Educational Gaming questions.

[Azazel]

Very quick question - no snark please. I'm writing a proposal up to get money for Interactive Entertainment crap at my school.

We so far have a Wii with Sports and Wii Fit.

I'm asking for a PS3 with GHWT, an extra guitar, drum stool and mic stand. PS3 over 360 because of reliability and also the BR player aspect.

Is there any Wii software out there that's very physical- or educationally based, which isn't already covered by Wii Fit (ie Tiger Woods golf is redundant with Wii Fit, by school standards.)

Going to ask for Big Brain Academy, other than that, I'm interested in other ideas.


thanks,

[Krakrok]

Maybe the Wii Play because it comes with 9 games and a controller for $45 (on Amazon).

[Azazel]

Thanks - good call there.

[ffc]

Mario and Sonic at the Olympics makes my arms tired with all the waggle to move my guy.  Especially swimming.  After a few competitive rounds I am generally a bit out of breath / almost sweating.  I'm no fatty either, although I do love my Chipotle.

Shaun White Snowboarding just came out and it could be good exercise when paired with the Balance Board.  A couple reviews I read have lines similar to this:

Soon we found ourselves trying so hard to turn that we almost fell off the board, which was almost as embarrassing as the sweat that started to appear by the time the third run was complete.

May I ask why you want a PS3 for GHWT instead of buying Rock Band / GHWT for the Wii your school already has?  Is the Wii version crippled (unsurprisingly) somehow?

[funcro]

DDR can be pretty physically demanding, and has at least two different incarnations on the Wii.

[mutantmagnet]

If this project of your gets funded you may want to keep on eye on Nintendo's newest franchise project "Personal Trainer"

It's supposed to be a program with integration between the DS and Wii but I've yet to see their Wii efforts.

"Personal Trainer: Cooking is the first in a new line of Personal Trainer titles from Nintendo designed to help users enrich their lives and learn new skills in fun and interesting ways," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. "Whether you're cooking for yourself, your family or your friends, everyone in the household benefits from these tasty recipes for months and years to come."

Aside from that I would suggest:

Trauma Center: New Blood.
It allows players to work cooperatively as doctor and nurse on patients and tackles realistic medical procdures for the first half of the game before it goes off into fantasy land.


DDR1 or We Cheer
Do not get DDR2 unless you have the time to compare both. People have been saying the second's song list is inferior. Get We Cheer if you like to teach kids with the sink or swim school of thought. 



Brain Challenge
Get this over Big Brain Academy. It's Wiiware so it will still be cheaper despite the age of BBA. Also it offers a bit more additional content that improves on what the older BBA provided.


Simcity Creator
If and only if for some reason you don't allow your students to play games on PCs, because a Sim on the PC would be cheaper. Otherwise a city building game is always a good educational experience. But be warned this version on the Wii is more challenging in the beginning because you can't rely on advisors so players have to do a lot more of the heavy thinking until they level up and that might fustrate them.


My Word Coach
THis seems like a good secondary for Brain Challenge as it focuses on improving your vocabulary.


and lastly

BoomBlox or deBlob
Both allow children to express themselves. Deblob through painting and BoomBlox with block construction. BoomBlox challenges players to manipulate physics intuitively to win while deblob is just a fun game in general.

Two other games that will be released in the far off future you may want to keep an eye on are:
Endless Ocean 2: Beautiful Ocean, because it will be a pretty cool way to introduce kids to marine life.
The Melancholy of Haruhi could be a dancing game that overcomes the flaws of DDR1 and We Cheer.

Also as FFC mentioned GH World Tour is on the Wii. No need to blow your wad on the ps3.

[Azazel]

Mario and Sonic at the Olympics makes my arms tired with all the waggle to move my guy.  Especially swimming.  After a few competitive rounds I am generally a bit out of breath / almost sweating.  I'm no fatty either, although I do love my Chipotle.

Shaun White Snowboarding just came out and it could be good exercise when paired with the Balance Board.  A couple reviews I read have lines similar to this:

Soon we found ourselves trying so hard to turn that we almost fell off the board, which was almost as embarrassing as the sweat that started to appear by the time the third run was complete.

May I ask why you want a PS3 for GHWT instead of buying Rock Band / GHWT for the Wii your school already has?  Is the Wii version crippled (unsurprisingly) somehow?

So we can have 2 consoles running in 2 classrooms at once. I'd ideally like to have a Wii in every classroom but they're not going to spring for it, so getting a PS3 allows for both a wider variety in software as well as having 2 classrooms using Interactive entertainment programs at once. Which is the best way to get a third console and so forth, as opposed to having one Wii and a ton of shit for it, all of which lives in my room 90% of the time.

Also PS3/360 iterations of GHWT allow for students to compose their own tracks and play them back in the game. Chances are the Wii software I tacked onto the funding request will have to be trimmed, when they then give me far less money than the initial request was for. You know how these things work... 

I had another teacher ask me to find physical-based stuff for a grant she is/might be getting from an external source.. I looked up made a list for her that included SW Snowboarding, as well as Mario/Sonic etc.

[Azazel]

Also, DDR isn't available here in Australia on Wii (I was looking for it, but no dice), the cheerleader game probably won't work, as we don't have a cheerleader culture here.