[senco-forum] Brain Train

My son asked for a Nintendo DS for his birthday  - a bit like a Game Boy -
hand held games console. I bought the Brain Train programme to go with it
and think it's great. It was developed in Japan for Alzheimer's sufferers  -
they found that by reading aloud and doing simple mental arithmetic, it
stimulates parts of the brain that apparently delay the symptoms of
Alzheimer's. Don't know how valid that research is but I do see benefits for
reluctant students.

The game has a mental arithmetic section where you write the answers on to
the screen a quickly as possible - so you have to be neat! If you do it
daily there is a graph that comes up recording your progress and you get
quicker - it included most times tables to ten plus simple addition and
subtractions to 20. The reading aloud (there is a built in mike) times how
quickly and accurately you read. There is a game where four digits appear on
the screen, disappear and you have to remember them in order from lowest to
highest (visual and working memory), there is one with a picture of a house
and people go in and out and you have to remember how many people are in the
house.

All along there are incentives to improve your speed. Friends who have used
it with their children say the mental arithmetic scores have gone from over
a minute down to under 30 seconds.

Each Nintendo DS is fitted with a wireless facility so kids can challenge
ach other to eg solve the list of sums as quickly as they can an have races.

I think I am going to steal it off my son and take it to work as an
incentive/reward for some of the kids.

Anyone else familiar with this prgramme and used it in a school context?

Fiona