Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

We can teach students geography using Nintendo Wii — at least that’s what Mr. David Brantley at the Cumberland Elementary School believes.

Gathered in front of the white board in David Brantley’s class, his first-graders vie to show off geography skills using the Nintendo Wii.

“We’ve seen North America, South America, Africa and Asia,” Brantley says, as he flips the wand controller and spins the projected weather globe to an unknown location. “How about Europe or Australia?”

Though they have individual maps of the U.S. and the world at hand, the students are not waving their arms to point at the map with their fingers the way children have traditionally learned geography. They want a chance to wield the controller to find and click on U.S. states and continents.

It gets better…

From making math problems out of bowling scores to playing Scrabble-like Flash games, available free on the Internet, he sees unlimited potential for educational use.

Source: Game system lowers learning curve at Cumberland

Nintendo announced a new game controller called Wii Balance Board. This new controller is specially designed for games that involve physical exercises.

The centre piece of the whole shebang is the Balance Board, a device that looks a bit like a slim set of bathroom weighing scales. By applying pressure to it (by standing or pushing with your arms during press ups etc.), it can measure your actions and relay them to your Wii. Examples showed stepping, push ups, hula-hoop motions, heading and dodgying soccer balls, dancing, yoga and simple ball-rolling exercises where weight is shifted from one foot to other.

I think this new controller will further push Nintendo’s market share. First, it will encourage more people to buy Wii just because they want to exercise while being entertained by video games. Second, parents will be more willing to buy Wii than other game consoles because Wii has a healthier image. Third, Wii’s innovative game controls are user-friendly to all ages.

Related links:

• Nintendo Wii Balance Board gets you stepping in upcoming Wii Fit title
• E3: Nintendo unveils Wii Fit and Balance Board
• Wii Fit (youtube video)

According to a market research firm, as of the end of April 2007, Nintendo has sold 2.5 million Wii consoles in the US, almost double PlayStation 3’s sales and closing in on Xbox 360’s 5.4 millions sales. There is a little doubt that the video gaming market is now divided.

The question is how did we come to this situation? Few years back, Nintendo was considered a “dead” company by many analysts. Sony’s game console was the king. What did Sony do wrong? What did Nintendo do right?

Read the rest of this entry »

Wii is not only good for entertainment and physical exercise but also for brain rehabilitation. According to Edmonton Journal, doctors are experimenting the use of Wii to treat patient with movement and balance issues.

Dr. Grigore Burdea, a world leader in computer-based virtual reality techniques in rehabilitation therapies, said in five years, he believes every hospital and rehab clinic will have embraced the gaming technology for their patients.

Burdea said some hospitals have used the Wii gaming system to help boost and entertain patients during their hospital stay. But he said the Glenrose is the first hospital he knows of where occupational therapists are guiding patients through golf swings, tennis serves and baseball strikes to help them not only gain lost movement, but to teach their brains to respond quickly to fly balls or swinging fists.

Spotted on Nintendo Scene

For a long time, researchers have dreamed about pervasive computing — heterogeneous computing devices are seamlessly integrated and can communicate with each other. I think Nintendo is bringing us one step closer to this vision.

Later this year, Nintendo will release games that will utilize Nintendo’s Wi-Fi Connection Play technology. It will enable wireless gaming between its set-top game console Wii and its handheld game console Nintendo DS.

From Nintendo Press Release:

Now for the first time players can compete with one another near and far with Pokémon® Battle Revolution, a game of remarkable firsts:

• the first Wii game to include Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection play
• the first Pokémon game for Wii
• the first game to link Wii and the hand-held Nintendo DS™
• and the first Wii game that can be controlled using Nintendo DS

When Wii and Nintendo DS are linked, players can use their Nintendo DS units as controllers or import characters from the upcoming Nintendo DS games Pokémon® Diamond Version or Pokémon® Pearl Version.

For additional information, check out this YouTube video. Although I don’t understand 99% of the game talk in the video, but I think it will be a fun game for kids to play. Since play is learning for kids, the sophisticated game design and game play will help to make tech-savvy of kids who are growing up with these technologies.

Wiimote Music is a wiki page on WiiLi.org that showcases the use of Wii remote controls for playing and mashup music. In those showcased YouTube videos, Wii-motes sometimes are used a replacement for traditional music instructions (e.g., a guitar), and other times are used as input devices for mixing and mashup tunes.

• Dj wiij — Wii-motes for DJ and skratch.
• The Wiitar — Use wii-motes as a guitar

Kotaku has some photos of chocolates that are made in the shape of Wii-motes. Don’t rush to your nearby supermarket yet. No candy company has yet declared partnership with Nintendo to make Wii candies.

What you see in the photos are made from empty plastic packaging of Wii-motes and Nunchunk controllers. It’s a very creative idea.

Two pieces of interesting news about Wii this week:

1. Play Wii Sports for 30-minutes everyday can help you to lose weigh (see also NBC report).
2. Ben Heckendorn took apart his Wii and created a Wii laptop.

I’m not too surprised to see people losing weight after long hours of playing Wii Sports. Though Wii is not currently marketed as an exercise or a workout machine, but I definitely think it has the potential to be marketed as such. Imagine a new Wii console that comes with bikes or real sandbags!

Wii laptop is amazing not because it played any better than the one that is connected to my big screen TV in the living room. It’s amazing because it demonstrated the ingenuity of its creator Ben Heckendorn. By inspecting the design of the Wii laptop, you can tell Ben has spent a great deal of effort to complete this project. He definitely deserve a round of applause — “Well done, Ben!”