The Nintendo DS is providing much more than just fun and games for English-language students at Tokyo's Joshi Gakuen all-girl junior high school. The portable video game console is now being used as a key teaching tool, breaking with traditional Japanese academic methods.
A giggly class of 32 students used plastic pens to spell words like "hamburger" and "cola" on the touch panel screen — the key feature of the hit console — following an instruction from the machine.
When the students got the spelling right, the word "good" popped up on the screen, and the student continued to the next exercise. "It's fun," said Chigusa Matsumoto, 12, who zipped through the drills to get her sticker. "You can have fun while you study."