Nintendo Labo

Just saw another Labo creation, Link's bike:
 
Just read from the verge and siliconera, Nintendo is bringing Labo to school:

Nintendo is working together with the Institute of Play, a non-profit organization, to bring Nintendo Labo into classrooms to give kids a way to explore basic STEAM concepts. A pilot program is currently in progress.

“What we’re not doing is writing a lock-step curriculum,” explains Arana Shapiro, co-executive director of the Institute of Play. “We’re really thinking of this as a teacher’s guide, so what we’re trying to do is create something that has enough examples so that teachers can feel like they can immediately do something in the classroom with Labo. But we also are trying to give enough support and structure so that teachers can be inventive with the ways they want to integrate Labo into their own classrooms.”

Labo wasn’t actually created with learning in mind. “We didn’t plan on it turning out to be educational at all,” Kouichi Kawamoto, a producer on Labo. But after receiving feedback from players, in particular educators who were interested in how they could utilize Labo, Nintendo decided to explore the idea of bringing its DIY line to classrooms.

Fils-Aimé believes that the tactile, creative nature of Labo makes it uniquely suited for teaching STEAM concepts — an acronym for the fields of science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics — to a younger audience. “We think it’s important for kids to get exposure to STEAM, and especially the ‘arts’ part of STEAM,” he says. “Many educators across the country are talking about STEM, STEM clearly is important. The arts aspect, the hands-on aspect, is something that’s important to us.”

Through this partnership, Nintendo Labo kits will reach around 2,000 students in about 100 schools across the US, while the Institute of Play will be creating a guide for teachers to integrate the kits into their lesson plans. Institute of Play co-executive director Arana Shapiro commented that the idea is to basically make a guide for teachers so they can naturally come up with ways to do something with Labo kits, while leaving room for teachers to explore new possibilities.

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