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Hey! I'm just going through a teacher's program right now, and I've been looking for resources to use with smartboard. First of all, if you don't have a smartboard go here:
http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/

Then try out:
Algodoo (costs about 25 euros): Great physics simulator. I would say it would be useful even for university students. You can, however, adjust the difficulty level. It's good for kinematics, some optics, buoyancy, some fluid dynamics and a few other things. I started off with making a piston pump system.
http://www.algodoo.com/wiki/Home

Crayon physics: Great for intuitively exploring some physics concepts. It costs about 20 bucks. It's similar to above but it's closer to a game. There are a series of challenges that you accomplish (try to move a ball to a star, overcoming a series of obstacles. Learn some physics concepts through osmosis.
http://www.crayonphysics.com/

Celestia: Great freeware for exploring our galaxy (and neighboring galaxies). It implements astronomy knowledge into a space simulator. It allows to you to visit out solar system and beyond. As humanity discovers more, you can update the planet (i.e. with new exoplanets). This one is super cool, a little like Eve Online but IRL. You can also install Star Trek universe updates if you are a trekkie, as well as Star Wars.
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

Ok that's the coolest stuff. There are other things out there but they aren't as impressive. ScaleoftheUniverse is neat, but limited in classroom utility: http://www.scaleoftheuniverse.com/

Huh? What does that even mean?

"Draw distance" is the distance of the farthest object from the camera before it disappears, in game world units. For example, a platformer might put the leading edge of the scrolling view 384 pixels in front of the character, where 32 pixels represent 1 m. The draw distance in this case is 384 pixels or 12 m. First-person shooters need a long draw distance, but there are stylized FPS games with 2D graphics, such as Nintendo's Duck Hunt and I-Mockery's Kill the Dog from Duck Hunt. But the only way to get long draw distances with a free-roaming camera is a 3D engine.

They look more realistic

Possibly, but prerendered sprites as seen in Donkey Kong Country do a decent job of showing depth on what is ultimately a 2D plane. And stylized graphics still have their uses; for example, the character models in the movie Up are anything but realistic.

and they allow you to simulate physics more realistically.

Not all video game designs need a realistic physics simulation. Play 99 Bricks to see what would happen if, say, Tetris had more realistic physics. Besides, a physical simulation can be done in 2D: see Crayon Physics and all its clones.

Crayon Physics is a great game for playing with the basic physics properties of different types of objects in a finger-painting-simple kind of way. It's not comprehensive and it doesn't teach you the theory or equations behind what's happening, but it's great fun and encourages you to think about physics problems in different ways. Physics fun for the whole family (myself included)!

There's this game called Crayon Physics where you draw objects in order to get a ball to the end point. It sounds simple but it challenges you to overcome various physical obstacles like getting your ball uphill, or to get your ball into a little catapult, and creating a counterweight to launch it to the end point. Neat game, check it out. http://www.crayonphysics.com/

World of Goo has no DRM.

I found that that, coupled with the gameplay I had sampled on my counsin's Wii, was enough to compel me to purchase it.

Granted, the fact that it cost $5 more, direct from the publisher, to purchase for my PC than it did to purchase for the Wii, was almost enough to compel me to turn back around and steal it.

In the end, I just ended up installing it on every computer I own, and figured I got my money's worth. WoG and Crayon Phyisics are the only games I've bought in recent memory that charged a fair price, and the only ones that didn't bullshit me with DRM.

Also, if DRM-Free and awesome are your criteria for purchasing games, I suggest you look into Crayon Physics Deluxe.

Thanks for the suggestion; it's on my radar already; I saw the videos on their website and it looks *awesome* :-) Looks like a perfect thing for me, as well as for my son and daughter (who also enjoy WoGoo). It looks like it's most enjoyable with a graphics tablet though, so that might become an additional cost.

This trend of DRM-Free gaming is actually leading to me spending more money on games :P

Ditto :-)

I gave my money to 2D Boy for World of Goo even though everyone I know was using it pirated.

I almost turned around and pirated the game because I was so pissed off at the fact that their direct sale on their website was $5 more than the console version. The NFO I read before downloading the release however, warned that anyone would be a bit of an asshole for pirating a DRM-free, cheap game from an indie developer, I went back to 2D boy's site.

I'm actually very happy with the purchase, because I am able to take the installer and run it on all the machines I use without having to worry about activations and so on.

Also, if DRM-Free and awesome are your criteria for purchasing games, I suggest you look into Crayon Physics Deluxe. This trend of DRM-Free gaming is actually leading to me spending more money on games :P

If anything, it shows that all there's all kinds of ways to market your game and if it is enjoyable, people will pay for it.

Now, looking at this year's possibly popular indie games, I think Crayon Physics Deluxe will be a hit, and I hope Fez (video here), which I haven't heard of since February 08 will post some news, and finally there's Braid again, which is coming on the PC!

Additionally, if you include game mods as indie development, I'm looking forward to Neotokyo, a total conversion mod for HL2 that has its inspiration in Ghost in the Shell, and Black Mesa Source, another total conversion for HL2 which is the original Half-Life ported onto the Source engine.

Sorry, but no matter how much the Sony fanboi crowd whines, LittleBigPlanet is still crap.

You don't get praise and scores like that from tech demos.

Remember Black & White? How about Spore? Tech demos get praised all the time.

And no, the physics is quite good.

Have you ever played the game? The physics are horrible.

First off, nothing bounces. Even Super Mario Bros. was able to get things to bounce in its physics engine (namely Starman), and it doesn't really HAVE a physics engine!

Then it ignores Newton's third law. The only force things exert on each other are gravity. Rockets don't thrust things out of the way, and jumping doesn't send things down.

Really, the physics engine in LittleBigPlanet is as complicated as the physics engine in Crayon Physics. No, really, it is. If you watch the demo on that website, it looks almost exactly like LittleBigPlanet's physics.

Crayon Physics was written in five days by an independent developer. Gives you an idea just how "amazing" LittleBigPlanet's physics engine really is, huh?

Let's give you full credit and state that the PS3 version of Rock Band is a "port". Heaven forfend! What problems, exactly and specifically, does this lead to?

Really? You can't figure this out on your own? Ports always get content and bug fixes after the main version. They generally don't work quite as well as they did on their native platform. In Rock Band's case, you lose out on basically all the online stuff that you get through Live on the Xbox 360 since the PS3 doesn't have an online service.

but if you have a PS3, why not?

Well then go ahead, if you've already thrown your money down a hole, it makes sense to use the machine you already got. But if you're trying to decide on a PS3 versus an Xbox 360, the decision is a no-brainer.