o mii gosh! My husband found this video on YouTube, where Johnny Chung Lee, a grad assistant at Carnegie Mellon U’s human-computer interaction department, has adapted the Nintendo Wii remote to serve as a digital whiteboard and head tracking for VR displays.
It’s amazing what he does with some hardware driver programming, a PC, the Wii remote controls, and some basic items you can pick up at your local Radio Shack.
With head tracking turned on, the TV actually looks like an entrance to a real room. Just like in real life, when we move our head around, we can look behind objects. As you look closely, some targets appear to be floating off in front of the screen, reaching into the real world. As we get closer to the screen, we get closer to the objects, and even get behind the ones floating in front of the screen. (Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote on YouTube, 2:43)
The finger tracking technology is the future now. Remember how Tom Cruise flipped through images on a virtual interface in Minority report?I would love to see some games where you can look around corners like I always want to in a race or a stealth mission.
I’d also love to use that whiteboard, since you can “draw” right on the wall, and it can record your notes for later. Oh, collaboration!
In the art of writing is an art, we still use tried-and-true formulas to get started with researching, interviewing, and organizing basic news according to the 5 Ws and the H. We discussed policy examples last time.
Now, let’s look at how these questions can play out for news stories about events. Most of the questions below work for sports and other competitions, fundraisers, awards ceremonies, professional development conferences, training classes, filing deadlines, holidays, anniversaries, religious/commitment/memorial ceremonies, parties, club activities, meetings, and even sales.
Who is performing the event?
Who is organizing, funding and hosting the event?
Who are the guests of honor?
Who are the target attendees for the event?
What is the purpose or objective of the event?
What are the popular traditions of the event?
What is the newest focus of the event?
When – date and time – is the event scheduled?
Where – building/venue, room, city – is the event scheduled?
Why is it popular, or beneficial to attend?
How will special attendees be rewarded?
How many are expected, and/or how many attended? How much has attendance grown?
How much does it cost?
Next, we’ll look at how these questions can play out for other types of news stories: accidents and discoveries.
Yay! According to Wii Sports, my fitness level improved 27 “years” since yesterday, based on my performance in boxing, tennis, and bowling. I think yesterday the level was based on boxing, tennis, and baseball. It does factor in strength, agility, and balance. But I think I’m just better at bowling than I am at baseball, even in real life. And I’ve got to give my dear husband some credit for his attempts to coach stubborn ol’ me. But the boyz and I are having a lot of fun together, cheering each other on.
We also started using Wii Points to buy a Web browser. My boys can now play Starfall in our TV room to learn to read, as well as other games (see my related series on free preschool games). But since the hunt-and-peck game is getting a little old while we enter Web addresses, we’re ransacking our closets looking for a USB wireless keyboard. Unfortunately some sites like NBC and SciFi have Flash applications that don’t support the Wii browser.
We also used some points to get some classic games from other systems, including Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (originally Nintendo64). Sonic3 works fine, but the Ocarina wants the classic game controller instead of the Wii remote. Aargh for the delay.
But I’m just happy that after Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga, when we play with Legos in real life, my boys are suddenly building walls on their own, and a house for Yoda to sleep in, and a Star Destroyers to go flying through the house. Before, they could only watch as I helped them build cars, planes, and houses. They were never so creative; they never really knew what worlds and stories they could build.
And so I gush, we are so thrilled with our Wii. Thanks, dear Granny, Grandpa, and Uncle!
For Christmas, the grandparents on my side got the kids a Wii, with much thanks to my dear brother, who pulled favors with his connections in the local Wal-Mart.
So we’ve had the console, Wii Sports, an extra set of controllers, and Lego Star Wars the complete saga, for a week now. My husband played the Wii Sports with the boys and his nephew for five hours on Christmas Day. He started out with a fitness age of 63, and is now at age 28 after seven days and a sore shoulder from boxing, baseball, golf, tennis, and bowling. I just tried the fitness test today, and I wanted to record my age of 59 with a similar goal.
I feel we’re in pretty good company. After all, if frugal guru Trent of The Simple Dollar can justify it, then so can I.
I should say that my sons love playing golf, especially when they hit the ball into the water hazard. They do the same with Tiger Woods on the PC. But this way they actually stand up and swing instead of hitting keys. It does indeed get us off our collective buns.
Not to say there aren’t more sedentary alternatives. Lego Star Wars, for which we mostly sit, has been both fun and frustrating, partially because of the required fine motor skills that my boys just don’t have yet, and partially because my boys don’t want to destroy all the things that will score you enough points to get to the next level or build a minikit.
