Village Gamer

EA Montreal has released a new Army of Two: 40th Day trailer. This short video focuses on the multiplayer extraction mode. Army of Two: 40th Day is slated for release on January 12 2010.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4lPGdoe6o4]

Vancouver Film School is holding a Halloween makeup contest. Impress their judge, film industry veteran and Head of the Makeup Design for Film & Television program Stan Edmonds (The Butterfly Effect, I, Robot, Unforgiven), and you’ll have the chance to win some great prizes, including a selection of professional-quality makeup supplies! All you have to do is show your Halloween-themed makeup skills – and that can be anything you imagine as long as you’ve created the makeup yourself – on the photo-sharing site Flickr between October 26 and November 1. Once three finalists are chosen by our judge, the public will get to vote on the winner.

Ottawa – Corel has introduced Corel® Paint it!™ touch, a new digital art studio built explicitly for the Windows 7 platform. Corel Paint it! touch is optimized for use on touch-screen computers, Paint it! touch provides budding artists of any age with a unique artistic experience. Using the program, consumers can create original artwork with the touch of their fingertips. The program’s touch-enabled capabilities let consumers add artistic touches to photos or create art from scratch using a number of realistic brushes and effects.

“With Paint it! touch, it is now possible to bypass mouse clicks and interact directly with your digital canvas, all with the touch of your fingertips,” said David Toeg, Paint it! touch Product Manager for Corel. “Windows 7 and Windows Touch have enabled Corel to create new possibilities for our users by removing barriers and helping them to connect with their digital content in more personal ways. Whether they are creating painted masterpieces, photo projects, or home videos, it can now be an even more spontaneous and interactive experience.”

IUGO Mobile Entertainment has released information about their latest game which is headed for the Apple App Store – Implode, where players are tasked to carefully plant limited dynamite bundles in order to demo obsolete structures. Sounds easy enough, right? WRONG! Implode! is a classic “easy to learn, hard to master” casual game that will pull you in and won’t let go. IUGO currently has three games in the pipeline for the App Store – Implode, Zombie Attack Second Wave and Cliffed.

Features include:

• 60 dynamite levels
• Reactive UI, touch and drag control options
• Fun chalkboard theme and clean graphics
• Two different types of bombs (traditional bombs and blast bombs)
• Varying structure shapes for ongoing challenge
• Submit score online (online score is the sum of all levels’ high scores)
• Grading system for high scores adding replayability to each level
• 3 Difficulties; Casual, Veteran, and Expert
• In-level help system: Learn as you play!
• IUGO VIP: Sandbox cheat gives you more bombs and you never fail! (high scores disabled with this feature)
• Watch buildings tumble with real physics!

Victoria – Island Tech 09 is looking for speakers. Island Tech takes place on November 13th at the Crystal Garden and will feature an afternoon of thought-provoking discussions, much in the style of the TEDx conferences. They are looking for people that have an interesting topic they would like to present. Talks should be rooted in innovation, or at least connected to technology. The organizers would prefer talks with a broad and/or unconventional scope. Do you have anything you’d like to say that fits this bill? The format for the talks is a 20 minute presentation followed by 10 minutes of Q&A with the audience. People should come away from this part of the Island Tech event thinking “I’ve never thought about it that way”, or “man, that was interesting”, or maybe even “that was brilliant!”. We want these talks to stretch the boundaries a bit, and make people think. Please email Island Tech 09 with a synopsis of your talk.

The MindShare Learning Report—Canada’s, Leading, Learning & Technology eMagazine and title sponsor Microsoft Canada Co., are set to officially launch the Microsoft – MindShare Learning Report™ 21st Century Digital Classroom Challenge (Contest Info – PDF). In its second year running, this event aims to inspire teachers, along with their students from across Canada to share their successful classroom practices using technology. Teachers from publicly funded schools can qualify to win one of three technology prize packs valued at over $15,000 for their school.

The office launch takes place at W.H. Day Elementary School in Bradford, Ontario, the site of one of last year’s contest winners, grade 5 teacher, Mali Bickley. “It is an honour to have the Mindshare Learning Contest launch hosted in my classroom. Winning the Mindshare Learning contest and having the technology for the class helped us connect with so many other classes throughout the world. The technologies were the tools that connected my students in curriculum based projects that truly made a difference in their lives and other students globally,” says Mali Bickley.

Through a video submission, K-12 educators from publicly funded schools across Canada are challenged to share their success stories using technology to support student success. Qualified entrants will be eligible to win one of three classroom technology prize packages, each valued at more than $15,000, from leading classroom technology providers, including: Microsoft Canada, Advanced Education, Dell, EPSON, FrontRow, ISTE, NECTAR Foundation, netTrekker, Pearson, SMART Technologies and MindShare Learning.

“Canadian teachers are excellent stewards in marrying technology with education and are critical in developing instructional environments that use technology to ignite the imaginations of students,” says Shann McGrail, Director of Education, Microsoft Canada. “Microsoft Canada is committed to helping educators to prepare students for today’s and tomorrow’s workforce with education-specific tools and technologies, and this contest maps to our belief that technology is one way to deliver enriched instruction to engage students and improve learning outcomes.”

“The awesome prize packages were carefully selected and represent best-of-class technology to enable 21st century digital learning in the classroom. I’m humbled by the generosity of our sponsors,” says Robert Martellacci, president and publisher, The MindShare Learning Report.