The Top 10 Video Games To Improve Senior Health

January 18, 2012 / admin / No comments

The Top 10 Video Games To Improve Senior Health

If you think that video games are for lazy teenagers or adult couch potatoes only, think again. Once you start reaching your ‘golden’ age or if you are way past your 60s and 70s, your heart, body and mind can use the adrenaline rush brought about by the modern gaming devices which are available today.

Why Video Games Aren’t Just For Kids Anymore?

So what exactly are the benefits that grandma and grandpa can get from playing Wii, online games, PlayStation 2 or similar gaming devices? There’s actually a lot more to video gaming than you may actually think.

A good number of studies in the past have shown that playing video games has many positive benefits to senior health. For young people, one of the benefits of playing video games is to sharpen their problem-solving abilities. Video games are even known to improve the skills of a surgeon in the operating table.

Now, to give you an idea about the health benefits that older people will enjoy, take a look at the following list:

1. According to the Psychology and Aging magazine, playing complex video games after receiving training may improve the cognitive functions of seniors. This is one the functions which typically decline with age.

2. Aside from improving their cognitive functions, video games which require seniors to juggle multiple tasks may also improve their ability to perform some other everyday tasks in the ‘real world’.

3. Researches done in the past also indicated that video games such as the ones provided by Nintendo and Wii can be successfully used to doctor seniors with Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and other illnesses of a psychological or psychosocial nature.

4. Preliminary studies have shown that strategy video games may help older adults in keeping their brains razor sharp.

Since you will be playing with the aid of a joystick, video games can help improve your eye-hand coordination.
To sum it all up, what video games do is keep an aging brain young – which is why they bring forth a multitude of benefits for a senior’s overall health. And with the introduction of Wii fitness-themed games, who says that they can’t enjoy the physical benefits of video games as well?

Top 10 Video Games to Improve Senior Health

After learning about the benefits of using video games to improve senior health, which games should you borrow from your grand kids? Here are the top 10 video games which help improve senior health:

1. Brain Age and Brain Age2

This is a video game developed by Nintendo DS, which has already spawned a sequel: Brain Age2. Both the original and the sequel video games are inspired by the work of Japanese neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima.

Basically, what the Brain Age video game will assist you with is stimulating your brain by giving it the workout that it needs with activities like solving simple math problems, currency counting, drawing pictures or unscrambling letters.

As indicated in their website, the activities in the Brain Age2 video game will increase the blood flow to your prefrontal cortex. [Poor Blood Circulation]

2. BrainBashers.com

BrainBashers.com is actually a website which was started in 1997 by Kevin Stone, BSC. The site has a great collection of logic game, brain teasers, riddles, puzzles, games and optical illusions.

The good thing about BrainBashers is that five new puzzles are added every other week, so you will have some new brain-exerciser games to look forward to. [Brain Strengthening Exercises]

The benefit of visiting sites like these is that your mental acuity will be sharpened because of the sheer number of activities that your brain can be engaged in.

3. Wii Golf

If, for one reason or another, you have decided to quit playing golf – you can still have a go at it with the help of a video game like the Nintendo Wii Golf.

You can enjoy it as part of the Wii Sports collection which includes a series of five sports simulations: tennis, baseball, golf, bowling and boxing. So, how exactly will the Wii Golf help seniors have a pretty good workout – with the help of a video game console? [Balance Exercises For Seniors]

The Wii Remote is the key. What it does is mimic the actions performed in real life sports.

Let’s say that you have swung the Wii Remote which you will be using as a golf club, its mechanism will detect how strong or how gentle your golf swing is, and the results will be seen on the screen.

4. Dancing with the Stars

Whether or not you’re a fan of the show that the video game is based on, you will have a blast playing the “Dancing with the Stars” video game. Released in October 2007, the game has PC and online versions, and is also available in Wii, PC, mobile and PlayStation 2 platforms.

If you will get the PlayStation 2 or Wii formats of the game, that is when you will have the best time exercising because it comes with the dance pad. Basically, you will enjoy a physical workout while playing a video game at the same time.