But my preschoolers now know this epic very well. They can name all the characters, creatures, and machines like the geeks their parents are. And it’s fun playing out scenes like Luke on a tauntaun on icy Hoth, being attacked by that Wampa monster, hanging upside down, grabbing the light saber with the Force’s telekinesis, and cutting off the monster’s arm (one of the brothers works very hard to take his arm out of his sleeve, and then falls dramatically to the floor).
Of course my boys love trains, and play with their cousins’ set at Grandpa’s. This site has their favorite characters, and like my brother at their age, they love to learn the parts and vocabulary of trains and other vehicles.
So there’s a race, jigsaw puzzles, a matching game, building with drag-and-drop Legos, and more.
I like the fact that this brand emphasizes the value of being Really Useful.
Like Playhouse Disney, PBS is also high on my list, but not as popular with my boys. Curious George unfortunately keeps getting in trouble, so I’m not sure I want to encourage sneaky unsafe behavior; but some of the games are nicely challenging in terms of pattern recognition (skates) and animal-sound matching. Much to my husband’s chagrin, they discovered Teletubbies, which plays on my boys’ love of babies to a cloying extent. But then there’s the Sesame Street, Between the Lions, and Mister Rogers. There are dozens of other show-related subsites for older kids too.
When we watch TV or record shows for the kids, typically it’s from Playhouse Disney because they don’t have to watch third-party commercials for things they don’t need like toys that make noise and junk food. Little Einsteins is for learning about music, instruments, composers, dancing, and art. Handy Manny is about being helpful, solving problems, and using the right tool for the job, with some Spanish sprinkled in. Of course, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is a new classic. And Captain Carlos is my hero, for encouraging my kids to avoid junk food in favor of a healthy diet, so they can have more energy, sharper thinking, and better sleep. Some of the games on this site are really creative, and that’s why it’s high on my list.
My neice-in-law turned me onto this site, after her daughter learned to read on it. It is absolutely the best program I’ve seen for teaching regular* kids letter sounds and letter combinations, building skills along an excellent curriculum with fun games, songs, stories to click around, and more.
There’s even a lesson on the alphabet in American Sign Language. And there are activities for every season and holiday on the Calendar: Earth Day’s cleanup is one of our favorites.
The lessons may be low in production value, but it’s very lightweight bitwise, so it can work in low bandwidth, while still being very colorful and full of great animation. I don’t know how they fund it (well, there’s a store with games, books, journals, plush dolls, and phonics packs), but bottom line, it’s a wonderful site, and I give a lot of credit to Starfall for making it easy for my sons to learn phonemes.
* The exception is one of my former employers, Creative Education Institute, which has the best program around for evaluating people with special learning needs and tutoring them in reading, English as a second language, and mathematics from number recognition to fractions. But unlike the Starfall site, the CEI systems are not free.
Why can’t I stop writing about games? Well, I saw another great post from a gamergrrl, Kat@ttack, Female vs Male MMORPGs.
It turns my stomach to see some of the stereotypical marketing to girls for toys, games, and TV. But I’m glad to see more strong heroines popping up all the time: Handy Manny’s Kelly, Dora the Explorer, (you can tell how old my kids are, can’t ya?) Lara Croft, Diablo II’s amazons/sorceresses/assassins, the reinvented BSG’s Starbuck/Roslin/Boomer/Six/Cain, the reinvented Bionic Woman, The Closer’s Brenda Johnson, and anything from Joss Whedon’s body of work (Buffy, Willow, Cordelia, Zoe, Inara, River, Kaylee).
It’s too bad none of these strong heroines are moms. It seems you have to be single to explore your options and save the world. Moms in epics and games are always the lesser characters who sob loudly, protest against their sons being taken away, or roll their eyes and get back to mothering. OK, there’s an interesting exception in BSG’s Sharon “Athena” Valerii (not Boomer, who tried to snap the child’s neck), and I look forward to more there.
I’m a gamer mom myself, and so is my neighbor, who looks and talks conspicuously like Morgan on G4TV. I don’t have girls to raise; between dear hubby, dear sons, and dear dog and cat, I’m surrounded by testosterone.
But I’ll thankfully stand on the shoulders of the feminists from former generations who made a difference. Because now, all we really have to do is confidently, quietly do what we do best and it will earn the respect of our fellow gamers and colleagues, or at least those who matter. We can confidently, quietly widen our circle of influence. Will that change the tide of the stereotypical marketing machine? Maybe not immediately, but there’s hope.
If I’m too Pollyanna about this, or missing some heroic moms in entertainment, feel free to squawk back at me.
The finger tracking technology is the future now. Remember how Tom Cruise flipped through images on a virtual interface in Minority report?I would love to see some games where you can look around corners like I always want to in a race or a stealth mission.
