eArticle Review: iLearn II: An Analysis of the Education Category of Apple's App Store

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop has recently published iLearn II: An Analysis of the Education Category of Apple's App Store, which is an in depth research study that examined 200 of the top selling education Apps with the intention of tracking trends in the industry and setting best practices for developers. Take a look at some of their findings:

KEY FINDINGS & IMPLICATIONS

Apps are an important and growing medium for providing educational content to children, both in terms of their availability and popularity.
• Over 80% of the top selling paid apps in the Education category of the iTunes Store target children.
• In 2009, almost half (47%) of the top selling apps targeted preschool or elementary aged children. That number has increased to almost three quarters (72%).
• The percentage of apps for children has risen in every age category, accompanied by a decrease in apps for adults.

Early learning apps for toddler/preschool are particularly prominent. Developers should consider potential saturation of this market.
• Apps for toddlers/preschoolers are the most popular age category (58%), and experienced the greatest growth (23%).
• General early learning is the most popular subject (47%), and there are significantly more general early learning apps than the second most popular subject (math, 13%).

The first iLearn report was published in 2009.

App Review Blog: A Matter of App

Here's another blog that reviews children's apps. This one is run by Dr. Cynthia Chiong, who is a educational media researcher with Digital Kids.  This blog reviews apps for kids aged 3-8 and uses a rating system which takes into account the following factors: Developmental Appropriateness, Balance, Sustainability and Parental Involvement.  An explanation for her rating system can be found here.

App Review: Baby Sign ASL

Baby Sign ASL, Version 1.05

By iDev2.com

$4.99 on iTunes

Baby sign language is very popular right now, and I want to jump on that bandwagon.  My daughter Jordan is five months old, so I plan to start teaching her some basic sign language.  I have a book and a DVD, but do I have time to deal with that?  No.  This Baby Sign ASL app is perfect.  There are more than enough words here (don’t cheap out and get a free version- it is a waste of time).  Each word is demonstrated through a clear video.  You can add your favorites to a list and quiz yourself.  You can search alphabetically or by categories.  I spent about five minutes with the app today, and I have a few signs in mind (mommy, daddy, milk, and bath) that I plan to show Jordan tonight.  While I was watching the videos, I couldn’t help thinking of Robert DeNiro’s character teaching his grandson signs in “Meet the Fockers”.

Review by Leslie McNabb

eArticle Review: For Reading and Learning, Kids Prefer E-Books to Print Books

In a study of 24 families with children ranging from three to six years old, researchers from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center found that children prefer reading an e-book to a print book. Comprehension was the same with both, with the exception of enhanced e-books. Enhanced e-books with games and other interactive elements hindered comprehension of the story. The Joan Ganz Cooney Center plans larger studies on the issue. The article continues with a discussion of the children’s e-book and app market. Concerns are raised about a possible digital divide with disadvantaged children not having access to e-books. In conclusion, experts and publishers agree that getting a child interested in reading is the important thing, not the format of the book.

Posted by Leslie McNabb

App Review: Drawing Pad

We first encountered Drawing Pad (Amazon) at the Apple store.  We then went home and installed it on both the Kindle Fire and Galaxy Tab because it was such a hit with the little dude.

You can use digital crayons, pencil crayons, markers, stamps, coloured paper and stickers. The sticker function is by FAR the most awesome. There are stickers of fish, vehicles, insects, faces, flowers, birds and animals, all of which can be shrunk or enlarged and moved around until you "stamp" it to make it stick permanently. The drawer that holds all the tools opens and closes, and Little J can now navigate his way through the drawer to change colours or tools, as well as scrap his piece of artwork and start over again.

Drawing Pad (iTunes) is an awesome app for learning fine motor movement, playing with paint without making a mess, and making the train go choo choo down the track.  Totally worth the $1.99 and good for kids from 2 up.

eBook Review: Barnyard Dance

Stomp your feet and clap your hands! Everybody ready for a Barnyard Dance!

When Sandra Boynton tells us to stomp and clap, we say HOW LOUD?  We took this eBook for a swing around the pigpen on our brand spanking new Galaxy Nexus.  We chose the "The big guy reads it" option, which is much more fun than the "I want to read it myself" option because it's sung the whole way through.  If you don't do your pauses right it can feel awkward. I find this with a lot of Sandra Boynton's work, but it's sacrilegious to say such things in public so I keep my big trap shut most of the time.  Trust me- it's better to have some lightly animated cow read it to you so it's done right.

Extras included dancing bovines, ungulates and fowl (bowing, spinning, bouncing, walking in a line), interactive foliage, tilt-sensor egg shells and animal sounds galore.  I found the pages a little hard to turn, especially for little fingers.  You have to be very precise with your swiping, and it's too easy to hit the "do it again" button instead.  At the end of the book there is a deck of cards with covers from other Boynton books, which I assumed would take me to the Market so I could purchase them too, but that was not the case.  Take my money, darnit!

