edutainment
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Origami on your DS
TDK is tossing their entry into the tsunami of training games for the Nintendo DS. DS Origami sits comfortably alongside other non-games that teach gardening, skin care, yoga, and language skills. The top screen shows users where to make folds while a controllable video plays on the bottom screen. Over 100 different origami projects are included from hamsters to wedding dresses to the famous crane. This begs the question: do we need a game that teaches origami, or would a book or website suffice?[Via Siliconera]
DS Daily: Life and style
So maybe you're not really into the idea of a cookbook, and you haven't got much of an urge to learn yoga or French. But we're willing to bet there's something you'd like to use your DS for beyond gaming. What kind of apps or non-games might appeal to you? With the new internet browser, one potential function of the DS is fulfilled, but what might appeal to you? Something that's already available (just not in the US), or at least something that's already in development? Or would you want to design some other non-game or edutainment title?
Escape the ghetto ... Czech style
Building on the success of a board game called Cesta z Ghetta (Out of the Ghetto), an organization called Tady a Ted (Here & Now) recently announced its plans to release a video game designed to educate students about the challenges of poverty in the Czech Republic. Themes in GhettOut! will include dealing with authorities, discrimination, housing, crime, and drugs. Players learn what it's like to live in constant uncertainty trying to sort everything out and live a successful life.The game will be available as a download, and Here & Now is aiming for a December release. According to the organization, interest in GhettOut! is high in a number of countries, so an English-language release is inevitable. Also distinctly possible: a hip hop music video unveiled in tandem with the game. Seriously.[Via GamePolitics]
Bug-hunting game set to creep out Japanese DS gamers
The market for non-games on the DS is getting a bit too weird. We have gardening and yoga titles coming from Square-Enix, an interactive haiku-based novel, and numerous dictionaries and language-learning programs already on store shelves. What next, a kleptomania sim starring cute smiling animals?The latest quirky non-game in Japan is Quiz & Touch Kensaku Mushi Sukan (Quiz & Touch Insect Encyclopedia). This edutainment title aims to teach players about the six-legged creepy crawlies. Test your knowledge of both the appearance and sounds of many bug species through a series of quizzes and minigames. Kind of makes bird watching seem exciting, doesn't it?[Via DS Fanboy]
DS English training software increases students' vocabulary
Junior high schools in Kyoto, Japan recently reported a sharp improvement in English language skills thanks to the Nintendo DS. The Yawata Municipal Board of Education distributed DS systems with copies of Chuugaku Eitango Target 1800 DS, an English training program, to English classes across the district's schools. Over the course of five months, students' vocabulary increased between 300 and 400 words, bumping them up to the equivalent of level 3 in the Eiken Test in Practical English Proficiency held by only 30% of junior high school students in Japan.Nintendo has long touted the non-gaming possibilities of the touch screen-enabled system. It seems Japan is the only region to benefit from these edutainment programs, however. Would language training software fly in Europe or the States? How about DS yoga lessons and gardening tips?[Via Gamasutra]
NMS: Brain Age 2 confirmation and impressions
The mocking head of Dr. Kawashima is officially a go -- he will be back to taunt you a second time. Joystiq's own man on the scene got a chance for a little hands-on (brains-on?) action with the good doctor at this week's Nintendo Media Summit. There's really not a lot to "fix" when it comes to Brain Age, except perhaps some of the more famous glitches, and that seems to be where a lot of the improvements focused. And there's an exciting extra: an unlockable, fully playable version of the original NES Dr. Mario! Hear that? It's the sound of thousands of retro-lovers squealing in delight.We will definitely admit that we're excited to give the sequel a chance ourselves, but mostly, we're looking forward to another few years of Photoshop fodder. The head of Dr. Kawashima is filled with comedy, and the above screenshot is just about the best thing we've ever seen in a video game.
The DS takes Kyoto, education style
Last fall, we wrote about a pilot program with the DS that was being tested in a secondary school in Japan. Eight months later, it seems that program bore fruit, because now it's being implemented in all the upper schools in the city of Yawata in Kyoto, Japan. Using Chuugaku Eitango Target 1800 DS markedly improved students' English vocabulary -- they showed increases that averaged at 40%. Now we want our language games just that much more.
