“Games and gizmos for a smarter school year” plus 3 more |
- Games and gizmos for a smarter school year
- Kids Integrate Creativity and STEM Skills at Guildhall Academy Game Development Camp
- DoliDoli - Games For Girls, By Girls
- ThinkGeek Kids Electronic Guitar & Drum Kit Shirts Released
| Games and gizmos for a smarter school year Posted: 18 Jun 2010 12:40 AM PDT It's back-to-school time, and parents are balancing their desires to outfit their kids for success with today's economic realities. Here, TODAY contributor James Oppenheim of JamesGames.com offers advice to help parents make the most of their dollars. Preschool products Although built on the same technology as last year's Tag, the concept has been completely redesigned for younger children: They don't have to be read from start to finish. Instead, there are many activities that children unlock through exploration of the illustrations as well as the text. Tag Junior comes with one book. Additional books ($14.99) — based on licenses from Curious George and Dora the Explorer and others — cover concepts like colors, counting and shapes. Keep in mind that there is a substantial hidden cost: The device requires a computer to download the programs to the wand — an activity that should be done by an adult. Learning via game platforms It may be some time before there are enough learning titles to justify purchasing a game platform solely for educational purposes, but if big brother or sister already has a Wii, surely their younger sibling will want to play as well. Jumpstart Pet Rescue helps alleviate parental concerns about video games turning their children into game playing zombies by mixing fun with learning. My Virtual Tutor ($29.99) is another example of this trend. It brings reading readiness to the Nintendo DS, so kids can practice reading skills interactively wherever they go. There are three different packages (Pre-K to kindergarten, kindergarten to first grade, and first grade to second grade), each developing curriculum-based skills through practice games and interactive books. Students hold the DS vertically like a book, interacting with the game through the touchpad on the right and viewing the interactive books on the left (each title has eight books). Developed as part of a university study at the University of Colorado, the program gives kids an opportunity to reinforce school skills. Even the Xbox 360 — one of the "go to" consoles for action-oriented teen gamers — is being repurposed for education. With Kodu Game Lab ($5) tweens think they are creating video games, but they are actually learning all of the basics of programming! The game harnesses all of the visual power of the Xbox, but stealthily provides deep thinking skills and an introduction to programming. The same program is now being used by schools across the country on the PC, but it is only available for home use at present on the Xbox 360. The game is available online only through the Xbox Live Marketplace. Learning via computers Hundreds of different styles of games and activities keep kids engaged as they learn. More than just multiple choice and "right" and "wrong" in its approach, this online world of pirates and dinosaurs helps kids learn how to reason their way to the correct answer through the use of on-screen "manipulatives" that help kids visualize the way math interacts with the real world. Parents looking for a free online educational site should also look at the brilliant Professor Garfield site. Netbooks are a big part of the back-to-school story for tweens and teens. Models that come with Vista may qualify for the upgrade program to Windows 7 later this year. Disney's Netpal ($349) is a netbook that comes bundled with special creativity software, a built in Webcam and software to keep the kids safer on the net and is designed for tweens. In households with one computer and two children, this second machine might be an economical way of avoiding wars over who gets to use the bigger family computer (which might also be storing all the family's financial info, as well), while keeping younger computer users from accessing parts of the Web that are not appropriate. High school students will be drawn to stylish netbooks like HP's Mini 110 ($329). On the plus side, netbooks are about half the size and up to half the price of a full laptop. On the downside, they have less powerful processors, and less memory and storage than their big siblings. Their smaller keyboards may work as an advantage to kid-sized hands, but can be uncomfortable for teens. They are appropriate for Web surfing and word processing, but if your child wants to play games or edit videos, look to a full-size notebook as a better investment. Frugal parents should also consider manufacturer refurbished models — you'll find them at eBay and at some manufacturers' online stores. E-book readers This is still new, expensive technology and is not essential for most kids this year — there is even a competing format war like the one that accompanied the BlueRay/HD disks last year. The exception would be if a parent feels that the "newness" of the technology will get an otherwise reluctant reader to give books a try. In that case these devices (which will, no doubt, be cheaper and more ubiquitous in the future) can serve as important gateways to a love of reading. They can make reading cool again. Final advice Seagate's Replica ($89 and up) is a complete and idiot-proof solution. You plug it into your computer and it automatically backs up everything. You might also want a separate offline backup of your documents using a standard external backup as an archive, but having an image of the disk programs has saved me and my kids countless headaches over the years. Replica makes it cheap and simple to be prepared for the inevitable day when your child says "the computer ate my homework." Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| Kids Integrate Creativity and STEM Skills at Guildhall Academy Game Development Camp Posted: 18 Jun 2010 06:57 AM PDT Dallas - | Dallas – Teens and tweens are engaging both sides of their brain at the Guildhall Academy, a two-week intensive summer camp in which middle school and high school kids build their very own 2D video games using Microsoft's ® XNA™ technology and a starter kit developed by Southern Methodist University. Taught by renowned faculty of The Guildhall at SMU, one of the nation's leading graduate video game development education programs, the camp enables kids to integrate the principles of science, math and art to transform their passion into a tangible creation. In its fourth year, the Academy strives to provide a distinctive experience to as many kids as possible. "Students are honing core skills, while expressing their individuality in a next-generation medium," said Dr. Peter Raad, executive director and founder of The Guildhall at SMU. According to Raad, without the tuition assistance provided by sponsors, nearly twenty-five percent of the camp's students would have been unable to attend. "Texas is committed to ensuring that students have the opportunity to excel in the increasingly competitive global economy through an education in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields," said Leah Smith, animation and video game liaison for the Texas Film Commission, Office of the Governor. "We are proud to sponsor The Guildhall Academy's video game development camp for middle and high school students, which gives students of all backgrounds the invaluable opportunity to learn about the STEM fields in a hands-on environment." The Academy offers two camps each summer. At the conclusion of the two-week development cycle, students showcase their games to parents and guests. They leave with a glimpse into potential future careers, a sense of achievement and a true product of their imagination. Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| DoliDoli - Games For Girls, By Girls Posted: 18 Jun 2010 12:00 AM PDT Following the idea that kids know best how to make their fun and games, the DoliDoli.com website develops its games with the advice of bright little girls from all around the world. (PRWEB) June 18, 2010 -- There's no better adviser when it comes to creating a product for kids than, you guessed it, an actual kid. The team behind the newly launched girl games website, DoliDoli.com, believes that the best way to develop fun games for girls is to get direct input from girls all over the world. Does a 10-year-old girl look at a flash game differently than the 30-year-old male programmer that makes that game? Certainly! And does that 10-year-old girl look at the characters, colors and buttons differently than the graphic designer who creates them? Absolutely! All webmasters who administer websites dedicated to young girls are in fact adults and, surprisingly or not, the majority are male. Creating flash games for girls is a complex process, involving planning, design, development, expensive hardware and software and hours upon hours of testing. But look further than the obvious business aspects and you will see that flash games for girls are basically free toys that girls enjoy playing with on the Internet. When a little girl opens a cooking game, for example, she doesn't really care what Action Script was used to make the game or if the graphics are vectorized or not. She wants to have a fun, colorful, easy to learn and rewarding game. This is why involving girls in the creation of the games they are about to play online makes perfect sense. However, this hasn't really been done before. The team behind DoliDoli tried to go beyond analytic data and surveys and see what little girls actually expect from the flash games they play. The results were often surprising. Let's take dress up games as an example. Most dress up games being published today have a theme, a number of 20-30 items, a girl to dress up and a background. They're cheap and easy to make and game developers can easily produce dozens of games within a month. But what do girls think? After asking about two dozen girls with ages between 9 and 11 what they think of dress up games the general feedback was that the games are too simple and they get bored playing very quickly, most under a minute or two. Most girls thought the games should have a better story and an ending – meaning that after the doll is dressed up she should also go somewhere or do something, rather than just standing there wearing her new outfit. Of course, for a flash games developer this means spending a quadruple amount of time developing the game. But what if this risk is worth taking? The DoliDoli team certainly believes it is. Mediocre games for girls will get played quickly and then they'll be forgotten but good or even great games tend to become viral and spread around quickly and effortlessly. Their value can be ten times bigger both for the girls playing them and also for the developers. This has lead to the development of several exclusive DoliDoli games which use many of the ideas suggested by girls during talks with the development team. # # # Doli Doli Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| ThinkGeek Kids Electronic Guitar & Drum Kit Shirts Released Posted: 17 Jun 2010 12:40 PM PDT It's Summer vacation for plenty of kids out there, and so they're probably all sitting around, playing their video games, or whatever else their parents aren't all too fond of. So, what do you do when you need to give them something to entertain themselves for hours on end? You give them clothes that can do the job for you, of course! Introducing the Kids Electronic Guitar and Drum Kit Shirts, which are far more feature-packed than they probably need to be.
Brought to you by ThinkGeek, these are the kid versions of the already popular electronic instrument shirts. Designed to let people "ROCK OUT!" as the press release says, these shirts aren't designed to play pre-canned musical riffs. In point of fact, they're designed to be real musical instruments, to allow kids to actually play the instrument. It even comes with its own mini-amp, which can be hung from your belt, or pants, or whatever else you need it to. Each button on the neck of the guitar plays a major chord, which makes it simple and easy to crank out songs like "Smoke on the Water" and "I Love Rock n' Roll". Since all the chords have been recorded on a real electric guitar, the sound that is created is truly authentic. The included magnetic pick allows you to strum just like you would on an actual guitar. The same goes for the drum kit as well. While it may be more of a technological marvel to play a guitar on your shirt, we can see plenty of kids beating their chest in hopes of cranking out the next best rock jam. Both styles of shirts come with their own cleaning instructions, so if you do get one, make sure to read those. Oh, and if you want to buy one? You'll have to head over to ThinkGeek's website, and order one for $29.99. Press Release:
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