Offer ends December 31st!  The mission of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, they need people who believe in what they’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege.

Between November 12 and December 31, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. During this time, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution.

Give One Get One!

Between November 12 and December 31, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. This is the first time the revolutionary XO laptop has been made available to the general public. For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. $200 of your donation is tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving).

For all U.S. donors who participate in the Give One Get One program, T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary HotSpot access. Find out more.

(Please be aware that they will make every effort to deliver the XO laptops by the holidays, but quantities are limited. Early purchasers have the best chance of receiving their XO laptops in time for the holidays, but they cannot guarantee timing.)

Fox News --  Technology developers are poised in the next month to debut new "brain-computer interfaces," which will allow video game players to control their PlayStations and Xboxes with their thoughts, not their fingers.

The devices are powered by neurosensors, attached to points on the scalps of players, where the "Alpha," "Theta" and "Beta" brain waves can be detected, according to researchers.

These sensors are connected to the game controls, which move the on-screen characters left or right, up or down, faster or slower, depending upon the thoughts of the players. "Frontlines," "Doom" and "Tetris" may never be the same again.

"The technology is similar to the electroencephalogram that neurologists and other doctors use to measure brain activity," said Domenic Greco, a doctor of clinical psychology and the founder of SmartBrain Games, a developer in San Marcos, Calif. "It's a neuro-feedback system which sends a signal of brain activity to a specially designed game controller."

Science Daily — Researchers from Germany, Portugal and the UK have developed an interactive role play game which helps children to cope with bullying at schools. Currently over 1,000 children all over Europe are part of pilot studies which aim to explore the impact that the software may have in the possible reduction of bullying among pupils.

In the specially developed computer game “FearNot!” each child takes the role of an invisible friend of the victimized character, discussing problems and exploring possible solutions and coping strategies. The advice given subsequently influences the actions of the victim.

With “FearNot!” the researchers are using a new and innovative approach to get children reflect on the sensitive topic of bullying. “This 3-D interactive virtual environment provides a safe haven for individual children, where they witness bullying scenarios without being directly involved,” says Rui Figueiredo, a scientist at the Institudo de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores in Portugal and one of the Kaleidoscope researchers involved in the project. “We use emergent narrative techniques, which enable the learner to direct the path the story should follow.”

Educational Games Research Blog~

Here’s an interesting comparison of the sexes insofar as video gaming goes. 

Gaming Today quoted Jing Feng from the press release:

“On average, women are not quite as good at rapidly switching attention among different objects and this may be one reason why women do not do as well on spatial tasks. But more important than finding that difference, our second experiment showed that both men and women can improve their spatial skills by playing a video game and that the women catch up to the men,” Feng added. “Moreover, the improved performance of both sexes was maintained when we assessed them again after five months.”

Dr. Ian Spence, director of the engineering psychology lab at Toronto, added this neat quote: “Clearly, something dramatic is happening in the brain when we see marked improvements in spatial skills after only 10 hours of game playing and these improvements are maintained for many months.”

Townhall.com by Suzanne Fields - History won't repeat itself in the future so much, it will just rewrite itself. The young who grow up on computers will inevitably be influenced by the games they play.

The hottest new electronic games are based on facts of history, and the players must study the actual events of history to devise winning strategies. I know, because my young tutor in one such game stopped the barbarians from invading Rome with stealthy deceptions of bad leaders and wily negotiations with men easily duped.

This young player insists we can learn from mistakes of history. (Certain presidents and prime ministers would die for such do-overs.) A player can't do what the rules of the game don't allow, of course, but the rules of the game I watched leave ample opportunities to alter the wars of the Roman Empire. Playing the game sent my tutor to the library for a stack of books on Caesar's campaign through Gaul, and several interpretations of why certain senators conspired to kill Caesar. I even managed to talk about Mark Antony's funeral oration as rendered by Shakespeare, with a discussion of sarcasm and irony in the description of Brutus as an "honorable man."

As if the gym was not tyranny enough, now there's another fitness routine that's playing on the insecurities of the masses - the brain workout.

