Wiiii ! - look at me, Mum!

You might wonder why the Nintendo Wii features on an eLearning web site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii

I just did some quick "research" on one of these systems for the benefit of our readers (both of them). This gaming system has generated quite the buzz. My son's friend queued for 16 hours to buy his system this past weekend. Nuts!

But, oh boy, is he happy that he did! This was an obvious hit with the kids when I dropped by the house to see how the "tests" were going. It might even help combat the ever increasing Body Mass Indices that these kids develop - it was very active and tiring for them.

So why might this be relevant to eLearning? I was hoping that these novel control systems might be useful for acquisition of certain procedural skills. There are some games already that seem to promise this - e.g. Triage Center (or something like that). Well, I was certainly impressed by the excellent 3D response to large vigorous movements. Tennis, boxing etc were very impressive.

But the sensors do seem to lack sensitivity for subtle movements, which would make it much less useful as a training aid in medicine. There are not too many activities that we pursue by means of large arm movements. Perhaps with some tweaking of the sensitivity settings, it might be worth exploring further...or maybe my imagination is just too limited.

The other component that is missing obviously is that of force feedback - there is no sensation of resistance when you "make contact" with other surfaces or objects. Of course, you would not expect that with a system that is free and untethered...but I think we sometimes forget how dependent we are on tactile feedback when acquiring new skills.