educational
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Genomes on the map
Genome Island in Second Life is a real treat if you're a genetics geek or a science geek. If you're not, it's still an amazingly cool place to visit. Max Chatnoir (Dr M. A Clark, Professor of Biology, Texas Wesleyan University) has brought this site to life along with the help of some skilled and able assistants, most notably Elizabeth Gloucester (Professor of Microbial Molecular Genetics at a medica school in New England), and Apaul Balut (Professor of Microbiology at a medical school in the Midwest USA). Three-dimensional protein sequences hang in the air, among educational displays and trivia games, and giant reproductions of individual cells, with labeled structures in motion and larger than your head. %Gallery-19254%
Could MMOs be a substitute for high school spanish class?
Educational games have traditionally occupied that strange territory between "don't know" and "don't care." The very phrase evokes an image of a brightly colored box adorned with the image of Dora the Explorer or perhaps, if you're lucky, Bob the Builder. The idea of an educational MMO is one that has eluded me entirely. That is, until we found out NASA may be working on one. But a more general question, and one that's brought up by the blog A Ding World: would MMOs be a good vehicle for teaching players basic grammar and vocabulary in a foreign language?It's actually sort of an intuitive idea, as A Ding World points out. There are already games out there that have some sort of imbedded language mechanic built into the game. There's the language of the V'rix in Earth & Beyond, or the simple utility of the Logos language in Tabula Rasa. While it's debatable whether most players pay attention to these instructive nuggets within the game, it seems plainly obvious that the work/reward mechanic of an MMO would have some utility that high school Spanish teachers would have a hard time competing with. If studying had the same rewards grinding did, we might all be bi-lingual by now.
Wiimote used in Buckyball Bowling, other educational simulations
Seriously, is there anything the Wiimote can't do? Just when you thought the world had exhausted all possibilities for Nintendo's oh-so-versatile controller, along comes the crew at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to prove otherwise. Programmed to operate with BigBen -- PSC's 4,000 processor, 21-teraflop Cray XT3 supercomputing system -- the Wiimote was seen controlling a round of Buckyball Bowling, which just might be the nerdiest (that's a compliment, ya know) title for a game to date. Additionally, it was suggested that the WiiMD technology could eventually "offer scientists an easily usable tool to gain insight into simulations," and moreover, provide "an entertaining educational outreach tool to help interest students in biology, chemistry and physics." Man, lecturing is so last year.[Via EarthTimes]
Satiate intercontinental voracity with online vocabulary game
Ever feel you're wasting your time with games? Feel like you should be doing something to better yourself or the world around you instead of staring at a screen? Well, with Poverty.com's Free Rice game, you can do your part for personal and global fulfillment without ever stopping the gaming.The self-betterment in Free Rice comes from vocabulary identification questions that automatically adjust to your skills so they're challenging but not impossible. The world-improvement comes from the eponymous free rice, ten grains of which are donated through the UN's World Food Program and the site's advertisers for each right answer you provide. In the past month, over 856 million grains of rice have been donated, with the total rising exponentially day over day.We love the idea, and think this model has potential for all sorts of games. Every Halo headshot can net a donation to Amnesty international (sponsored by Mountain Dew). Every five star Guitar Hero performance could give money to Save the Music (sponsored by VH1, of course). Bill Gates could add few bucks to his foundation for every Achievement point earned. The possibilities are endless.[Via Gene. Thanks Michelle]
Maxian looks to educate with dictionary-equipped E900DIC PMP
Not willing to be left behind by all those other dictionary-packin' PMPs out there, Maxian has decided to launch a device of its own to both entertain and educate. The E900DIC boasts a stylish white enclosure, simplistic control scheme, and a "Saydic" dictionary that even touts text-to-speech capabilities. Details regarding the actual formats that this thing supports are scant, but we do know it features a DaVinci chipset and plays nice with H.264. Unsurprisingly, this one looks to be a Korean exclusive, but those parked near Seoul can reportedly snag one for between ???400,000 ($430) to ???500,000 ($538).[Via MobileWhack]
Today's wildest video: Wolf Quest
In what could be the greatest game trailer of all time, this Wolf Quest video introduces the December, 2007 simulation title. You play a wolf capable of forming a pack with other players online, where you do wolfy things, like hunting, peeing on stuff, and howling. The game, being released through the Minnesota Zoo, will be a free Mac/PC download.The trailer strikes an uncanny balance of mediocre (read: hilarious) production values and game content that genuinely looks fun. While the educational game may skew towards a younger audience, any animal fan might enjoy the title.Screw Okami and Twilight Princess. See the new alpha dog after the break.
