Let your DS help with your homework

By now, the inevitable has probably happened. You’re probably back in school. It happens, and until you turn 18 you’re stuck there for the time being. But learning can be fun and doesn’t have to be a dismal experience.

A good way to help make the learning process easier and more entertaining is to turn to educational video games. The DS’ extensive and impressive game library has led to a surprising amount of educational games that can be a great help to not only students, but ordinary gamers with a passion for learning new things. It can also help parents who have children who aren’t willing to sit down with an educational help book or tutor, but are willing to sit for hours playing a video game.

To help you see what kind of applications and educational games are out there and available, Gamertell has put together a rudimentary list of informative DS programs. To help make things even easier, all games are organized into the classes or skills to which they pertain.

Reading and Writing:

My Word Coach is a natural program for boosting language skills. It has over 16,500 words to learn, and can be great for boosting your vocabulary over an extended period of time with regular use.

The forthcoming Scribblenauts could also be considered educational, though in the loosest sense. Since it allows you to write in objects that can be used to solve puzzles, it could help boost problem solving skills and challenge players to learn new words to use in the game.

Additional forthcoming games are on the way and directed at younger DS owners. My Virtual Tutor: Reading Pre-K to Kindergarten, Kindergarten to First Grade and First Grade to Second Grace are all coming out in September, 2009. The goal of all the games are to improve reading skills in young children.

If you don’t mind importing your games, there’s yet another educational option. In Europe, Nintendo released an application called 100 Classic Book Collection, filled with 100 classic books, and 10 extra books you can download for free thanks to the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Since the DS is region-free and the program is in English, you can enjoy all of the books and turn your DS into a miniature Kindle.

Math:

When I first began writing and researching this story, I was of the belief that Personal Trainer: Math, a game that uses the 100-cell learning method, was the only dedicated math game for the DS. True, both Brain Age games also have math portions, but it isn’t the main focus. Imagine my surprise when I discovered there are two additional DS programs designed to help students with their mathmatic skills.

The first is Learn Math, which focuses on learning specific exercises. However, Learn Math was created specifically with students in first through fourth grades in mind. There’s also Math Blaster in the Prime Adventure, which tries to make math fun by adding in a sci-fi storyline to provide reasons for solving all sorts of math challenges.

Foreign Languages:

Thanks to a substantial effort by Ubisoft, the DS is a haven for language acquisition software. They’ve released multiple programs designed to teach language in the Coach line. There’s My Spanish Coach, My Chinese Coach, My French Coach, My Japanese Coach and even My English Coach for non-native speakers. All of them are fairly involved titles with exercises and quite a bit of vocabulary to learn.

There was also one other language learning titles released, called Spanish for Everyone. However, Spanish for Everyone is designed for a younger audience and is more lighthearted and unintentionally humorous than the other language programs.

Gym:

People generally look to the Wii when they want to purchase a game that will get them in shape, but the DS has a few programs that are also designed to help maintain a healthy body. Nintendo just recently released Personal Trainer: Walking, a game that comes with two pedometers that synch up with the DS.

Konami also released two exercise games for the DS in the US – Let’s Yoga and Let’s Pilates. Both programs show positions you can perform and help guide you through the various activities and learn to appreciate the good yoga and pilates can do for your body.

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Science and Social Studies:

Since the education science and social studies DS program genres are under-represented on the DS, they’re combined into one section here. There are very few history games on the DS, sadly. Sure, there’s Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution and Dawn of Discovery, but they aren’t terribly educational. The closest thing to a Social Studies game is Learn Geography, which is heading to the DS in September, 2009. Hopefully that will help spur on games that deal with the world and its history.

There also aren’t many Science games available. There are two games which require players to solve physics based puzzles though – Dr. Heinz Wolff’s Gravity and Marker Man Adventures.

There is also Science Papa, which frankly is to science what Cooking Mama is to cooking. However, it does show actual, plausible science experiments and activities, so it could be considered remotely educational. At the very least, it could get children interested in science.

Other Classes:

There are also a few other high school classes which are represented by DS applications. For example, Home Economics students could pick up Personal Trainer: Cooking or My Healthy Cooking Coach to help expand their recipe repertoire. Students who are taking Driver’s Education could pick up Drivers’ Ed Portable, to help brush up before they go for their permit or license. And, to complement possible after school SAT prep courses, futureU: The Prep Game for SAT and My SAT Coach are both immediately available.

General Knowledge:

If you’re searching for something that’s generally educational, but doesn’t focus on one subject or is just kind of fun, there are tons of games available. Both Professor Layton games (Professor Layton and the Curious Village and Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box) can help boost general problem solving skills. Both Brain Age and Brain Age 2 also offer a variety of exercises designed to boost various brain functions, and so do the games inspired by them like Big Brain Academy, Brain Boost: Beta Wave and Brain Boost: Gamma Wave. My Fun Facts Coach can also be used to help you learn interesting or potentially useful trivia.

EA has also recently turned the popular Brain Quest series of educational flashcards into DS games. So if you have a child who is in elementary school, you have the option of picking up Brain Quest Grades 3&4 or Brain Quest Grades 5&6 to help them over the coming school years.

Read [Science Daily] Also Read [Network World]