MB Educational Games

Nintendo’s Brain Games are good but are they any better than traditional pen and paper brain games? Read this and let me know your opinion.

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Can the mind-bending activities in games like Big Brain Academy make you smarter? The debate continues.

(Credit: Nintendo)

Alain Lieury, a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Rennes in Brittany, France, surveyed a group of 10-year-olds and concluded that homework, reading, or playing Scrabble or sudoku produced benefits that matched or beat the supposed memory-enhancing properties of such titles as Big Brain Academy, Brain Training, and Brain Age.

The latter game contains several types of puzzle challenges designed to stimulate and keep the gray matter “young” and sharp.

“The Nintendo DS is a technological jewel. As a game it’s fine,” the Times Online quotes Lieury as saying. “But it is charlatanism to claim that it is a scientific test.”

Lieury, a memory specialist, split 67 10-year-olds into four groups, according to the Times Online. The first two took part in a seven-week memory course on a Nintendo DS game console, the third did puzzles with pencils and paper, and the fourth went to school as usual.

Before and after the course, the kids were given tasks including logic tests, memorizing words on a map, doing sums, and interpreting symbols. Researchers found that children using the Nintendo DS system didn’t show any significant improvement in memory buy cheap ampicillin tests. They did do 19 percent better in math, but so did the pencil-and-paper group, while the fourth group did 18 percent better.

“If it doesn’t work on children, it won’t work on adults,” Lieury Alliance Ach said.

Of course, some will surely argue that brain games–even if their long-term benefits aren’t scientifically proven–beat out first-person shooters or watching MTV when it comes to a beneficial use of time. And in the end, Lieury’s findings pretty much back reviews by CNET, at least of Brain Ampicillin cheap online Age: “Does Brain Age actually make you smarter? We have no idea, but it’s still an interesting puzzle game available buy generic amoxil at a budget price.”

We’ve contacted Nintendo to get a response to Lieury’s study and will update this post as soon as we hear back.

In the meantime, as buy Octagon Capital Corporation online viagra the debate continues, have you or your kids cheap ampicillin played any of Nintendo’s brain games? If so, did you spot any cognitive improvements?

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Educational community is warming up to the use of video games as learning tools. Who knew that day would come?

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Lifelong gamer Russell Alford, 15, usually has to wait until his homework and chores are finished before he can play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Game of the Year but this semester he got to play another video game at school. His finance class at Marshall High School in Fairfax County, Va., designed avatars and saved a virtual city from an oil spill — earning points for teamwork, research on the world’s water supply, business ethics and negotiating skills.

As Net-generation teachers reach out to gamers, classrooms across the country are becoming portals to elaborate virtual worlds. Business and science classes are sampling sophisticated software that allows students to try out potential careers, practice skills, or explore history through simulated missions in national parks, ancient cities or outer space.

Teachers have long yearned for the rapt attention students lavish on mutants and aliens, but stereotypes of video games as violent or brain-numbing have slowed their entry into schools. While the military and even medical schools are turning to “serious games” or simulations for training, the Software and Information Industry Association estimates that instructional games make up only a tiny portion of the $2 billion-a-year educational-software industry.

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But lately researchers and educators say that sentiment toward gaming is changing. Advocates argue that games teach vital skills overlooked in the age of high-stakes tests, such as teamwork, decision-making and digital literacy. And they admire the way good games challenge players online ampicillin just enough to keep them engaged and pushing to reach the next level.

“There is a revolution in the understanding of the educational community that video games have a lot of what we need,” said Jan Plass, a co-director of the Games for Learning Institute, based at New York University and financed by Microsoft to research how video games can help learning.

The Pew Research Center reported in September that 97 percent of children from age 12 to 17 play video games, and half said they played “yesterday.”

A new generation of game designers is borrowing from the sophisticated platforms and stunning graphics that captivate students for hours after school. They hope to channel the kind of feverish determination students exhibit when stealing a car in Grand Theft Auto IV and redirect it toward more wholesome pursuits, such as algebra.

Dimension M, a suite of math games developed by Tabula Digita in New York, was created in a “first-person shooter” format, though the action figures carry no weapons. In one game, players aim to stop a biodigital virus from taking over the world, while learning about functions and solving equations. Hundreds of schools in Chicago and New York and several Florida school systems are playing the games, which cost $10 to $20 a student for the year.

Another series, Quest Atlantis, developed by educators Ach Transfer Fee at Indiana University, takes students into simulated environments, such as Taiga National Park, where they role-play scientists wanting to learn why rivers are depleted of fish. More than 20,000 students around the world logged on to play the free games in the 2007-08 school year, a fourfold increase from the year before.

