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Kiki Master: the student-developed confidence-boosting game
Another really interesting student-created game from the Nintendo Game Seminar has been put on the Everyone's Nintendo Channel for download: Kiki Master (Listening Master). It's sort of like Ouendan, but less rhythm-based and more reflex-based, with a bit of logic as well. In the first chapter, you help a boy gather the confidence to confess his love by popping his negative thoughts with your stylus. He'll think in multiple thought bubbles, and it's up to you to leave only the ones that are positive or helpful to his cause. As the negativity disappears from his mind, he gains confidence.Now that the Nintendo Channel is on the way to the U.S. and Europe, can we expect to see interesting content like this? Probably not!
WWDC Student Scholarship Info Posted
If you're hoping to go to WWDC on a student scholarship, better get applying soon. The deadline is fast approaching. Get those applications in by the 10th of April. Scholarship winners will be notified by email by the end of April. The WWDC scholarship offers a free ticket to WWDC with complete access to all tech sessions and special events, saving you somewhere roughly in the neighborhood of $1600. (We previously wrote about the scholarship here.) What's more, there's usually an all-day event just for student developers plus a career fair where you can meet hiring managers from many Mac development companies. Thanks Joseph Agreda
Student newspaper raises concerns about WoW addiction
A boy skipped his senior prom because he was busy playing WoW. A woman divorced her husband because he was more interested in WoW than in her. We've heard these kinds of stories many times before; the media runs them all the time. And while it's frustrating that the games we play are often seen only in that light by the public at large, there's no denying that some people have a problem with unhealthy addiction to WoW and games like it.The student newspaper of Northeastern University ran yet another piece lamenting the negative effects of World of Warcraft on some people. At this point, all these addiction articles are becoming white noise to me, but this one had a couple notable contributions to the discussion.An expert was quoted within, saying that video game addiction is mostly a problem for young males of high school or college age. Imagine that! Also, the article featured a not-new quote from Liz Woolley (founder of On-Line Gamers Anonymous and the mother of that boy who committed suicide while playing EverQuest way back when); she said that MMO developers know that players can become addicted, and that those devs are therefore "no better than drug pushers." I think that's a bit harsh, but it's understandable that she'd come to that, given what she's gone through. You can still achieve many of your in-game goals on limited playtime. Our weekly WoW, Casually column has the hints, tips and tricks for those with 2 hours or less to play.
Modular AudioGear system allows teachers to tone it down
While your offspring may be too busy attempting to snap a blur-free image of his / her instructor to actually listen to the lecture, those dedicated few who actually show up to learn may appreciate what AudioGear provides. Crafted by Logical Choice, this modular audio system is designed to allow every student, regardless of proximity to the teacher, hear his / her voice loud and clear. The system places a number of speakers around the room and equips the moderator with a wireless lapel microphone in order to broadcast their voice evenly without resorting to the tried and true screaming approach. Moreover, school's can "upgrade" their purchase in the future without replacing the core hardware in order to acquire a "voice enhancement system with infrared microphones for the teacher and students." Initial response in a number of Florida schools has been fairly positive thus far, but this thing sure would bum out the habitual nappers in the back row, for sure.