A look at My Word Coach (and DS-Wii connectivity)
Ubisoft let fly with the details on their latest new Nintendo title, the now-official My Word Coach, a vocabulary trainer with various single and multiplayer modes. Let us be among the first to say it: we're excited. In fact, we're doubleplus excited, because you need this game.Yes, you. You. Right there. We've been reading your forum and LiveJournal posts for years. You didn't loose anything (unless you dig archery), and you're really doesn't refer to anything owned, but rather, something that is. And while there may be more than two versions of the homophones too and to, only one of these can be used to communicate that you also want something (like delicious ice cream).But enough with the lecture. The most exciting bit about My Word Coach is on the Wii side of the news, as the title is coming out for both platforms. Before you protest that the Wii isn't perhaps best suited for writing, check this out: you can use your DS to control the Wii version. According to IGN, there are several ways in which the DS can be utilized, and "you won't even need a DS copy of the game for this particular mode" (in reference to a mode that requires players fill in the missing letter of a word). This seems to intimate that for other modes, both the Wii and DS versions of the game may be necessary for full interaction. While that has a lot of potential, we just hope it's worth the expense.%Gallery-3340%
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.
DS Daily: Finally, with the language 'games'
Three words we weren't sure we'd ever say: God bless Ubisoft. They're finally bringing some English-based language trainers to the DS: listings for My French Coach and My Spanish Coach have turned up on GameFly. We've yearned for such as these after drooling over all the English and Kanji trainers out for Japanese DS owners, and at last, it looks like the tide has turned in our favor. Between this and Jam Sessions, we're starting to feel a little better about Ubisoft and their unfortunate port habit. Also listed is My Word Coach, which sounds like it might be a vocabulary trainer, and we're all for that! We're hoping we'll begin to hear words like mellifluous and tmesis in daily conversation. So today's question is: are you interested in any of these three, or are you firmly holding out for languages not taught in the average high school? Or perhaps we should say, vous voulez acheter Mon Entraîneur Français? Feel free to correct any errors there -- we could use a French coach![Via Joystiq]
Ubisoft to assist in the learning of glorious languages
Bonjour! Gamefly is really letting us know what's coming down the pipeline lately. Siliconera reports that they spotted "games" My Spanish Coach and My French Coach for the Nintendo DS on the site with an October release. We're going to guess that the Ubisoft published games are meant to assist the average unilingual American in picking up another language -- although French wouldn't be all that helpful on the North American continent unless you got lost in the wilderness of Quebec.Ubisoft will also release My Word Coach, which would seem like a vocabulary enhancement tool. Wii cüd rly uz dat. We'd like to think that these "games" would be used in schools to teach kids, but dagnabbit, this is America and nobody should speak anything but American. And drink Budweiser, eat Kraft cheese, drive a GM truck ... etc., etc. Can't we just bypass the whole "learning" thing and just get a universal translator up and running already?
Is Nintendogs the most 'important' DS game?
The folks at GamePro have put together a pretty interesting feature listing their picks for the top 52 most important games ever. These aren't necessarily the best games, or the best-selling games, but their choices for those titles that have been the most influential on gaming as a whole. And while we're sure many of their picks will be questioned and debated to the point of exhaustion, we're really only interested in one small part of the list -- that is, the only DS title to make the cut. Nintendogs weighs in at #44. Does this mean it's the most influential of all DS games? Since it's the only one on the list, it would seem so, and while we agree that Nintendogs certainly advanced gaming, we might argue that since the franchise draws heavily on both Animal Crossing and the digital pet phenomenon, it's hard to see Nintendogs as a "focusing lens" that forever changed gaming. Does that mean Nintendogs did nothing new? Of course it did. But the idea of a needy digipet existed long before Nintendo popularized the portable pooches with their array of titles. GamePro says "first" doesn't matter -- it's being the folks that do it right that matters -- Nintendogs certainly did a lot of things right, but is it the most important game on the DS? It's an interesting question.And we have a question of our own -- where's Brain Age? The game that started the training phenomenon is easily equally influential, or perhaps even more so. But we won't argue; rather, we admire the effort that goes into such a list, and after skimming the comments on the article, we don't envy the flood of angry e-mails that are surely flowing into the mailboxes of the writers.