5. Tetris

Whether it’s a game installed on your mobile phone, your computer or a gaming console, the classic blocks game of Tetris will provide a lot of benefits for you as a senior.

When you use the arrow keys on your keyboard to play the game and you’re at an advanced level, your quick thinking skills will be sharpened. Hand-eye coordination and logical thinking are the other benefits that you will get from playing this game.

6. NASCAR 09

Bring out the risk-taking race car driver in you with the NASCAR 09 video game. It comes in the following formats: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. If you’re not into race car driving, you can try the other driving and flying video games, which will keep your wits razor sharp.

7. Guild Wars

This PC game is available in Windows format only, and is developed by ArenaNet. It’s an episodic series of role-playing games on multiplayer online mode.

Guild Wars is in fact popular with both the younger and the older crowd – so you’ll have plenty of youthfulness to keep you company while the game sharpens your wits at the same time.

8. Pogo.com

If there’s one online video gaming site that is popular with the over-40 crowd, that is none other than Pogo.com. The site is suitable for seniors who are not really into racing, war games or strategic games.

Pogo.com includes a wide array of puzzle games, word games, card games, board games, arcade and sports games that will keep you spending as much hours as your grand kid is spending on the Internet.

9. Scrabble

Another classic game that will keep your brain razor sharp is scrabble. You can even go one step further and use the fun game to connect with your friends and family – no matter which part of the world they live in.

You can have a game with two to four players, and receive notifications on your e-mail if it is your turn to play.

10. Grandparent Games

To cap off our list, there’s the aptly named Grandparent Games which allows seniors to connect with their grandchildren through interactive games. If you want to connect with your children’s kids while exercising your brain at the same time, you get free access to the service for 7 days.

There’s a minimal fee to continue, but if you like playing the games, it is definitely worth it.

There you have it – our top 10 list of the best video games that will allow seniors to exercise their brains, their bodies and improve their eye-hand coordination. Whoever said that video games are a waste of time and are only meant for lazy kids and adults, can never be more wrong.

Neelima Reddy, author of this article writes for HealthWatchCenter.com; which is the premier publisher of health related information and news from around the world. This blog is aimed at helping you better understand the problems you are facing every day and offer suggestions. Health Watch Center

Article from articlesbase.com

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Get Into The Game

January 17, 2012 / Jody Mugele / No comments

Gaming isn’t just for geeks anymore: online gaming has gone mainstream, thanks in part to companies looking to cash in on gamifying their marketing efforts. But it’s also become a successful vehicle for learning, with teachers using games to help students comprehend new concepts, retain course material and collaborate with classmates. As higher education searches for ways to keep students both engaged and on track to graduation, gamifying courses and other college activities serve to show how useful technology can be in education.

Getting into the game
An article about the gamifying of college applications appeared on Technorati last summer; the article features Acceptly, a platform that gives high school students and their parents points and badges for completing various steps of applying for colleges and universities. This is a relatively new way to tackle the college application process: in addition to guiding students and their families through college selection and application with rewards, Acceptly can help students determine which school would be the best fit for them. And by incentivizing the application process, some students might be more likely to follow through on finding and enrolling in college.

Leveling up to graduation
Research suggests that a learning system that rewards students at each stage of academic achievement can be effective for students in several subjects. And tech giant Microsoft is banking on it. In collaboration with several higher education institutions, the company developed a real-world game called Just Press Play, which offers students digital rewards for academic achievement. Player-students receive cards that can be swiped at check-in locations and after communicating or meeting with faculty or staff. The goal is to keep students accountable for their coursework, and the game gives them a chance to receive nearly instant gratification after performing well in classes and other on-campus activities.

State of engagement
Games like these can make learning fun, but they can also serve as a way for students to break down their work into digestible bites—game levels they can tackle one section at a time. This kind of compartmentalization can be important for first-year college students who might become overwhelmed with the newness of college, and ease them into the more demanding nature of higher education.

With online degree programs becoming popular, game-based learning could also help distance students stay engaged with their classmates and faculty; along with encouraging regular participation in class assignments, games can help build a sense of community in a domain where physical contact and face-to-face communication is relatively rare.