You can see a trailer of this eBook here.

eBook Review: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

I love free stuff.  And this eBook was free from the Amazon App Store.  This eBook is best enjoyed with a big mug full of rum-spiked eggnog.  Or something a little stronger.

There are 3 options for this one: Auto Play, Read to Me and Read it Myself.  I did the Read to Me option, and I managed to be only slightly heebie-jeebied by the talking snowman.

You can click on the illustrations once creepy snowman dude stops narrating and you are rewarded with the spoken and written identification of whatever object you tapped.  Not enough of the objects are labeled, however.  I would have gotten a kick out of hearing the snowman say "Reindeer Butt."

This nostalgic tale of stymied conformity contains vocabulary like "Red Schnoz" and a suspiciously gay-looking elf named Hermey who hates making toys and wants to be a dentist.  Rudolph and Hermey run away from home and encounter a prospector named Yukon Cornelius; the Abominable Snow Monster; and King Moonracer (the flying lion who rules the land of the misfit toys).  The plot is nutty, the characters fickle and there is a terrible ripping sound effect as Hermey the gay dentist elf extracts the Abominable Snow Monster's teeth (after he dropped a huge chunk of ice on its head).

What on earth were they on when they made this?   I LOVE it!!!  But I will NOT be reading it with my progeny until he's old enough to discuss concepts like narrative structure.  Or the lack thereof.

 (I couldn't make this stuff up, it's too good!)

Free Rudolph App Today!

Amazon App store offering Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for FREE today!!!

Like them on facebook and they will tell you what their free App of the day is.

eBook Review: A Charlie Brown Christmas

It's Christmas Eve, y'all!  I took the plunge and shelled out some actual dough to buy A Charlie Brown Christmas.  I am glad I did.  For my hard-earned money I got to witness my favourite melancholy youngster bemoaning his lack of Christmas cheer, then finding it again by being whacked on the head with a little religion (yeah, it's a little heavy handed, but I'm trying not to be all Scrooge McDuck about it).

Extras included a game of collecting Christmas ornaments throughout the book, snowflakes that go POP and crystalize, and pop-up style characters that do funny things like sigh or wiggle when you tap them.  There is also finger painting, piano playing, angry-birds style snowball throwing and Lucy saying "Look Charlie, Let's face it. We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket!"

I had fun clicking on words to make the bored sounding computer voice make sentences that made no sense, and Little J really got the hang of turning pages.

Spring for this App, snuggle up with your kid and be jolly, eBook style.

Happy Whatever Holiday You Celebrate When It Gets Cold, everyone!

iTunes
Android 

ALSC Blog Literacy App Review

Kiera Parrott, the librarian who told us about the Darien Library's circulating Early Literacy iPad kits has now posted something else on the ALSC blog: Five Great Apps for Under-Fives.  These apps are not free, but she includes some favorites like Peter Rabbit and Moo, Baa, La La La.  Take a look and load up your iPad with some good electronic early literacy content.  Then come over to my place and let me play with the iPad.

Touch and Go eBook Reviews

School Library Journal provides all sorts of reviews for all sorts of good stuff, but what's really exciting is their Touch and Go blog, which reviews apps and eBooks for kids and teens.   I usually look at the Preschool-Grade 4 posts, and there are quite a few holiday titles reviewed on there at the moment.  Often the products reviewed are not available for free, but they're not prohibitively expensive.  I'm even tempted to buy A Charlie Brown Christmas for the Galaxy Tab, even for $6.99.  One pet peeve about this blog is that they don't have links to the marketplace for the items, so you have to do all that pesky copying, pasting and searching to take a gander at what they're talking about.

App Review: Fruit Book

Fruit Book is a free, simple app that kept Little J interested for beyond what I would have expected, which was wonderful because we endured airplane travel today. You have 2 options: Learn or Quiz.  On Learn mode, you see a picture of a type of fruit (barberries, cacao, cherimoya and olives included) and the name of the fruit both written and spoken.  You go through the fruits alphabetically, navigating with arrows or swiping.  That in itself was enough to keep us going for awhile: at least as long as it took for the flight attendants to go from peanuts to beverages.    In Quiz mode, you are given 4 pictures of fruit and the pleasant but disembodied voice says the name of one.  If you tap on the correct fruit, you are rewarded with canned applause and a green check mark.  If you tap less correct fruit, there is a scary buzzer noise and a big red X.  Little J declined to play the quiz game after getting a few fruits incorrect.  Good fun and worth the price.