Members of Finland’s Tampere University of Technology Student Union and Universimo gaming company have teamed up to build the world’s largest Tetris game. The team used the windows of the Mikontalo student housing complex staircase to create giant color changing pixels that can be controlled by a mobile phone. The university plans to implement other student created games on the wall as well.
Too bad the guy playing in the video sucks at Tetris.
Nintendo, The National Institute of Aerospace and Nortel LearniT have joined forces to use Pokemon as a learning aid to teach science. The program is aimed at elementary and middle school students and focuses on astral sciences. An activity component will even allow teachers and students to submit questions to experts in the field. Robert Lindberg, NIA’s President and Executive Director had this to say about the project:
“We are thrilled to offer educators a resource program that utilizes popular characters to enhance the learning experience for students in fields of study that will only grow more crucial as we move forward in the 21st century.”
This isn’t the first time Pokemon have been used for learning with the Pokemon Learning League taking many awards for its approach to teaching kids about Math, Science, Language Arts and Life Skills. Here is what George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications had to say about the corroboration:
“We’re honored to have our characters take what sometimes may seem like dry topics and help make them come alive for students. The collaboration provides an opportunity for children to learn 21st century science using 21st century tools with characters they’re familiar with.”
Lets hope it’s a little more Pikachu than Snorlax.
A Duke University project has designed a virtual crack house as a way of helping addicts overcome their addiction. The sim is designed to actually place addicts in tempting situations in order to experience cravings. These cravings are learned behavior which the game aims to erode. Designer of the sim, Professor Zach Rosenthal explained the details of the learned behavior and how the sim effects it:
When temptation arises [in game]… the patient rates his or her own craving level. But the magic moment comes when a high craving subsides, which it does, because the patient won’t be taking drugs in the virtual world. The therapist tries to tie that moment, when a craving subsides, to a trigger, like a tone. So the addict eventually learns to associate the sound with the sensation of decreased craving… For example, if an addict ends up in a [real world] tempting situation, he or she can take out the phone donated by the program, dial a number and hear that tone. The addict remembers the sound learned in the therapy session, and the craving should subside.
A now clean long time addict who has been through the program praised it openly by saying:
The program has done wonders for me. Although I have fallen since I came out of the program, I am clean and have been clean for a good while.
The sim has been modeled on real world environments from pictures that were taken when the Durham, NC Police Department took the team to known drug locations.
A small scale study at a primary school in the town of Dundee, Scotland has uncovered some very promising findings. The study set out to test the benefits of using More Brain Training for the Nintendo DS as an educational aid.
The students were separated into 3 groups of 30 for 10 weeks, one that played More Brain Training for 15 minutes each morning, one used “Brain Gym” (physical exercises meant to stimulate brain activity) and the last group did nothing.
A math test given to students at the start and end of the study showed that the students who used More Brain Training improved their scores by a greater margin than those who didn’t. Interestingly, students who performed poorly on the first test saw particularly impressive gains over the course of the study - one special-needs pupil raised his score from 25/100 to 68/100.
Derek Robertson, from Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) speaks about the project he helped design:
The results of this small-scale Dr Kawashima project have shown how a targeted and managed use of such a game can help to enhance pupil numeracy skills and classroom behaviour.
There was also a noticeable impact on behaviour and levels of concentration throughout the school day, with the children becoming more self-confident.
It had a real calming effect on children in the class. In fact I have never before seen such gains across the board.
Educational games don’t usually make it to consoles, and certainly never make it “fun” like is always claimed… except on the DS. So it’s good news to hear the DS is finally taking the plunge in respect to a musical education, with the game Rhythm N’ Notes. Through the use of piano and drums the game aims to teach the technical aspects of music. The game is designed for both the musically inept and advanced, with ranging difficulty levels. Available now, at the very reasonable price of $19.99 you really have no excuse not to aim to be that musical virtuoso you always wished you were.
Three UC Irvine students have teamed up with two students from Dartmouth College to win IBM’s Cell Broadband Engine Professor University Challenge, using three PlayStation 3 consoles to recreate the visual processing area of the brain.
Prior attempts of solving the problem with standard CPUs have been hindered by insufficient processing power, however the UCI/Dartmouth team’s solution of three PS3 consoles and a PC is capable of recognizing an object in just one second.
According to Jayram Moorkanikara from the UC Irvine team, their work has several applications, and is just getting started:
We have just started looking into the exciting area of hardware realization of brain algorithms. More such algorithms and applications will be developed and used in smart, self-guided cars, computers and robots,
By transmitting information from the accelerometer to a portable computer, they were able to record data about the forces acting on the unit as it entered free fall. They were also able to measure the acceleration of a swinging pendulum by swinging it on a piece of string.
More educational experiments have been planned for the Wiimote, which has superseded the humble mouse in similar experiments.
