Free Mind Exercising Games from FitBrains.com

Canada is now the third largest videogame producing country, overtaking Great Britain’s former position. Marke Andrews over at The Vancouver Sun reports on Vivity Labs, producer of FitBrains.com.

With mostly private money (from five hi-tech industry investors) and some public funds (Telefilm Canada, Industrial Research Assistance Program) behind it, Vivity Labs seeks to replicate the success of Nintendo’s popular Brain Age game, which is also aimed at greying boomers and seniors, and Electronic Arts’ Pogo, a game popular with boomer women. The company’s partners include Vancouver’s Michael Cole, who’s worked in the brain fitness field for the past seven years; Dr. Paul Nussbaum, an American clinical neuropsychologist who specializes in aging; and Mark Baxter, a Vancouver games developer … Prior to the launch, Cole has struck a deal with health magazine Prevention to put three Fit Brains games on its website, and another that licences Fit Brains games with Seattle casual video game site Big Fish.

The site offers nine games with a tenth on the way, aimed mainly at users 40 and over. The games focus on language, concentration, logic and spatial skills. The site will remain in open beta until August, when a monthly fee will be assessed for accessing advanced features of the site.

References:
Andrews, M. (2008, July 3). B.C. company takes aim at brain games geared for boomers. The Vancouver Sun. [Online]. Retrieved July 3, 2008 from http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?
id=7dcc2a05-1825-4245-bbdf-b5ff786a30e3

UK games industry ‘dead man walking’. (2008, July 2). Politics.co.uk. [Online]. Retrieved July 3, 2008 from http://www.politics.co.uk/news/opinion-former-index/
opinion-former-index/uk-games-industry-dead-man-walking–$1229794.htm

Programming with Alice at Carnegie Mellon

In continuing our ongoing discussion of teaching kids programming skills by having them design their own computer games, Kathy Larason suggested I take a look at Alice over at Carnegie Mellon.

Alice is an introductory 3-D programming language that focuses on animation objects. The graphics are interactive, and could be constructed as games or animations. The main code and accompanying documentation are housed at alice.org.

Alice is a major endeavor. Four textbooks on programming with Alice were published in 2006; one in 2007; and at least one more is slated for 2008. Workshops are ongoing this summer, including sites at Carnegie Mellon, Roger Williams University, and Georgia Tech.

Alice has been widely adopted in schools and colleges. In a PowerPoint presentation led by Dennis Cosgrove, Caitlin Kelleher and others at ACM SIGCSE 2007 earlier this year, several statistics were given. The main site has had some 3.5 million page views, and almost half a million downloads of the program have occurred over the past year. About 250 colleges and universities are using Alice to teach programming.

Alice has a serious agenda. Computer Science majors continue to decline in numbers, and there are numerous ongoing efforts to interest girls and women in programming as well as math and the hard sciences. Researchers being as they are, several studies of Alice and its effect on this serious agenda are ongoing. One study of initial Computer Science class takers at Ithaca College and St. Joseph University showed a jump in grade averages (from C to B) and a large jump in willingness to take the second semester of Computer Science when participants were exposed to Alice prior to taking the class (see reference below).

Alice 3.0 is due out in 2008. Besides funding from the NSF, sponsors have included video game giant Electronic Arts, DARPA, Intel, Microsoft, the Office of Naval Research, and others. The Electronic Arts Foundation recently donated $300,000 to the effort, and EA has granted permission to use characters from The Sims 2 in Alice 3.0. The Sims line has long been the most popular computer video game series, and is appealing to both male and female players.

Alice is well worth watching as an introduction to computer programming. I’ll be interested in reading more about it as research studies continue to be published.

References

Moskal, M., Lurie, D., & Cooper, S. Evaluating the effectiveness of a new instructional approach. In Proceedings of 2004 SIGCSE Conference. Norfolk, VA.