505 Games did it, Mum!
European budget publisher 505 Games announced a new title for the children. Because the children are a very profitable demographic our future! The game is called I Did It Mum! and comes in boys' or girls' versions. Both versions are jam-packed with educational minigames like "Toy Train" and "Drive the Car." And both versions are totally for preschoolers, so you have an excuse not to be interested in the thing yourself. But if you have kids, this may be perfect "Playing DS Games Training" to help them get ready for other training games.[Via Joystiq]
Slate: Serious games are seriously boring
For all the bluster about serious games being the wave of the future, most examples of the form thus far are missing that key element of ... what's the word ... oh yeah, fun! Slate takes a withering look at the state of the serious games industry by asking the simple question: "Can a game still be called a game if it isn't any fun?"It's a good question, and one that doesn't reflect kindly on many of the serious games out there. The author is especially derisive of training games that mirror the repetitive, mindless nature of the workplace -- games that are "less alluring to people who love games and more alluring to people who don't. Your boss, for example."The author suggests that developers who want to make learning fun should focus on the fun first and the learning second. We couldn't agree more. We learned more about urban planning from SimCity than we ever learned about arithmetic from Math Blaster -- mainly because we kept playing SimCity long after Math Blaster got donated to the secondhand store. In other words: you can lead a player to an educational game, but you can't make them play. They have to want to do that.
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.
Sony brings Buzz! to UK classrooms
Though the headline might fool you into thinking trenchcoat-wearing Sony goons will soon be infiltrating schools and selling children some sort of designer drug, it actually refers to the hugely popular series of quiz games on PS2. It's rather simple -- the game asks a question and you consequently slam your hand or forehead into a giant red button (part of the special Buzz! peripheral) before answering. Being based upon the acquisition and sharing of knowledge, the game seems like an ideal fit for a classroom brimming with kids. Buzz!: The School's Quiz will derive its over 5,000 questions from the UK's Key Stage 2 National Curriculum, and will include cooperative play modes. It's pleasing to see that some still see the value in video games as educational tools. You know, beyond the ones that teach us how to kill each other.
Serious Games Summit: Henry Jenkins keynote
I'm here at the Serious Games Summit in Arlington, VA where the keyword of the keynote speech by MIT's Henry Jenkins was convergence. Not necessarily technological convergence -- that mythical, magical black box that will control your media and your life -- but a cultural convergence that allows a community to form a collective intelligence around a game, movie or TV show. The real appeal of media experiences today, Jenkins argued, is not necessarily the product itself, but the community that grows around it, the participatory culture that doesn't come in the box.Jenkins urged the serious games movement to keep this in mind when designing the educational and socially relevant games the conference is focused on. He challenged the diverse crowd of experts from the government, education, military, health and social change fields to create educational games that were less like a spelling bee (high on memorization, low on discussion and engagement) and more like Scrabble (high on experimentation, low on penalties for risk). Jenkins also echoed Will Wright's call for games that are interdisciplinary, that take on multiple agendas instead of just narrowly focusing on one subject.With the final part of his speech, Jenkins focused on specific projects trying to achieve these goals -- games like Revolution, a Neverwinter Nights mod that encourages students to role-play as a colonial patriot, and Labyrinth, an upcoming game that teaches math and logic skills on top of a search for a lost pet. Jenkins also acknowledged the challenges of getting these products out to market (some teachers refused to buy Revolution because of occult symbols in Neverwinter Nights, for instance), but seemed hopeful that companies could break through these barriers by joining together.
