education methods.The Institute of Play, a non-profit currently headed by designer and educator Katie Salen, seeks to introduce games into school curricula in order to foster creativity and promote new ways of thinking about problems. The Institute has dubbed the term "Gaming Literacy" to refer to a revolutionary way of approaching education by adhering to modern media. The school, which is being built in collaboration with New Visions for Public Schools, is due to open in the fall of 2009.The MacArthur Foundation has shown great support for the potential of games in education. In a recent NPR piece, journalist Heather Chaplin spoke with Connie Yowell, the Foundation's Director of Educational Grant-Making, who was excited to introduce games into the education process. The MacArthur Foundation also recently awarded a grant to the Institute of Play's sister company Gamelab, to create educational software for teaching game design.Update: corrected a minor factual error.
NEC's VT700 projector excites kids, bores teachers
While there's been no shortage of projectors for the suits of late, NEC is looking out for the CEOs (and subordinates) of tomorrow with the VT700. This portable device features a 1,024 x 768 native resolution, automatic keystone correction, near-instantaneous startup and shut down, 3,000 lumens, an integrated five-watt speaker, DVI input, a 3,000-hour lamp life, and audio out as well. Clearly designed with classrooms in mind, the wall-color correction technology "enables accurate colors to be projected onto whiteboards, blackboards, and colored walls," and Autosense automatically synchronizes the projector with computer signals to save technologically disadvantaged teachers from insanity. Notably, NEC touts the unit's three-year warranty as if schoolkids would ever put this thing in any sort of danger, and while it's due to start shipping (not coincidentally) in August, public pricing details remain a mystery.
Are today's students getting enough gaming time?
There's an alarming epidemic facing high school graduates in this country. No, we're not talking about literacy or obesity or anything so unimportant. We're talking about video games. Get your priorities straight, people!According to a shocking report in the Dayton Daily News, the graduating class of 2007 is being distracted from important game-playing time by attention-stealing activities like "homework, jobs and extracurricular activities." That's right ... the promise of our future would rather do their homework than put in the important gaming time that will help them grow into mature and active adult gamers.What's worse, some of today's graduating seniors have a hard time envisioning a future that included normative social gaming. "If some guy was like 'You want to go on a date? We could play Guitar Hero,' and I'm 30, I'd be, like, 'No!,' " said one such lost youth. It's enough to make you long for the good old days when students knew how important a Pac-Man high score was to their future.[Via Gaming Today]
This Old Mac: Icebooks
Remember when Apple ditched the clamshell iBooks and created the sleeker "icebook" form factor? My wife calls them Chiclets. Well we have 3 of them: a 500 MHz G3 from 2001 with a 10GB drive, a 800MHz G4 with a 60GB drive but a busted optical drive, and a 1.2GHz G4 with a 30GB drive but working CDR/DVD drive. The 800MHz machine is still my old personal machine, although between hacks and apps and data overload it is very slow. The other two have found new life.The oldest iBook actually has the best build quality, I think. The keyboard feels good, and none of the keys have rubbed off. It is fast and solid. However, since it is so old, I decided to use OS 9 as the primary OS. We inherited a bunch of old educational CD's from the 90's and the iBook plays almost all of them better than the PPC-based Mac mini in the den. Perhaps the biggest drawback? The smell of burning plastic that is emitted from the possibly-not-covered-by-recall motherboard. Oops.The newest iBook is zippy enough to handle video from apps like VLC (for the playlists) without a hitch, so we're using it as a video jukebox of sorts. Connected to the network I can either stream or move videos to it for the kids, plus it runs all the OS X educational software we've got. Oh, and TuxPaint, which also runs on my personal machine in case they both want to draw at the same time. The working optical drive on the 1.2GHz came in handy at the beach recently, when the TV in the kids room didn't work. So we used the iBook as a DVD player.Of course, if you work in primary education this is probably a snoozefest to you. Apple sold quite a few (though not nearly enough) iBooks to the educational markets back in the day. So it should come as no surprise that my wife and I recycle our old work machines as kid machines. What makes the iBook so special is the ability to run OS 9 natively and the form factor. Sure, iMacs are great, but you can't take them on vacation. The old clamshells are OK as well, but a little bulky. Then again, maybe I just can't bear to throw anything away.UPDATE: Added a gallery.%Gallery-3585%
Scratch teaches game programming, commenting etiquette
We here at Joystiq are big proponents of teaching via video games. That's why we were happy to stumble across Scratch, a super simple programming language created by researchers at MIT. Using an incredibly intuitive drag-and-drop interface, Scratch gives you all the tools you need to make simple interactive Java applets, complete with graphics and sound, without any advanced programming knowledge.How easy is it? To find out, we put together the simple program shown above. It took about an hour, and that's without even reading the FAQ or watching the handy instructional movies. In fact, the biggest time expenditure was coming up with comments that would actually be useful and helpful to our readers. Like we said, we're big proponents of teaching via video games.[Via The Tech Savvy Educator]
More Brain Training coming to Europe, maybe US
The evil floating head of Dr. Kawashima returns! Gamasutra reports that More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima: How Old Is Your Brain?, the sequel to Brain Age (known outside of the US as Brain Training), is coming to Europe this summer.The educational series has been a phenomenal success for Nintendo -- in Japan, the sequel sold over 400,000 in its first week of release. More Brain Training will cost €30/£19.99 (approx. US $41) at launch.There have been no plans announced for a US release, though Gamestop has listed Brain Age 2 as arriving August 1 for $19.99.
