Using the Wii for educational purposes

Here are some reasons for using the Wii for educational purposes that I have witnessed in various colleges:

1. The games encourage hand-eye coordination

2. The learners enjoy the interactivity and for under £200 compared to a £3000 Smartboard, it buys a lot of engagement.

3. The games can allow people with disabilities to join in an activity that would not be easy to do in real life: bowling, playing tennis, fishing etc.

4. Learners enjoy creating their own Miis, characters that represent them, and creating Miis for their tutors. A discussion around physical attributes could happen here - face shape etc

5. Take pictures and videos with your SD-card camera, pop them into the Wii and you can draw on top of the photos (pointing out Health and Safety hazards for example), run slide shows, create jigsaws from your own photos. Thanks to Josephy Priestley College for these ideas. One more from me: copy areas and paste them (cut out words from the bottom of a picture and paste them in the right areas to label parts, for instance?)

6. Get on the Internet with the Wii (see my other blog posts about using the Wii) and never have to buy another game! Try the word games, puzzle games, shape or colour matching games, painting programme etc. This is my current favourite logic game that will get your learners' goat (as it were): http://wiiplayable.com/playgame.php?gameid=246

7. Browse web sites using Opera (you have to buy this for the Wii) for a whole new experience.

8. I know Hull College have bought a racing game and a 'steering wheel' for their Foundation Tracks motor vehicle students and it helps them to understand manual versus automatic transmission a lot better as they can witness the difference for themselves.

Got any more good examples or ideas? Send them to me and I'll collate them and put in a post to ILT Champs one of these days, or maybe add to Dave Foord's wiki on ILT...