My Colleges and Careers Blog » Software

Nintendo Video Game Designer Shigeru Miyamoto Turns to Life for Inspiration

Sarah Ward — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:35:07 +0000

: Nintendo Video Game Designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Photo c/o Lawrence K. Ho / LA Times

Shigeru Miyamoto is Nintendo’s chief video game designer and the creative genius behind their best-selling games including Mario, Donkey Kong, and Zelda. He’s also the legend video game designers aspire to be.

A natural innovator, Miyamoto received his formal education from the Kanazawa College of Industrial Arts in Japan and finds inspiration from real life experiences for video games. Wii Fit came about as a result of his family’s efforts to get healthier, hit the gym regularly, and track their weight. “It made me think that perhaps health could be a subject for a game,” Miyamoto told The Sunday Times. And thus Wii Fit was born.

When Miyamoto got a puppy, the dog training class with his sheltie inspired him to create the video game Nintendogs. When asked about Nintendogs’ popularity, he reports, “rather than trying to follow industry trends, it’s based on things that people find appealing in general. Not just what they find appealing in a video game.”

Video game design and development is a popular field that relates not only to fictitious worlds, but as Miyamoto shows us, the one we know and love.

Video Games Fabulous Teaching Tools Says Justice O’Connor

Sarah Ward — Fri, 28 May 2010 20:19:34 +0000

On Wednesday, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor spoke with ABC News about a great new learning tool for children — video games.

“They’re fabulous,” she told George Stephanopoulos this week. “And we’ve had tests done. And the students go up 20 percent in their knowledge by playing those games. It’s just incredible.”

Since middle school aged children are spending 40 hours on average in front of a screen, Justice O’Connor says, “if we can capture just part of that time, to get ‘em in front of a computer screen to play these games, they’re going to learn. [T]hey’re fun. The games are great.”

Integrating modern technology such as this into today’s teaching methods is an effective way to teach the up and coming computer-savvy generation. A free resource, both teachers and students will benefit from these educational video games.

If you’re passionate about teaching with technology or developing video games that can be used for educational purposes, visit My Colleges and Careers to find a program in your area.

Web Based Applications for Education – Google

Brandon Buttars — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:33:54 +0000

I’m sure you’ve all seen the lists of FREE open source software and maybe even the specific lists of FREE open source software that will help students. Well that’s great and all but what happens when you jump from computer to computer? You have to install the software on those computers. Well we thought we’d put together a list of web based applications that could help students. Specifically, Google web based applications that can help students earning their online degrees. We’ve decided to create an initial list, but we’ll visit each application one at a time and explain what it does and how it can benefit students.

Before we get to the list though we need to discuss the basic benefits of a web based education applications, and why students can benefit from a web based application.

Here are some of the basic benefits of Google web based applications in education:

All data is accessible with an internet connection.
Device independent. (Access from your phone, the computer lab, your laptop, your parent’s PC, etc.)
Files stored on Google’s servers. (I think Google know how to run servers, your files are probably pretty dang safe.)
Many web based application are shareable and collaborative. (Working as a group just got easier.)
Revisioning (Your edits are often times archived and revisions are created.)
One centralized Google Account to manage all web based applications. (The main reason we focused this article on Google.)

Now the list of categorized Google Web Applications:

Collaboration

Docs
Sites

Communication

Media

Networking

Groups
Orkut

News

Alerts
News

Organization

Programming

Code
Labs

Publishing/Sharing

Reading

Research

Shopping

Writing/Editing

Docs

Your Input

How have you used Google in your schooling or everyday application? How has Google benefitted you? What do you wish Google had? What do you wish Google did better? Comment your feedback and let us know how you use Google.