I'm not all that clear on how Guitar Hero is going to promote literacy. When you think about it, the very concept of Guitar Hero is about dumbing-down an activity so every one can do it, which would make it the literary equivalent of a McDonald's picture menu, but it sure does give News-4's reporter an excellent chance to stand on camera with a guitar controller. Hit the jump for the video report, condemned there due to its auto-starting nature.

I think overall the answer to the question, at least in regards to the games they are playing, is not really, but I think we should all lie and make it seem like the children are smarter just so we can stop by our local libraries and play Guitar Hero in the future.

Do video games make kids smarter? [KVOA News 4 via Game Politics]

“I am shocked and overjoyed to be the first G.I.R.L. Scholarship recipient,” said Brasil. “I’m really looking forward to my internship with SOE, and getting some hands-on experience at such a well-known company. It’s such a great opportunity.”

Shocked, Julia? You need to believe in yourself. Dreams really do come true; you're living proof.

SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT AWARDS $10,000 SCHOLARSHIP FOR WINNER OF FIRST-EVER G.I.R.L. GAME DESIGN COMPETITION
G.I.R.L. Scholarship Program Helps Boost Female Educational Opportunity
SAN DIEGO, Calif. - July 8, 2008 – Sony Online Entertainment LLC today announced that Julia Brasil of San Francisco has won the 2008 G.I.R.L. Game Design Competition. The competition was the first of its kind and was promoted in conjunction with The Art Institutes system of schools, to encourage students toward career paths in the creative and applied arts, ultimately resulting in the development of games that are more interesting for women to play.

Brasil, a student in the Game Art & Design program, was awarded a $10,000 tuition scholarship toward her education at The Art Institute of California – San Francisco and a paid internship of up to 10 weeks at the Sony Online Entertainment studios of her choice in Austin, Denver, San Diego or Seattle.

“I am shocked and overjoyed to be the first G.I.R.L. Scholarship recipient,” said Brasil. “I’m really looking forward to my internship with SOE, and getting some hands-on experience at such a well-known company. It’s such a great opportunity.”

Brasil was one of nearly 100 applicants vying for the winning title of the 2008 SOE G.I.R.L. Game Design Competition. In order to become the winner, Brasil had to submit an in-game design, original concept art and two essays.

“We believe our groundbreaking G.I.R.L. scholarship can give Julia the foundation she needs to pursue a successful career in the video games business. SOE is thrilled to jumpstart the first step in pursuing her goals,” said Torrie Dorrell, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing, Sony Online Entertainment. “We anticipate G.I.R.L. continuing to evolve and snowball, creating even more opportunities for women to get behind these games.”

Due to the popularity of the initiative, SOE will make official G.I.R.L — Gamers In Real Life — T-shirts available for purchase sometime this summer. For more information about G.I.R.L., go to girl.soe.com.

Danks introduced the concept for PlayStation-edu — "It's mostly about getting schools hardware, to learn how the actual platform works. Not for research and development, for computer science and engineering, and not for art. The goal is to reach the people who care about the metal — engine level coders who like to write in assembly."

"Consoles and multi-core are here to stay," continued Danks. "Beyond that all things change and you need to learn the basics at the low level. So Assembly is here to stay!"

"A lot of schools are treating game education like trade school," argued Danks. "Too many students can’t explain a pointer, can’t explain memory caches, can’t explain bus contention, can’t explain how a complier works, cant explain a software rasterizer, can’t explain a race condition…"

He goes on to talk about the legal agreements that will be required and the three tier structure of the program. Sounds like a promising idea, but academia is very hard to change — and slow to come around in many cases. We'll see how long it takes this idea to take root.

Sony's Danks Details PlayStation-edu Initiative [Gamasutra]

Qualifying institutions (college level and above) will be given a chance to purchase PSP and PlayStation 2 development kits complete with the hardware, dev software, and SDK, along with demo codes and samples so teachers can illustrate how the hardware works to students. The goal here is to generate a fresh crop of college graduates armed with the knowledge they need to create on SCEA hardware.

Interested parties can hit the link below for contact information, and if you are currently in a game programming or computer architecture class, start bugging the hell out of your professor so you too can get your hands on a PlayStation 2 with the word TOOL on the side in big letters.

