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things you should know about...
Wii
Scenario
Two members o the College o Music aculty workedwith a team o computer science proessors to developan instructional tool based on the Nintendo Wii gamesystem or teaching conducting. In their tool, the Wiicontroller, which eatures an inrared camera, is mount-ed on a stand. Student conductors wear special gloveswith inrared LEDs in them; they also have the option o using a baton tted with an LED. As they practice theirconducting technique, the camera in the Wii controller“sees” where their hands—and the baton—move andsends that inormation to custom sotware on a PC. Thesotware translates the inormation about movementand position into a digital representation o a personconducting, which is rendered on a computer screen,and into a 3D “map” o the movement o the person’shands or the baton. Andre is a second-year student in the Master o Musicprogram, studying choral and orchestral conducting.Using the new system, which digitally records sessions, Andre can replay recordings o rehearsals, examininghis conducting technique and how the musicians re-spond. Because the Wii-based system ocuses on themovements o his hands, Andre can ocus his attentionon the patterns and variations that dene his style. The3D maps allow Andre and his instructors to see howconsistent he is with his technique by overlaying dier-ent sessions and seeing how closely they match. Hends that at least on one level, the new tool is morebenecial to his understanding o the weaknesses in hisconducting than the videotapes he has used beore toreview rehearsals.Faculty members also record themselves conductingwith the system, and they recruit other proessionalconductors to do the same. These recordings aremade available to the students, who can review themas stand-alone artiacts, watching or patterns and ele-ments that make each conductor unique or overlayingthese recordings with their own to see how they com-pare. Andre knows that he must cultivate his own style,but he nds that being able to see clearly how his tech-nique refects (or diers rom) that o other conductorssharpens his awareness o his motions and allows himto ocus his eorts on small but important changes thatimprove his perormance.
What is it?
The Wii is a video game system that uses a wireless controllercapable o sensing position and motion, allowing users to interactwith the game applications through physical movements. In Wiitennis, or example, users swing the controller (oten called the Wii-mote) as i it were a tennis racket. Sensors in the controller transmitthose motions wirelessly to the game console, which renders theplayer on the screen as a game character swinging a tennis racketin the same arc, with the same speed, sending the ball—hope-ully—back over the net. The controller takes many orms, rom abasic wand-like remote to gol clubs, shing rods, or a tness padthat senses the position and balance o a user standing on it.
Who’s doing it?
Since its introduction in late 2006, the Wii has been a avorite o thegaming community, which has praised the system or transormingthe gaming experience into a physical activity. Retirement com-munities have adopted the technology to encourage residents toexercise, and the Wii Fit, which includes a balance board to simu-late movements rom hula-hooping to yoga, has been popular withsome tness proessionals. Physical therapists have embraced theWii as a tool to help patients regain balance, coordination, range o motion, and muscle tone through an engaging, un activity. The controller has also captured the interest o academic re-searchers and hackers, who seek to apply the technology to otheruses. Using custom hardware and sotware he developed, a PhDstudent at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at CarnegieMellon University created an application that uses Wii technologyto turn any surace into an inexpensive, interactive whiteboard.Faculty at the University o Illinois and the University o Caliornia,Berkeley, developed an application based on the Wii concept thatallows choreographers to collaborate rom a distance. The ap-plication senses the position o the dancers and renders thosepeople on a screen, which simultaneously shows dancers at sev-eral locations, providing a shared, virtual experience. A proessorin the department o biomedical inormatics at Arizona State Uni-versity has conducted research into the use o Wii games or train-ing surgeons. He ound that students who played a Wii game thatrequires hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity to move amarble through a series o obstacles showed considerably higherimprovement in their surgical techniques than students who didnot play the game.
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© 2008 EDUCAUSE This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
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