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]
High school students laser-enable the disabled
The students on the Palo Alto High School InvenTeam arrived at the Stanford Cool Products Expo this year with a new system designed to allow quadriplegics to operate all kinds of gadgets and appliances. The user shakes his head to activate a glasses-mounted laser, which he can then point at sensors embedded in an array of custom triggers placed around the home. So far the team's nailed the basic on/off circuit needed for lights, fans, and a pet food dispenser (which is currently shelling out M&M's to Expo attendees), but the real noise is their plan to extend the system by building a small robot that will perform various tasks. According to the school, team captain Guy Davidson was only kidding a little when he said the team hoped "to have [the user] vacuuming in a few weeks." While this isn't the first time we've seen lasers used to assist the disabled, you gotta wonder what's going to happen to their altruisitic spirit when these kids realize they can also just headmount one of those crazy high-powered laser pointers.Read - CNET Cool Products Expo video (second item)Read - Palo Alto High School press release (6MB PDF)
Maryland considering GPS tracking for truant students
Regardless of your personal opinion regarding the increasing use of so-called "Big Brother" tactics by the governments of the world, you've gotta hand it to the Maryland legislature for its sheer audacity here. "What, your kids won't go to school? We've got an idea, let's track 'em with GPS like the criminals they are!" Though perhaps parents will be delighted to learn that if Billy skips school too many times, an upcoming bill means they won't have to bother to do anything about it. According to Maryland Delegate Doyle Niemann, "They're not in control of their children. They take them to school, the kid walks in the front door and then out the back door. It doesn't make any sense to continue to beat on the parents." Seems like the schools might try a bit harder to spot these kids in transit from front door to back door, but if they're proving this elusive already, perhaps GPS really is the only answer.[Via The Raw Feed]
French students to get USB drive with open source software
Sheesh, where were these guys when we were in school, huh? A number of (admittedly admirable) French authorities have okayed a plan to dish out 175,000 USB drives to Parisian high-school students at the beginning of the next term, and each stick will pack a bevy of open source software aimed at "further reducing the digital divide." The USB drives will likely contain Mozilla's own Firefox and Thunderbird applications, OpenOffice, an instant messaging client, and of course, an unnamed media player to play back tunes and videos. The exact mix of software will be determined by whichever firm ends up winning the bid to provide said thumb drives, but the council plans to spend a whopping €2.6 million ($3.4 million) on the devices alone, leaving us to wonder if these won't be crafted out of precious metals or something. Nevertheless, it looks like just the 15 and 16-year olds will be getting the gifts this time around, but if the implementation "proves successful," it could very well be renewed (and expanded) the following year.[Via SmartMobs]
Electrolux crowns champions in 2006 Design Lab contest
Electrolux has been known to crank out some wicked appliances (and other household gear) over the years, but now its getting a taste (ahem) of just how snazzy its lineup will be once these students hire in upon graduating. Engineering minds from all over the world submitted entries into the firm's 2006 Design Lab contest, and while props were (understandably) given to a plethora of participants, only three could claim top honors. Above all was the Nevale Food Carrier (pictured above), which rocks four separated layers for toting "different hot / cold meals" at once, and the digital screen atop its lid provides a real-time readout of the storage conditions while the built-in vacuum system keeps food "fresh and free from bacteria." The first runner up, dubbed The Organic Cook, puts a nasty right hook on Mr. Foreman's offering, as it touts "oil-free frying, grilling, and boiling using infrared technology and vacuum cooking." Taking home the bronze is VESSTO, a "sleekly-designed, portable cooker" that utilizes renewable energy as power via an "advanced version of the Stirling Engine," and also features touch-sensitive controls and a screen for displaying recipes. So if you're interested to know just how stylish your kitchen will look in just a few more years, be sure to click on for a few more snapshots, and hit the read link for the full rundown of spectacular contrivances.[Via Appliancist]
Medical students treat dummies that bleed, speak, and die
While there's always the off chance that your next surgery will be completed by a robotic doctor, we'd wager that most of us would opt for a well-trained, well-rested, and naturally conceived expert to handle the tools. The University of Portsmouth is upping the ante on its training facilities for those making the rounds in med school, and doctors-to-be now have access to £135,000 ($266,706) dummies that "bleed, speak, and potentially die" depending on the level of care received. Providing a more realistic practice environment, these lifelike mannequins can also "breathe oxygen, drool, secrete fluids, blink, and even react to drugs injected into their bodies." Aside from being used by students of medicine, social work, and dentistry, police and firefighters will also be able to get their hands dirty, but they'll be forced to treat the creature as a real human, taking notice of their names, biographies, and medical history before picking up that needle. Additionally, users will be able to access the built-in cameras and microphones to "critically appraise performances in real time." So if you're looking for a second opinion, tracking down a recent Portsmouth graduate that trained on these blokes might not be such a bad idea.[Via Smart Mobs]
IBM to future game makers: Stay in school
The vagaries of computer chip design don't usually hold a school child's rapt attention. But tell the student how that chip design relates to video games and things might go a little differently.That was clearly IBM's hope when they invited over 300 New York area children to its $2.5-billion East Fishkill manufacturing plant this week to show them how the chips behind today's game systems get made. The trip was part of a program to encourage math and science education by "making the subjects interesting and relevant to them."To that end, IBM showed the students how math and science make games possible, and how the technology behind video games is being used in everything from health care to energy exploration. The students also got to get some hands on time with the next-gen systems, which we're sure made them forget all about that boring educational stuff.With IBM chips in all three next-gen systems, the company clearly has a vested interest in promoting its position at the forefront of gaming hardware technology. Still, it's always nice to see a corporate mega-conglomerate giving something back to the community.