PlayStation-edu [The Official PlayStation Blog]

Don't be fooled by the title. While the back of the box makes allusions to right-brained creative thinkers and the more logic left-brained folks, those two distinctions never really come into play in LBRB. Instead you'll find yourself whacking moles, moving a dot through a maze, tapping the screen to reveal pictures, tracing lines - you know, action games. No real thinking involved. Basically you try things a few time with your dominant hand and then the screen flips, allowing you to complete the same task with the other, comparing your scores and delivering a handy (again!) synopsis of your performance.

After playing the game for hours upon hours, I don't find myself any better at using my left hand, no matter what the game scores say. While some of the games are decidedly harder with my off hand (the maze in particular), most of them are easily conquered with either hand. Tapping the screen repeatedly to unveil a picture? Come on now. An interesting tendency of mine I noticed while playing the game was to actually move the DS with my right hand in order to properly position my left hand to type. This made me realize that my left hand, while getting some of the most important jobs a hand can have, will always be my right hand's little bitch.

Aside fro the standard mode, the game features a R VS L mode where you can race a ghost of your dominant hand's performance through the mini-games, as well as single-card download play, allowing you to share the games with your friends who were perhaps wise enough to read this before going out and picking the title up.

As stated previous, Left Brain Right Brain has a very interesting concept that I would love to explore in more depth - perhaps on the Wii where it wouldn't be as easy to pull off the old dominant hand assist trick - but the depth I crave just isn't here.

"We're honored to have our characters take what sometimes may seem like dry topics and help make them come alive for students," says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "The collaboration provides an opportunity for children to learn 21st century science using 21st century tools with characters they're familiar with."

I went ahead and downloaded the lesson plan that involved building a two-stage rocket, and while the PDF did indeed include a Pokemon-themed header and sidebar, I found no mention whatsoever of pocket monsters in the text. Perhaps you are meant to wave the printouts around to draw the children's eyes towards you. *shrugs*

This isn't the Pokemans first foray into learning, mind you. You can find interactive math, science, language arts and life skills lessons online at www.PokemonLearningLeague.com.

SCHOOL LESSON PLANS USE THEMES FROM LATEST POKEMON VIDEO GAMES TO TEACH SCIENCE

Free Lesson Plans Allow Students to 'Master the Science ... Master the Game'

REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 7, 2007 A new in-school program uses basic characters and themes from Nintendo's popular Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl video games for Nintendo DS to teach elementary and middle school students about science. Nintendo of America, Inc., The National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) and Nortel LearniT, have teamed up to make it fun for students to learn the sciences using imagery they already know and love.

Now through December, a variety of printable lesson plans and classroom activities developed by NIA are available to students and teachers at www.masterthescience.org. For instance, a lesson plan might teach elementary school students how to tell time using a sundial, or middle school students about how the universe is expanding. An activity component is also built in, where teacher and student questions can be submitted and answered by science experts.

"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," says Robert Lindberg, NIA's President and Executive Director.

"We're honored to have our characters take what sometimes may seem like dry topics and help make them come alive for students," says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "The collaboration provides an opportunity for children to learn 21st century science using 21st century tools with characters they're familiar with."

"We know through our Nortel LearniT initiatives that technology integration in the classroom makes learning both exciting and engaging," says Greg Farmer, VP, Nortel Government and Community Relations. "As an organization that believes technology can enable opportunity, we are proud to be associated with this project."

Pokemon is no stranger to in-school education. Teachers and students can also visit Pokemon Learning League (www.PokemonLearningLeague.com) to access its award-winning interactive online lessons in Math, Science, Language Arts and Life Skills.

For more information about the "Master the Science ... Master the Game" in-school program, visit the Web site at www.masterthescience.org.

The major downfall of our ability to track objects is speed. Because once these dots hit the on-screen speed of 0.15 metres per second, subjects were only able to track one dot at a time. I wish that I could put such a speed into real world context, but if you are interested in experiencing the phenomenon for yourself, hit this link to test yourself. It's...humbling at high speeds.

Brain can juggle eight balls at once [newscientist]

We do everything that's traditionally done...But as soon as we've done a little bit and they know it, we can turn around and make it a game and have fun.