Game-based learning and the gamification of higher education won’t work for every student, or for every subject. But what the technique can do is help students become more engaged and invested in their education, as well as offer instructors a way to keep track of students’ progress and weak points. As technology and human creativity evolve, gaming can help create an environment in which students and teachers alike discover ways to win points, and to make the act of learning more effective and enjoyable.

Harper Mac is an online education advocate, and blogs on behalf of Colorado Technical University.

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Learn About Different Types Of Jigsaw Puzzles, Their History And Evolution

January 12, 2012 / admin / No comments

Learn About Different Types Of Jigsaw Puzzles, Their History And Evolution

A puzzle is a quandary or mystery that exams the skill of the solver. In a very basic puzzle, one is meant to section concurrent objects in a rational way in order to generate the desired picture, figure or structure. Puzzles are sometimes contrived as a type of amusement, except they can also stem from thought-provoking mathematical or logistical problems.  Within those cases, their winning solution are usually a significant contribution to numerical research.

J. Spilsbury an English engraver plus mapmaker made-up the jigsaw puzzle during nineteen seventies.  The 1st jigsaw puzzle was a map of the world. Spilsbury attached a map to a piece of wood and then cut out each country. Instructors used these puzzles to show geography during study.  The students learned their geography instruction by placing the world maps back together.  The dissected map continues to be a successful instructive toy ever since.

The first jigsaw puzzles had been expensive because they were handcrafted, and considered as entertainment by the prosperous who had been those that could find the money for them. The first jigsaw puzzles were referred to as push-fit puzzles and were simple and didn’t interlock. The purchase price of puzzles reduced because machinery developed and they could be manufactured more easliy. The height of popularity for jigsaw puzzles was during the early twentieth century, at what time interlocking puzzles with many pieces were created and their popularity increased.

During the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties economic depression, jigsaw puzzles grew to becomte a extremely popular form of family amusement when chemists and libraries started loaning them out. Antique wooden as well as cardboard puzzles are extremely sought after as collectibles, and complete puzzles are much more precious . Wooden jigsaw puzzles are considered the best jigsaw puzzles since the jigsaw pieces are handcrafted by means of mechanised fret saws. Modern jigsaw puzzles are made of cardboard, with a photograph or artwork glued on to it. The cardboard is subsequently punch-cut into parts using metal dies.

In an interlocking puzzle, one or supplementary pieces hold the others together, or else the parts are mutually self-sustaining. The purpose is to completely disassemble and then rebuild the puzzle. Illustrations of these are the well-known Chinese wood knots.  Equally construction and disassembly can be challenging -contrary to assembly puzzles, these puzzles usually do not just fall apart easily.  The degree of difficulty is usually assessed in terms of the number of moves required to take out the initial piece from the puzzle.  The known chronicle of these puzzles dates back to the start of the eighteenth century.  In 1803 a catalogue printed contained two puzzles of this sort.

At the start of the nineteenth century the Japanese took over the marketplace for these puzzles. They developed a large amount of games in all sorts of distinctive forms, animals, houses and other objects – whereas the development in the western world revolved chiefly around geometrical shapes.

By the early twentieth century, magazines and newspapers found that they could increase their daily sales by printing puzzle contests.

The immense number of puzzles that have been developed can be separated into different types, for example a maze is a type of tour puzzle. Other classes include, brain teasers, stick, metal, disentanglement, jigsaw, lock, folding,combination and mechanical puzzles.

A large supply of these puzzles in our day is the on-line web site craftypuzzles.com. This small business provides amazing hardwood brain teasers and 3d jigsaw puzzles; the jigsaw puzzles are in great shapes like the Harley Davidson or Sports Bike. Their brain teaser designs date back to inventive Chinese patterns, they cater for all levels of skill, and each puzzle is designed to be an ornament, hence therefore will  not have to get left in a drawer when accomplished.

Would you like to comprehend some of these puzzles we talked about ?  Then visit The Crafty Jigsaw Puzzles Company for distinctive hardwood 3d puzzles.

Article from articlesbase.com

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