Guitar Hero World Tour

Both Guitar Hero and Rockband are huge success stories for the video game market as well as the music industry. Between Rockband and Guitar Hero over 20 million songs have been downloaded. Both games are seen as quasi-musical. Players time hitting buttons to the beat and rhythm of a song in order to achieve a high score. With a guitar, the player much match one or more of the colored buttons on the guitar neck and time it right by hitting a strum bar at the same time.

Mostly, it is hand eye coordination. However, it helps your hand getting used to moving up and down the fret board. Rockband adds another element besides bass and guitar, drums. The format is basically the same, however you must keep the beat going by hitting 4 drums and a bass pedal. This teaches students rhythm.
Students also have the ability to sing the songs in game. This is the most realistic of all the instruments. The notes must be matched in pitch perfectly on Expert mode, and pretty close on all the other difficulties. However, all these things do not add a wealth of educational tools to the classroom.

Enter Guitar Hero World Tour. It will include instruments for at least a four piece band like the original Rock band. Players can compose their own music and share it on the games’ networks. Taking a tool that the students are familiar with such as Guitar Hero or Rockband, and allow them to create songs really pushes the boundaries of music. Before students would have to sit down with expensive equipment to compose a song, now it’s a game and a tool. Granted this tool is limited in terms of what can be done, perhaps it will inspire students to do become involved in music.

Guitar Hero IV World Tour will be available in October 2008. 

Dance Dance Revolution

Dance Dance Revolution (or DDR) is a rhythm and dancing game that requires players to move their feet along to the music by hitting one or move directional pads. Not only does it require balance, rhythm and agility – it is fun too.
DDR also includes a workout mode that allows you to set up a workout based on calories burned, time or speed.

Using this in school would be a good way to decrease the obesity in schools and in the youth of America. Personally, I set up a DDR station at my school’s Health Fair and spoke to students about the importance of daily exercise.  DDR would count as exercise. Health, P.E. or Music class could benefit from this game.

Another Great tool that could be used in the classroom is Wii Fit. Wii Fit includes a balance board that the player uses to do certain exercises, such as sit-ups, pushups, stretching, yoga and some other techniques. It tracks your progress so you can see where you were and where you are headed.

The Cold War

I wanted to make a new web site that could be my testing grounds for using new web techniques and tricks. Rather than create a dummy site, I figured I should try to create a web site that is useful. I will be using Flash, CSS and other web elements that I have never used before in any of my web sites. I am hoping to learn a lot of new ways to bring information to my web site.

I choose the Cold War topic for several reasons.

(1) I have always enjoyed the struggle between the Superpowers of the Cold War.

(2) I studied the Cold War extensively as an undergraduate student in college.

(3) I'm really looking forward to Red Alert 3. RA3 is an upcoming PC/XBOX360 game based on an alternate history surrounding the Cold War.

Stay tuned for more.