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HIGHER EDUCATION | NEWS | 27
UCAS TRIUMPH AT CLOUD AWARDS
UCAS was a winner at the inaugural UK Cloud Awards, after successfully moving their service into a resilient cloud environment. The admissions service for the
UK’s universities and colleges won Best Public Sector Project in recognition of the extensive work to move UCAS systems into the cloud in 2013, ready for students to discover their futures on A-level results day. At its peak on 15 August 2013,
the Track system saw more than 180 logins per second; hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud service.
Jitesh Rawal
Student creates Japanese language game
TECH FIRM WINS £60 MILLION HE FRAMEWORK
European Electronique has strengthened its position within the higher education sector with a strategic framework win. The £50m turnover firm,
based in Oxford, has been awarded Lots 1 (provision of networking equipment) and 2 (small and medium projects up to £1m in value) of the North Eastern Universities Purchasing Consortium’s (NEUPC) national networking framework. The agreement will see
European Electronique supply networking services and equipment for a minimum of two years, to potentially up to 400 HE and FE members, including the University of Leeds and Durham University.
A love of Japanese culture inspired University of Derby student to design a computer game that teaches the language. Jitesh Rawal studies BSc (Hons) Computer
Games Programming, but wanted to create a Japanese role-play game (JRPG) that teaches the language but with entertaining gameplay at the forefront. Called Koe (pronounced ‘ko-eh’ and
meaning ‘voice’), it begins in a Japanese airport but quickly leads into a fantasy world of two-headed dragons and purple octopuses. Japanese culture is right at the heart of the game, meaning users can learn the language in the right context. Once all development is complete, the
game, which is heavily influenced by conventional JRPGs such as Dragon Quest, Pokemon and Final Fantasy, will be released for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. Jitesh, from Leicester, said: “I always
had the idea of a game that teaches language, but it had been done before. However, instead of being simply about learning language, I wanted to focus on gameplay. “People learn the language by using
various ‘items’ throughout the game. All items are basically Japanese words that are initially taught using
communicative language teaching techniques, basically ‘learning by doing’. “The user is given Japanese words from
various sources and those words are used as moves in batle. The game helps the user as they play and there are plenty of English prompts.” Jitesh says he is sure the game will help
people to learn the basics of the Japanese language. He said: “My dissertation on language acquisition has helped me to build my knowledge of techniques which help people learn new languages. Those techniques are built into Koe.” Now in his final year, Jitesh plans to
graduate before puting all his energy into geting Koe onto the shelves of computer games stores in PlayStation 4, Wii U and Xbox One format. He has so far raised more than £45,000
through small investments on pledge- based website Kickstarter, which will pay for an art overhaul from 3D design and games programmer Dan Tsukasa, as well as a soundtrack and voice acting from native Japanese speakers. It will also cover software licenses,
translation into other languages and a PlayStation Vita version.
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