But at least couch potatoes will not have to stir from the sofa to take part. This path to cerebral salvation can be navigated sitting down, in front of a screen, with a computer game.

A current advertising campaign by Nintendo suggests commuters put their sedentary time to good effect by improving mind functions like memory and concentration with a brain game.

The latest program to take the grey matter on a road test is MindFit, to be launched by one of Britain's best-known scientists, Baroness Susan Greenfield, on Thursday. Others include IQ Academy and Anagrammatic.

MindFit is PC-based software providing a collection of games (such as Picasso, explained above) that its creators say can halt the mental decline associated with ageing, based on trials in Israel among 121 volunteers aged over 50.

Bruce Robinson of MindWeaver, the company behind the software, says the different exercises target certain cognitive functions like memory, visual spatial awareness and concentration.

"If you use the analogy of a fitness room or gym then it has the equivalent of all the machines to exercise this variety of functions and has an online personal trainer aligning the exercises that you do to match your particular abilities and match your own performance." 

The exercises Olivia does include arithmetic calculations, recalling four to six numbers in their correct sequence and working out the time difference between two clocks. Another involves drawing a design from memory.

"In the beginning I wanted to do it because I wanted to make sure I stayed with it, but I do enjoy it too," she says.

"I have noticed the difference to an extent. I can remember little snippets - things I hear on the radio - a little bit more accurately."

Research done on animals has linked stimulation from visual tasks to the strengthening of neuron connections in the brain, says Professor David Moore, the neuroscientist who founded MindWeavers.

Stronger connections between neurons have not been demonstrated directly in humans because a test would require putting an electrode into the brain, he says, but neuro-imaging of whole human brains shows activity in the same areas when people play these games.

PopCap Games commissioned the survey and found some other interesting statistics that suggest not all video games are bad, either educationally or in terms of isolating kids.

Casual games provided the following observed benefits: improved hand-eye coordination and mental dexterity (68%), improved learning, such as pattern recognition and spelling (60%), mental workouts/cognitive exercises (51%), strengthened memory (48%), stress relief and relaxation (44%), and confidence building/affirmation (37%).

Beijing Perfect World announces that it will launch an MMORPG called "The War of the Red Cliff" at the end of the year.  The anticipation of this game has drawn the attention of the vast majority of China's gamers.

Chinese history and culture is long standing and revered throughout the world. A particularly popular period of Chinese history is the end of the three kingdoms era during the Han Dynasty, where the war of the red cliff became a classic battle. Beijing Perfect World and CFGC decided to base their jointly produced film and online-game works on this popular Chinese historical period, which has great importance in Chinese history.

The game stresses historical correctness, so that its players may experience the true environment of the era, and players can play the roles of famous soldiers to better understand their roles in the battle. But in the end, what the game hopefully demonstrates is that history is ongoing and never just a thing of the past.

Claudia Johnston is well-versed in the art of virtual death.

It happened when the 59-year-old Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi administrator played her first video game, "Doom," during a trip to an electronics store. But after suffering several deaths and subsequent virtual reincarnations, Johnston began to see a new professional life in the real world.

What if video games, which help hone critical thinking, could be used to train doctors and other professionals? For the past several years, Johnston has been deeply involved in an effort to develop a game to do just that.

LOS ANGELES, Calif.– Good-bye Bingo, hello high tech. As today’s seniors search for ways to keep their minds active, some are turning from tradition to the latest gadgets typically reserved for the younger generation.  “Aging is about taking on new challenges for the mind,” said Dr. Elizabeth Zelinski, a professor of gerontology and psychology at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California, who says video games are a good way to keep older adults’ minds active. “Like kids, seniors are playing games with people all around the world,” she said.

Recently, health plan provider Evercare surveyed 100 Americans turning 100 and discovered that one in seven has played video games. PopCap Games in Seattle reported -more- that its Internet video games have been downloaded more than 200 million times since the company was founded in 2000; a survey last year showed that 47 percent of the players were older than 50.