Gaming: The Nintendo Wii in a science classroom
Posted by: westy in gaming, tags: consalarium, ewan macintosh, gaming, learning teaching scotland, nintendo Wii, technologyEwan Macintosh has shown that social software is not just a gimmick that it has a place in mainstream education.
It’s not television, it’s not broadcasting. It’s about harnessing the networks that are out there, virtual or real-world, and creating new models of interaction for an audience that, increasingly, is online rather than on the box.
participation culture needs to underpin our largest educational and technological ventures.
In an older post Thinking out of the (X) Box Ewan discusses some of the possibilities that gaming has to offer with particular reference to creative writing. Derek Robertson Head of the Consolarium, the Scottish Centre for games and learning has been aware of the potential of platforms such as the Nintendo Wii for some time at Learning and Teaching Scotland.
All students are involved with social networking or gaming culture at some level. They interact with each other socially through Bebo or Facebook and they also interact with each other playing “games’ on the variety of platforms available.
I spent a day looking at the educational possibilities presented by the use of a Nintendo Wii in a science classroom. These possibilities fell into a number of categories.
- The technologies used (blue tooth, motion sensors, infrared cameras etc)
- Physics engines and the need to understand basic physics in the real world before the virtual world can appear realistic.
- As a carrot… yes you can come into the lab during lunch and play with the Wii but you have to research and write a report on the technologies involved over the weekend
Brainstorming indicated links that can be followed up
Apart from the obvious engagement of students (might not do boxing again as the willingness of students to virtually punch each others’ lights out looked as if it might spill over into the real world) there were some exciting developments. One student who clearly has an understanding of the technology beyond that of this humble chemistry teacher is following up a project turning the Wii remote into an interactive whiteboard. An example of gaming stimulating high order learning.
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August 23rd, 2008 at 4:28 pm
The wiimote whiteboard project (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/) is an amazing piece of work. I saw this demonstrated this summer. A little more digging and I discovered the Java API (http://www.wiili.org/WiiremoteJ) for programming with the wii remote. I’m planning to have my students do some programming with the wii remote this year. It would be a great project for physics students since you can measure input from the accelerometer sensors. Any students interested in game design should be learning to program physics simulations. I’m really excited about the potential that exists with the Wii.