Biometrics come to lunch lady land
Since today's children will inevitably grow up to be tomorrow's criminals, what better way to get their fingerprints on file than by using biometrics as a payment method for those delicious, nutritious school lunches? Lunch has certainly gotten a lot more high-tech since the days when we were students (you used to be able to fill up on Tastycakes and chips -- no MealPayPlus to ruin your atrocious dietary regimen), and now one school district in Georgia has taken it to next level by installing print scanners that allow students to instantly put meals on their growing tabs. Apparently the Rome City Schools have already had a PIN-based payment system in place for some time now, but as second grader Adrianna Harris opined, "The finger's better because all you've got to do is put your finger in, and you don't have to do the number and get mixed up." Good point, Adrianna, although with calculators already having taken away our adeptness at simple arithmetic and cellphones making it increasingly impossible to remember anyone's phone number, this new method seems like it might hinder yet another valuable life skill: the ability to properly operate an ATM. Still, we're all for technology making the lunch line move faster, but paranoid parents looking to keep their progeny "off the grid" will probably want to start packing bagged meals from now on -- along with keeping their disappointed kids as far away from Disneyworld as possible.
Deceptive game case makes children cry
Sony-hating Joystiq once talked about the new gaming Oreo: a DS Lite placed into the Value Pack PSP sock. When a junior high school teacher from 4 color rebellion (Disclaimer: it's a Nintendo blog) tried putting a PSP in a DS carrying case, all he did was make his students sad. One child even cried.You see, my students had become accustomed to playing with the ever-present DS lite. After class, some girls came up as sasked, "Can we play Mario?" I explained that I didn't have my DS with me, but one girl pointed to the case and its DS logo. I opened the case and watched their faces fall as they saw the PSP. I asked, "Would you like to play with this instead?" They replied, "No." The blogger goes out to point that he was surprised by this response, considering how the much-better graphics of the PSP didn't attract the kids at all. "To these students however, it is not an end-all multimedia device. It is just some shiny black thing that doesn't play Animal Crossing." As amusing as this story is, if Sony wants to extend their reach, they somehow have to steal part of the lucrative children's market.
College students shunning free music subscription services
It's the rare college student who will turn down free anything -- free food, free booze, and free love are all top priorities for the modern scholar -- so we were more than a little surprised to learn that those online music subscriptions being offered gratis by a number of colleges haven't really taken off like one would assume. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, the services from Napster and company have proven so unpopular that many schools are dropping the program altogether after only a year or two, although the RIAA claims that the number of participating campuses will actually increase "pretty significantly" this fall. Even if that's true, it's not clear why students at newly-subscribed schools would behave any differently than ones who already have access to the free tunes and still choose alternative distribution methods -- most notably the iTunes music store and the still-popular P2P networks. Ultimately it seems to be the services' many restrictions that are turning off the college crowd -- tracks can't always be burned to disc or transferred to a DAP, and they also disappear after four years -- and the fact that students today treasure their iPods even more than their precious cans of beer only makes non-FairPlay content that much more undesirable.[Via TechDirt]
eMachines releases five desktops for cash-strapped students
Even though summer has only barely begun, Gateway's eMachines is already looking ahead to the upcoming school year, having just announced five new Vista-ready desktops for the student on a budget. Starting at the "top of the line," we have the T6536 (pictured, with optional monitor) and T6534, which both feature Athlon 64 processors from AMD (3800+ and 3700+, respectively), nVidia GeForce 6100 graphics, and 250GB of storage, but the extra $90 you're spending on the $540 T6536 doubles the RAM from 512MB to 1GB and bumps the OS up to Windows XP Media Center Edition. Next in line is the T5046, which will set you back the same $450 as the T6534 but changes up the specs with a hyper-threaded Pentium 4 processor, Radeon Xpress 200 graphics from ATI, 512MB of RAM, a 200GB HDD, and the same dual-layer DVD burner found in both members of the 6000-series. Finally, the super-budget-conscious consumer has the option of either the $350 T3506 or $380 T3508, with the former machine offering a Celeron D352 CPU, Radeon X300-based graphics, 512MB of RAM, 120GB HDD, and a CD-RW/DVD combo drive, while the latter rig steps it up to a Celeron D356, Radeon Xpress 200 chip, 160GB hard drive, and that good old multi-format DVD burner. All of the new machines are available immediately, which gives you plenty of time to load up the software you'll need for surviving next year's vigorous academic schedule -- namely tunes, vids, and games.Read- T6536Read- T6534Read- T5046Read- T3508Read- T3506[All models via Yahoo]