Study: Educational software doesn't work
The U.S. Department of Education issued a report yesterday that educational software of all types, from the video-game-like to the ultra-dry, "has no significant impact on student performance." And folks like Elliot Soloway, professor of educational tech at U. Michigan, are miffed. Says Soloway, "It is the poor kids who will suffer, because it is their schools who will not get technology because of this study."That's one way to look at it. Here's another way: the study could help schools, both underfunded and not, because now their administrators might spend more money on good teachers and less on Oregon Trail. Shooting squirrels in a video game is fun, but it's no substitute for a real human showing you how to shoot squirrels.[via GameLife]
Learn Japanese with homebrew DS app
Japanese gamers can learn English with their DS. There's even a Japanese-English dictionary for the system. Now it's time for us poor monoglot anglophones to expand our linguistic horizons. A coder known as Zoelen has just released an early version of Project JDS. The app teaches you to recognize and write both hiragana and katakana characters, even listen to their pronunciation. And if you're really nice, you can use the touch screen to draw characters and get berated for using the wrong stroke order!It isn't much to look at, but it gets the job done and is surprisingly feature-rich for a homemade app. Now if only it had a catchy name. Something like ... Touch Dic.[Via DrunkenCoders]
Genius DS wants to train your brain
With all this brain training going on, one wonders just how long before DS aficionados start racking up the patents and the Nobel Prizes. Maybe we're just not quite there yet. We need to train further. Well, don't despair, future genius inventors, there's yet another edutainment title on the horizon, and it's coming to stretch your gray matter. Genius DS - Equal Cards is slated for this summer, and seems to be primarily a math-influenced title, and the math puzzles use cards that must be sorted. Sounds riveting.
SXSW: Serious Games: Can Learning Be Hard Fun?
When you combine the words "serious" "learning" and "hard" in the same sentence, chances are you're going to end up with something that gamers won't like. But that's what the Serious Games Initiative is all about, developing games for "non-entertainment" purposes. Of course, the problem is games for non-entertainment tend to scare people away faster than the phrase "edutainment."That's the main problem facing Serious Games, how do they make it seem like they aren't hiding the broccoli under the meatloaf? All of the games shown off were educational in one form or another, having to do with zapping cancer cells inside the human body, or how to interact with people in the workplace. Seriously, there is a game about the proper way to run a meeting, collaborate with coworkers, and generally function in an office. Too bad it's not running on the Unreal Engine. Zing!
Scientists recommend educational gaming
The Federation of American Scientists have concluded that gaming can provide skills useful in the job market and attributes that would facilitate learning. Making logical deductions, staying on task, staying motivated and goal-oriented despite constant failure, and infinite patience are all abilities gamers have and students need. Can we somehow converge gaming and education in such a way as to retain motivation while providing an educational environment?Following a Summit on Educational Games, FAS has released a report (PDF file) that calls on the government to fund research into educational games: establishing new approaches to educational games, evaluating their merit, and working with established game developers to devise new strategies. FAS also calls on business leaders to put a greater emphasis on educational software, particularly in the K-12 school system.Formed in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists, FAS is endorsed by 67 Nobel Laureates. They have in the past developed three games: Immune Attack, Discover Babylon, and Mutli Casualty Incident Response.[Via ars technica; thanks, jayntampa]
Capcom wants you to learn Japanese [update1]
Well, they want someone to learn it, anyway. But they're not telling us who. IGN reports that Tadashii Nihongo DS appeared on a list of titles that will be shown at Osaka's upcoming Games Festa 2006. Tadashii Nihongo DS, which translates to "Proper Language Japanese DS," joins a long list of other language tools that have been released for the system -- IGN points out that there are five that focus just on kanji. As for the focus of this title ... well, if we knew, we'd tell you. But for now, there's only speculation. Proper language, eh? One for the grammar sticklers, perhaps ....[Update 1: Thanks for the translation correction, p@ul!]
Common sense training on the DS
Forget training your brain -- what most people need is to learn not to be a complete moron in day to day life. But they don't mean common sense in the "don't set yourself on fire because it's funny" way (which is a shame), but common sense in the "general knowledge" way. Famitsu has several new screens from the third installment in the DS Touch Generations training series, but darned if we can tell what's going on in all of them. Maybe we need a little training.There's been some dispute over the translation of the title, so until we get an English version, we'll just go with Otona No Joushikiryoku Training DS. The game is scheduled for a Japanese release in October.Who can tell us what kind of flowers those are?[Via Go Nintendo]