Video games: the most important part of college
Sure, college is a great place to learn about life and everything, but where does most of that learning really come from? Once you take away the classes you slept through, the boy/girlfriend that you never listened to, and the parties you were too drunk to remember, the only remaining answer is the obvious one. That's right: video games!At least one college professor realized this essential fact and crafted his commencement speech to the graduating class of Bloomsburg University around the theme of lessons from video games. The speech name drops everything from Carmen Sandiego to Halo 2 in selling the lifelong lessons of gaming, including resilience, problem solving and teamwork. Sure, some of the analogies to life are a bit labored, and the whole thing reads like the author has only a passing familiarity with games. Still, it's nice to see someone using a commencement address to acknowledge what is no doubt the most important part of college for many graduates. And hey, it beats some guy droning on and on about sunscreen.
Capcom releases Japanese textbook about video games
Capcom has published an educational textbook in Japan called "Secrets of video games" to teach children about the games industry and culture. (Our zany Google translation of the book's title from Capcom's press release called it "May be the Gakken cartoon the [hi] of the series video game which is understood to see.")The textbook, presented in Manga form, is part of gakken's series of books aimed at teaching children complicated topics in a simple manner (i.e. comics). According to a translation by Canned Dogs, the book teaches children "the things that a game creator does, the development process in creating a game, how games affect the brain, and also how economically competitive the game industry is.""Secrets of video games" was distributed to 24,000 primary schools and 2,700 public libraries in Japan.[Via DS Fanboy]
SMU's Guildhall awards game design degrees
The Guildhall, Southern Methodist University's video game design graduate program, has awarded the world's first master's degrees in video game development. Twenty-four graduates received "Master of Interactive Technology degrees" in "Digital Game Development" on March 24. Commencement speaker Randy Pitchford of Gearbox said, "The granting of advanced degrees from accredited universities is crucial to the future of our industry... You never know how important someone will become in time. Bill Gates was nobody [30] years ago." Gates probably shoudn't be the poster boy for higher education, since he dropped out of school to start Microsoft, but whatevs, right?
OtoTenji interactive display teaches you Braille
We've see a myriad of methods to communicate and even learn Braille, but we'll admit, most of the previous iterations lacked that sense of excitement necessary to motivate most folks to assimilate something new. Akinori Oishi's creation, however, seeks to be different, as the OtoTenji interactive machine allows users to press touch-sensitive pads and then hear back the letter / character in which they've signaled. We've no word on whether or not the machine is programmed to handle a one-on-one Braille spelling challenge, but if you're interested in just how this peculiar teaching tool actually goes about its business, be sure to click on through for a videotaped demonstration.[Via FreshCreation]
Arkansas school to trial iPod, WiFi-equipped school bus
If you thought taking a ride on the GamerBUS was a thrill, this one will really make you long to be a youngster in Arkansas again. Reportedly, the Sheridan school district is launching the Aspirnaut Initiative to bring laptops, iPods, and wireless internet right onto Bus 46, and amazingly, they expect kids to actually glean knowledge rather than hit up a round or two of Counter-Strike. The project hopes to make the unbelievably long (three hours, to be exact) commute that some rural students face a bit less boring and a tad more educational, as students will have access to informational podcasts and web-based learning modules whilst cruising on home. Interestingly, the three-year pilot project will not give students class credit for their extra effort initially, but for brainiacs who stick with the program, they'll purportedly be keeping the goods for themselves once the trial run concludes.[Via ArsTechnica]
Get, like, totally educated about PSP's features
Who said girls don't use PSPs? Sony's released a new "educational" video that's intended to teach users how to make the most out of their systems. The problem? It's so incredibly fake. While it certainly doesn't border on the horrendous "All I Want for Xmas" debacle, there's something horrifying about 30-something actors pretending to be teenagers. No one talks like this, do they? It's forced rubbish, and the worst part is: it doesn't really tell you how to use your PSP. Sorry Sony, but this is not going to help you target the teen market.
