How Bizarre. Nintendo of America, The National Institute of Aerospace, and Nortel LearniT have partnered up a program which teaches basic science to elementary and middle school students. This leaves me wondering whether or not the same will be applied to our schools in Sydney. Heck, I would have benefited from it back in 1996 when Pokemon first came out on the original GB~

(Image from PokeDream of Starter Pokemon in Pokemon Pearl/Diamond)

It actually makes a lot of sense when you sit down to think about it: When you play the game, you need to choose the right size Pokémon with the right build type, possessing the right element for your battle. For example, if you are against some guy with an insect, it makes sense to use fire to burn the little thing, among other elements the bug would be weak to.

However, this isn’t the angle that the program is using. It actually focusses on building fundamental knowledge about light, physics and astronomy. Yes, that’s right - stars, planets, galaxies, you name it. Their entire curriculum is dedicated to teaching Space and Time using Pokémon as a strategic vessel to achieve this, specifically through their latest games “Diamond” and “Pearl”. This can be found at the program’s official website MasterTheScience. The program includes:

For Grades 3-5

• Timekeeping by the Sun -
• Travelling with Dirty Snowballs - (??? weird title)
• Living in Space

For Grades 6-8

• Expanding the Universe
• Life of a Star
• Travelling in Space

I had a look today because I was taking a break from studying Japanese in preparation for my Japan Trip, and the integration really isn’t as game like as one would think. One exercise is learning about how the sun can create a shadow, and with this shadow you can tell the time. However, instead of using a standard ruler or a stick outdoors (as people my age would have done) they try asking questions by substituting the stick object with a random Pokémon instead. Another exercise asks students to compare three pokemon, and discuss how their evolution mimics the Sun’s lifecycle.

Most of the exercises are fairly tenous, and don’t really require the student to know anythink about Pokémon, nor require them to own the game. If anything, it could be a very smart way to keep students engaged given the colourful nature of each Pokémon, or perhaps it could be a marketing gimic by Nintendo to promote their product. Regardless of its intention, what this reminds me of, is feeding a dog heart worm tablets - something they know is good for them, but can only consume when disguised.

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