Aussie Media Notes Educational Uses of DS & PSP in Japan

I’ve discussed previously the educational uses of the Nintendo DS, most recently concerning the trend in Japan. Now, The Daily Telegraph (Australia) has an interesting article regarding the use of the DS and the PSP in Japanese schools. Here are some benefits being realized:

* At just one-fifteenth of the cost of a personal computer — around Y17,000 ($A171.38) each — the DS is an economical teaching tool … results in an initial trial showed the English vocabulary of junior high school students using the DS had soared by 40 per cent.
* Saito Miyauchi, 12, approaches teacher Raita Hirai with a bashful smile as he holds up his DS screen. “That’s great!” the teacher tells him after Saito has topped the class by doing 45 multiplications in 15 minutes.
* “The badminton club keeps me busy. But with DS, I can study everywhere, and quickly.”
* “The benefit is that students can look at, hear and write an English word at the same time. With conventional flash cards, you would have two of them at the best,” …“With the game console, you can feel the fast speed and tempo. I think it matches today’s children,” [a school official] said, adding the board had received no complaints from parents.

Lest all the praise be reserved for the DS, the PSP garners its own admirers in the article. A pilot project in Osaka is soon to expand from 38 fourth graders to 800 or more students:

Teacher Toyokazu Takeuchi did not need to print out or check tests. Instead, his own console received real-time data showing which students were making mistakes and what mistakes they were making.
“This is e-learning made in Japan — traditional efforts in reading, writing and calculating coupled with the power of information technology and game machines,” he said.

Finally, the article concludes with the possibility that, since portable gaming devices are so inexpensive, they may possibly serve as an introduction to educational computing in developing countries. In the meantime, the Japanese seem to be enjoying the educational benefit of the DS and the PSP just fine.

References:
Videogames pushed in class. (2007, September 21). The Daily Telegraph. [Online]. Available: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/
0,22049,22456665-5006007,00.html

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1. Handheld Learning Conference, 2007 « Educational Games Research — October 2, 2007 @ 7:19 pm

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