Happy App Friday
This week, Dr. Seuss’s ABC app goes augmented reality, and BrainPOP keeps going strong with a huge library of educational animated content. Plus, a new report on the the state and potential of educational apps and video.
Garry Froehlich
Jellybean Tunes
Dr. Seuss’s ABC
by Dr. Seuss Enterprises
Dr. Seuss’s ABC is a new app that puts an augmented-reality spin on Dr. Seuss’s famous ABC book. Kids can point their phone or tablet camera at a flat surface and watch the book open up in front of them. For each page, kids trace both the capital and lower case letter, hear the narrator read out the page and watch the animated characters come to life in front of them. Kids can jump to any letter in the book, or access a playground mode where they can place characters around them as they wish. It’s quite well done, although tracing letters while holding a device could get a little awkward.
BrainPOP Featured Movie
by BrainPOP
BrainPOP Featured Movie offers short cartoons on a wide variety of educational topics from history, science, math, socials, arts and technology (they claim over 850 topics). The topics, such as a feature on Ada Lovelace, DNA, or even ethics, are aimed at older kids, which is refreshing in a world of preschool apps. Each animated feature comes with a quiz to test your comprehension and reinforce key ideas. There is a free movie offered each day, with subscription options to be able to see the entire library of content on demand.
Revisiting the Potential Uses of Media in Children’s Education
“For Revisiting the Potential Uses of Media for Children’s Education, journalist Chris Berdik interviewed more than 20 experts from a range of fields, including developmental psychologists, educators, media historians, app developers, as well as education nonprofit leaders and funders, to understand some of the lessons that can be learned from the successes and failures of children’s educational media over the past 50 years.”
Some good reading material about what children’s media can and should do to promote learning.
Revisiting the Potential Uses of Media in Children’s Education