Nine year old wins scholarship for edu-game idea
In a marketing stunt to attract attention to their new educational game system, VTech has named nine-year-old Jonathan Fisher their first Chief V.Flash Officer, a position that carries a $10,000 scholarship as compensation. Fisher won the competition for the position with an idea for a game called Mission Possible, which utilizes players' skills in foreign language, geography, social studies and math.The $100 V.Flash, which launched kind of quietly in September, is the latest in a line of educational systems from V-Tech and the first to sport disc-based games and 3D graphics. It's not going to challenge the big three for console supremacy or anything, but it might make a nice alternative for thrifty parents who want to satisfy their little kids console cravings on the cheap.
iWriter - easily create study tools for the iPod, .Mac and the web
Yea that's right: I said 'study tools' and 'iPod' in the same sentence. iWriter is an interesting little app from Talking Panda that allows you to quickly build projects and study tools for easy viewing on an iPod or the internets. Projects can be uploaded to a .Mac account, and iWriter offers 8 project templates to help students and teachers alike hit the ground running. This handy little app can even record lectures, and a preview pane allows you to see exactly what your project will look like on an iPod while you build it.All this isn't bad for a $12 piece ofUniversal Binary shareware. While a demo is available, Talking Panda receives a ding for requiring an email address to download it (though I can understand a small software outfit's need to reach out to their potential customers). Still, check iWriter out if you're in the market for more better studying with the help of your iPod.[via the intrepid Nik Fletcher]
The Nobel Prize for games
No, the prestigious international organization named for the inventor of dynamite isn't giving a prize for gaming along with its other prizes this week, but the Nobel Foundation is using some interesting educational games to explain the concepts behinds the winning science experiments, books and, er, concepts of peace.The games aren't going to make you reconsider buying a next generation console or anything, but they are a bit more interesting than the usual crap that passes itself off as edu-gaming. This simple platforming game used to explain laser physics is particularly notable for including actual hidden items and interesting mini-games with its dry trivia questions about lasers.This is all well and good, but when will we finally see a peace prize awarded to the person who finally brought down international criminal Carmen Sandiego?
Bar Z Adventures unveils educational GPS Ranger
If you're one who likes to roam solo, but still yearns for that oh-so-knowledgeable tour guide when strolling through historic landmarks or animal havens, Bar Z Adventures has just the thing to quench your curiosity while on the trails. The GPS Ranger (and self-explanatory Zoo Ranger) handheld devices are being aimed at historic sites, monuments, national parks, cruise lines, and zoos in hopes of giving tourists of any tongue the chance to soak up information about the area they're in without having to play follow the leader. The Windows CE-powered unit sports a 3.5-inch outdoor viewable LCD, 4GB of storage, and integrated GPS that allows a plethora of content ranging from movie / audio clips to lines of text to be displayed when the user encounters certain geographical coordinates. Multimedia tidbits describing statues, animals, battlefields, and essentially anything associated with a given attraction can be triggered when approaching a given landmark, and the device also packs support for a multitude of languages to cater to those international visitors. While we aren't sure how much these tour enhancing gizmos will inflate your activity costs (or how many jobs they'll replace), we can't wait to see the movie clip that gets queued up for these guys.[Via jkOnTheRun]
Games for Health: the industry's unsung heroes [update 1]
Last Thursday, we had the chance of traversing through Kentia Hall to meet with Ben Sawyer to talk with us about Games for Health, an effort to use videogames and game technology to promote healthy behavior and alleviate patients' pain and the burden of illness (and a part of the Serious Games Initiative). Some of the highlights, from both Games for Health and the Serious Games Initiative, include: Elemental -- a "falling brick" puzzle game that teaches you where elements are located on the periodic table, their relations to one another, and basic common compounds. Intended to help with early Chemistry courses. Free Dive -- a virtual reality/underwater exploration game intended to control pain during procedures such as a spinal tap. A Force More Powerful -- a strategy title that sets up scenarios where players can resolve international conflict using nonviolent outlets. This title was developed with aid from experts on nonviolent conflict. Re-Mission -- a third-person shooter from inside your body, promoting cancer knowledge and antibiotic usage. We had a chance to play this game and will have hands-on impressions for you later this week. Take Back Illinois -- a title that teaches players about the important political issues and promotes voter registration. Rest assured, sponsor Tom Cross has made games for both sides of the political spectrum. Stone City -- A training game commissioned by Cold Stone Creamery. Imagine learning how your job works with just a few clicks of the mouse. What surprised us most about these games was not the educational value, but the fun. Many of these games were really entertaining, and we think that is the key to their effectiveness. We'll have more on Games for Health, including a hands-on with Re-Mission and an interview with Ben Sawyer, as the week progresses.[update 1: clarified that many of the games listed were also part of Serious Games Initiative]