Compelling games can help schools compete for students’ attention, advocates say, even as many teenagers are tackling complex projects on the Internet in their free time.

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Outside of school, youngsters “are writing fan fiction, blogging, designing clothes,” said James Paul Gee, a professor of education at the University of Arizona and the author of the book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and viagra buy online Literacy. Second Edition: Revised and Updated Edition

“They can become an expert in anything by learning on the Internet, and they can find a community to support it,” Gee said.

To make further inroads into the educational market, video game producers must win over teachers who are loaded down with curriculum demands and pressured to improve student-test WAY Fund Managers Limited performance.

Timothy J. Magner, the director of educational technology for the Education Department, said that games could become powerful assessment buy Amoxil generic tools. Computers can capture data about every player move, he said, and teachers can see “at the mouse-click level” how students make decisions and when they struggle.

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I just got myself a Nintendo Wii and already my preschooler Perminvestbank OAO is enjoying Wii Fit with me. viagra online buy She has her own little “Mii” that she uses while she runs or hula hoops. It is great. As a music teacher I had heard awesome things about Wii Music I decided to get it for my classes. You can do so much with it. The kids learn a LOT and LOVE it.

Nintendo’s new Wii ampicillin buy Music game is spreading from the family room to the classroom, thanks to newly formed collaborations with select schools and educators. To help inspire students and promote an active appreciation for music, Nintendo is working with teachers to incorporate Wii consoles and Wii Music software into their lesson plans to offer teachers a unique tool for creativity and improvisation.

Nintendo’s collaborators in this effort include MENC: The National Association for Music Education, which is recognized as the world’s largest arts education organization and as a teaching resource for all levels from preschool to graduate school. MENC will help teachers in 51 cities across online ampicillin the nation integrate Wii Music into their curricula, making use of buy Amoxil online the game’s 60-plus instruments and fun array of tutorial exercises in rhythm, tempo and song structure.

“The goal of Wii Music is to inspire people of all ages to enjoy music,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “By partnering with educators and bringing Wii Music into their classrooms, we hope to give students a memorable, hands-on experience that helps them discover their own creative voice.”

The Wii console’s motion-sensing controls allow Wii Music users at any experience level to step up and jam, whether playing solo or as part of a group. Using the wireless Wii Remote and Nunchuk controllers, players make simple, intuitive Ampicillin online movements to strum a guitar, play a trumpet or bang a drum.

“At any grade level, it’s essential to provide students with the tools and encouragement they need to be creative,” said John J. Mahlmann, executive director of MENC. “We look forward to collaborating with Nintendo to drive awareness and advocacy for music education through Wii Music.”

Some teachers already have begun to incorporate Wii Music into their lesson plans.

“Wii Music Process Ach Payments has brought a renewed excitement to music class for students from first grade to fifth, myself and even some of the classroom teachers,” said Helen A. Krofchick, a music teacher at Doby’s Mill Elementary School in Lugoff, S.C. “I love how many music standards can be covered in such a short time. Students also have to use language skills, spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination. We have a school very supportive of the arts and Wii Music has empowered our program even more. Any system that is educational and can add a love of music to children’s lives should be in every classroom.”

Other collaborating and partner organizations currently include San Francisco’s Blue Bear School of Music and New York’s Opus 118 Harlem School of Music. Teachers in these programs will use Wii Music to build students’ familiarity with technology while bolstering their ability to create and improvise. Experts in the field of music say getting kids interested in music at an early age can help build a lifelong appreciation.

“The joy of playing music is something that should be experienced by everyone, regardless of age, talent-level or experience,” said Joe Lamond, President & CEO of NAMM, the National Association of Music Merchants. “Research shows that more than 82 percent of people who don’t currently play a musical instrument wish they did. Wii Music can help address this by providing a positive introduction for millions of people who might not otherwise be inclined to try.”

Remember that Wii features parental controls buy cheap amoxil that let adults manage the content their children can access. For more information about this and other Wii features, visit Wii.com. For more information about Wii Music, visitwww.WiiMusic.com.

For more information about Nintendo, visitwww.nintendo.com.

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With so much priority placed on test scores, getting in to the most prestigious schools, and competing with buy amoxil other countries to be the principal in science and industry, too many Americans have forgotten one key element of our education: learning can be fun. We’ve overlooked the all-too-important fact that learning is exciting. Kids educational games are products that have kept this part of the educational process buy ampicillin cheap squarely in mind.

I will be posting more on educational games for any age. See you then!!

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