Game system lowers learning curve at Cumberland [journal&courier]
[image]

The (game?) will be released October 18th with new content coming as soon as November. We're not certain that the DS screen is easy enough on the eyes for extended reading sessions, but we do fully realize that the DS can be held like a book—like a freakin' smartypants book! So we're sure it's a great idea.

The DS turned into an e-Book reader [siliconera]

High fives all around!
Listen Here [Multiplayer Blog]

PlaySmart

Commencing Oct. 1, 2007, PlaySmart rolls into schools all over Los Angeles County. Billed as a unique educational program from STAR Inc., PlaySmart uses existing and popular games as a means of teaching school age children skills such as problem solving, technological familiarity, objective thinking, literacy and other right and left brain exercises.

PlaySmart employs games such as Dance Dance Revolution™, Pokémon™ TCG and various other video games to enhance instruction in physical education, literacy, group dynamics, team building and positive gamesmanship.

STAR Inc., a 501 (c )(3), charitable non-profit organization's mission is to offer extended educational, recreational and enrichment programs to students; support and enhance school curriculum; improve student achievement; and expand the cultural base of young people through innovative, quality programs offered by highly qualified instructors.

"The Handheld Learning Conference and Exhibition brings together so many thought-leaders it is natural that Nintendo gets involved with this important educational conference," said David Yarnton, Nintendo UK's general manager. "As the biggest supplier of handheld entertainment, Nintendo is already driving learning across all age groups with its products, in particular the Touch Generations series, including Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old is Your Brain? and Big Brain Academy." Graham Brown-Martin, managing director of Handheld Learning added, "The majority of gaming devices - and particularly those by Nintendo - all feature local and wide area networking capabilities, which are exploited by its software titles to enable positive social interaction and networks. Whilst the world has been focusing on the $100 laptop Nintendo had already developed one in the form of the Nintendo DS."

More information on the conference and exhibition can be found at the Handheld Learning 2007 website. [via Next Generation]

How To Pronounce... "Ubisoft" (The Official Explanation) [MTV Multiplayer]

Worldwide the DS Lite has sold 22 million so far, with the DS line in general over 40 million.

So half of the DS Lite sales in the world are in Japan. I think we can attribute this to Japan's population density of over 870 people per square mile. The DS has proven an excellent way for Japanese people to look at something other than other Japanese people for five minutes. In contrast, the US population density is only 80 or so per square mile, which is good because sometimes we smell weird. Not bad, just...kind of off, ya know? Michael Fahey

10 million DS Lites sold in Japan - Famitsu [GamesIndustry.biz]

Have gaming history, trivia, or famous birthdays you'd like to see in TDIG? Drop us a line at tdig@kotaku.com

Ok, that's an admittedly horrible analogy, even with companies like Bungie on the list. Maybe...Checker's...or Popeye's...or Jack 'n the Box. Or just that good place on the corner.

2005: Microsoft releases Forza Motorsport for XBOX in the US. 1UP and GamePro gave the game a perfect score. Not bad for a new franchise. Mark Wilson

Have gaming history, trivia, or famous birthdays you'd like to see in TDIG? Drop us a line at tdig@kotaku.com

Mind-bending new Big Brain Wii screen [CVG]

Students at South Shore High School in New York have been passing up normal after school activities for video games...though not to play them. For the past year they've been meeting after school in order to develop meaningful video games with messages attached. It's all part of a program that melds game development with social awareness, and with the help of Global Kids and local developer Gamelab their first game has just been released online. Called "Ayiti: The Cost of Life," it puts the player in control of a family of five poor Haitians in what can best be described as a family management sim.

As you can imagine, the game is dreadfully depressing. You deal with bad weather, low income, hunger, etc. as you desperately try to keep the family alive. It's not fun, but I suppose that was the point. It shows a level of social awareness you certainly wouldn't expect in a group of American high school students. I think the program a brilliant way to mix gaming and learning with extremely positive results. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go borrow a Zoloft. Michael Fahey

Update: I originally mistook this for a school in North Carolina, when it is indeed in New York. I say thee whoops.

Ayiti: The Cost of Life
Creating games, learning lessons [News 14 Carolina]