Interactive Storybook Apps

            My favorite apps for the kids are interactive storybooks. I am a big fan of children’s literature, in general, and so I find it interesting to see how quality literature gets translated to ebook form. And basically I’ve found that you get what you pay for: the free books (for example, from StoryChimes or TabTale) are filled with ads, poor animation, and sometimes even grammatical errors. The quality books, from publishers like Oceanhouse Media, Calloway Digital Arts, and Nosy Crow, tend to cost five or six dollars each.

            Even amongst the “good” ebooks, there is a huge range in quality in terms of story, animation, narration, interaction with the characters, musical effects, and educational qualities (like text highlighting or built-in dictionaries). Most interesting to us are the apps that make good use of the medium and allow the kids to interact, instead of just translating the printed book to a computer screen and adding narration. Here are a few that appeal to my kids:

For the smallest of the smalls:

Elmo’s Big Birthday Bash! From Random House Children’s Books
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/elmos-big-birthday-bash!-sesame/id510754841?mt=8 

            Elmo’s Big Birthday Bash! is a story about Elmo planning and then enjoying his birthday party. My two-year-old adores the combination of Elmo, birthdays, and the iPad. The app is narrated by a familiar voice—Bob, from Sesame Street. Bob tells the app user when and where to swipe, so no reading is needed to begin the story.  That means that not only does this app combine all of her favorite things, my toddler can even use it relatively independently. It’s toddler heaven!

            Of course, I use the word “story” loosely here. The narrative is not much. Elmo’s mom suggests they have a birthday party, Elmo draws and delivers invitations, Elmo’s friends open the invitations, everyone brainstorms presents for Elmo, etc. The whole familiar cast of characters is here, and there are a few hotspots on each page (a party hat that pops up; a book you can open and close; characters who giggle). Happily for the toddler attention span, the story is broken into three parts, with a game-like activity in between each section of the book. In the first game, the app user is asked to help Elmo mail his party invitations by matching the first letter of the person’s name to the letter on the mailbox, and then dragging the invitation into that box. Although my two-year-old has trouble with the letter ID, and routinely asks her older sister or me for help, I was pleasantly surprised to see both how interested she was in this activity and how persistent in learning the click and drag motion. The other two games are similar, requiring the matching of letter sounds or rhyming.

            In addition to the pre-reading skills practiced in the games, the app has other features I appreciate from an educator’s point of view. For example, the text appears in large, clear print at the bottom of every screen. Each word is highlighted as Bob reads. If the app user clicks on an individual word from the text after the narration has finished, it pops up on a separate line and is re-read.

            In conclusion, while this app is a bit of a bore for adults, it is fascinating to the younger set. It is also well-designed and incorporates letter and sound practice.

For older children:

Bats! Furry Fliers of the Night by Mary Kay Carson From Story Worldwide
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bats!-furry-fliers-night/id494297887?mt=8
 

            The designers of this app call it a “bapp” (a book-app). In their FAQ, they say they felt the need to create something new–rather than a book that hardly used the tablet technology at all, or films/animations that seem more like playing a game or watching TV. The idea behind their bapp is to make reading deeper and richer by making you feel as though you are in the forest. They do this through 3D software, built in sound effects, and utilizing the iPad’s built in gyroscope to let you tilt the machine back and forth to get a bat’s-eye-view while flying overhead. The overall effect is very cool.

            My five-year-old suddenly cannot get enough non-fiction, particularly about animals. And I have to confess, I love when she conversationally drops five dollar words like “venomous” and “nocturnal.” So this app is one of my favorites. There are seven chapters, with a hyper-linked table of contents, on all things bat: habitat, echolocation, types of bats, threats to the species, etc. Each chapter includes beautiful close-up photography, as well as diagrams and text. Instead of traditional “hotspots,” the interaction is woven into the app, in the form of a wheel the app user spins to get information on each new kind of bat, or swiping up to follow the bats into the sky, tapping to zoom in, etc. Navigation of the app is surprisingly intuitive and there are arrows to guide. One quibble I have is that the arrows appear before the narration finishes, making it all too easy to accidentally move on before hearing the complete text. Of course, it’s easy enough to start the chapter over, if you miss something. Speaking of which, although they are non-traditional (no page numbers, for example), my pre-reader couldn’t help but learn about non-fiction text features from the highlighting of the excellent table of contents, diagrams, and text boxes.

            Finally, one thing that surprised me about this app is the price—it’s only $2.99. I would have paid much more for it.

Introduction

           What does “screen time” mean to you? Are you picturing a kid zoning out? Slack-jawed and stupefied in front of the TV or video game console? The whole thing has gotten a bad rap thanks to the American Association of Pediatrics’ ban on television for the under two-year-olds and limit of 1-2 hours per day for older children. I mean, let’s be honest, how many of us really find that realistic?

          The real culprit is a lack of interaction. What those pediatricians want—what we all should want—is for someone to talk with those kids. Twenty years ago, Hart and Risley’s research showed us how very important it is that infants hear thousands of conversational words from their caregivers every hour (to read more about Hart and Risley’s groundbreaking research, as well as current applications of that research, start here: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/). Without that conversational interaction, a three-year-old has heard 30,000 fewer words than his peers. This develops into a lower IQ and lower school achievement. By the time kids start kindergarten, the disparity in vocabulary and pre-reading skills is so large, even fantastic schools and teachers have a hard time making up the difference.

          But back to “screen time.” I’ve been trying to decide lately if the term has any meaning whatsoever as it relates to my preschoolers. There is such a wide variety of activities that they engage in that involves a screen… And some of it does involve zoning out. But some of it is creative and engaging, and yes, interactive.

          Of course kids need to go outside and get dirty and experience life. But kids of this generation are also, as Marc Prensky put it, digitial natives, who were born with iOS devices in their hands. Rather than try to enforce a super-restrictive rule like no screen time during the week, I decided to do some research for myself and guide them toward the apps I think worth their time.  This blog will be a collection of short reviews/thoughts about the apps that are on our Apple devices. I plan to write about which ones my kids prefer, as well as my thoughts--as both a parent and an educator--on what the kids might be learning. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right?!