Schoolhouse 2
School is a lot of work as it is without having to worry about how you're going to remember that you have an essay due next Monday for your Sub-Aquatic Fiber Arts class. Some people swear by the tried-and-true paper notebook, while others can't cope without their fancy PDA. While there are a few software options for those hardcore geeks (like me) who take their computers everywhere with them (including class), Schoolhouse is far-and-away my personal favorite. In addition to an almost totally redesigned interface, version 2 introduces some really handy new features including the ability to attach files to assignments, sub-tasks for multi-step assignments such as research papers, and a way to store all your class notes directly inside Schoolhouse. Schoolhouse is available as a free download– all the developer asks is if you enjoy and use the software, that you consider donating (unfortunately, the donate link is currently down).[via Lifehacker]
British school chooses PSPs over textbooks
The Nintendo DS may currently have the better reputation for educational-related activities, with Brain Age and similar titles molding minds young and old alike, but a school in England looks to be doing its best to sway things in the PlayStation Portable's favor, announcing that's it'll soon begin employing some of the handheld's non-gaming functions to take the place of old school textbooks. According to The Daily Mail, some 30 students will be given PSPs as part of the pilot program, which apparently could be expanded nationwide if it proves to be successful (one sure way to boost sales). While we're all for putting the PSP to some non-intended uses, we can't help but think that the school is overlooking some of the educational benefits of the PSP's gaming options. After all, you never know when the life skills learned from guiding all those LocoRocos to safety may come in handy.[Via The Inquirer]
Schools test edugaming in classroom
We've spoken ad infinitum on educational gaming, exercise gaming and serious games. It's an important cause and one that can prove mutually beneificial. (For the educators, a new way to teach and motivate children; for the game makers, a feeling of civic duty and another source of income.)Reuters has a rather lengthy piece (with an eye-catching headline) about current efforts to incorporate the interactivity of video games with schooling. Games requiring team effort are presented (Indiana University associate professor Sasha Barab's Quest Atlantis, pictured), as are proponents of using game-related technologies in grades six through 12. The latter, Katie Salen, is speaking at a Living Game Worlds symposium later this month.The article tackles the other side of the issue, that games have been linked (and just as often unlinked) to attention deficit disorder and aggressive behavior. Everything good comes with some consequence. We feel that aspects of the video game technology can outweigh consequences when incorporated with the bad. That, and we're hoping to rekindle our love with a new generation of Math Blasters and Mario Teaches Typing.
More Steve Jobs Education Fallout
In February, we posted about Steve Jobs's anti-teacher's-union speech at a K-12 education reform conference. "I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," he said a few weeks ago. The education community continues to respond to that speech. Yesterday, in an OpEd News article called "Jobs against Jobs", Dale Hill a 34-year retired education veteran, took issue with Jobs and defended the NEA. He suggests that Jobs stick to making computers and gadgets and leave education to professional educators. Kind of harsh, no? Well, Hill is certainly not alone in his opinion and there are many supporters on the opposite side of the debate as well. A quick google for "Steve Jobs"+NEA reveals the very polarized response Jobs' speech has received from the Webosphere.
PSPs used to teach UK students
Sony held an interesting event in London today: "PSP in Education National Launch." The event focused on a new project to be helmed by ConnectED that uses Sony's handheld gaming device for educational purposes. According to Gamespot, "teachers found that students benefited from being able to work at their own pace--for example, being able to rewind an audio file and listen again to ensure they didn't miss anything, or to view a video several times."This is certainly an interesting approach for Sony to pursue. Nintendo may be grabbing headlines with its Brain Age series of software, but Sony's approach has an observable, charitable effect for children. The project is planned to expand slowly--but not to America. Our media likes to skew perception of gaming in a completely useless, unconstructive way.