iPod or drinking: students prefer iPod
We can't say that we're really surprised, but it would appear that this year's hundred-university student survey conducted by Student Monitor showed the iPod to run the show in terms of student desireability, even more so than getting soused. It's the first time in almost ten years that something besides drinking has reigned atop the survey, but we have to admit though, drinking has the odds stacked against it. We'll see what happens to the Apple's sweet spread when we lobby the government to raise the minimum buying age for iPods to 21, now won't we?[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
How Schools Want You to Spend Your Summer
In response to our summer vacation topic the other day, the Collegiate Times has posted a list of summer vacation 'do's & don'ts' (how quaint), and coming in at number five on that list:5.) DON'T lock yourself in your room all day playing video games. It's only acceptable to spend eight consecutive hours in a virtual fairy-land if you are doing so with another human. Instead of closing your door and giving everyone the sneaking suspicion that you have formed an irrefutable bond with your right hand, knock on the next room down and make friends with dudeface so you can combine your warrior fighting noob powers. Don't worry, Zelda's Twilight Princess will be out in November, and you will have plenty of time to hide away in the darkest corner of your room to ride Chocobos and raise your HP to "Level 9 - Congratulations! You've graduated to the shameless rank of social outcast!" - insert retainer slurping noises here.So, does that mean that as long as you're playing games with other people, then it's ok? Is it just the Zelda games they want you to stay away from? And if so, why do they want you to wait until the school year to start playing? Something's fishy here...
Audience participation helps manipulate flexible skyscraper
The one thing that even non-architect-types know about skyscrapers is that tall buildings are designed to be slightly flexible, so strong gusts of wind don't send them tumbling to the ground. Well a group of MIT students have used that concept to build their own 800-pound mini-skyscraper which, in an impressive application of performance art, actually allows on-lookers to control the way it shimmies and shakes. Winner of a competition sponsored by the university's Department of Architecture, the 40-foot-tall modular structure sports four pneumatic muscles in each one of its stackable sections, which make it lean and bend into strange and unnatural shapes when multiple audience members operate the bicycle pump- or digital-controls simultaneously. Once the current exhibition is complete, we hope the design team decides to donate the wobbly wonder to their classmates who built that completely automated dorm room, because those guys could definitely turn it into a party accessory that would put those dancing flowers from the 80's to shame.
"Stealth ringtone" can only be heard by teens
We admit, the vibrating alerts in some phones are extraordinarily loud, often too loud to be discreet. And if the phone is sitting on a hard surface? Forget it. Motorola's BUZR could be years away, if we ever see it at all, so what's a mischievous, cellphone-toting student to do when phones are banned from class? Rumors are flying that students in the UK have recorded the sound produced by a device called the Mosquito, designed to disperse roving gangs of teenagers by emitting a sound that can only be heard by youngsters. By using the recording as their ringtone, they hear it (along with their friends and any nearby canines) while the poor headmaster is left in the dark. It's debatable whether your average cellphone is capable of producing sounds in the range necessary to elicit this effect, so this may be nothing more than a rumor, but if you see packs of dogs belting out some tunes near the local high school, you know what's probably going on. [Via Ringtonia and BoingBoing]
More on WoW Addiction in Students
From today's issue of the Rocky Mountain Collegian, the school paper of Colorado State University, comes another article concerning the addictive properties of WoW and the effects it can have on one's schoolastic life. The article talks with several students who detail the reasons that they just can't break themselves away from the game screen, and touches on numerous other points that we've all heard before, but shouldn't expect to hear the last of any time soon.One student does have a good quote illustrating why he no longer plays the game, however: "I like to live, breathe and eat, so I don't play that game anymore."
