Can Nintendo DS Consoles Be Used for Collaboration and Inquiry-Based Learning in Schools?

Handheld game consoles have been trialed in schools to identify their potential for collaboration and delivering an inquiry-based curriculum. The Nintendo DS consoles contain a built-in chat feature, PictoChat, which allows users to share text and freehand written text or pictures. In a secondary school, an initial survey was completed to test the hypotheses about the use of DS consoles by students. The consoles were compared with voting pads in Science lessons and used for collaboration in Modern Foreign Languages as well as English. Thinking skills activities based around the inquiry-based curriculum were explored and evaluated by teachers and students using Costa’s Habits of Mind as a framework and action research methods. Other practical aspects were investigated, such as using visualizers to capture interactions and enable the sharing of console screens with the whole class. Results show the suitability of DS console use for collaboration and inquiry, increased student motivation, and implications for staff training and support. The research aims to continue to investigate the use of ‘back channelling’, i.e. using the consoles to enable communication between the students and teacher during lesson delivery.