the ikids blog » app review

App Review: Word World

digitalvictor — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:51:22 +0000

About a year and a half ago, I stumbled onto Word World, a cartoon produced by PBS Kids. I was instantly drawn in as much as my kids, with the cartoon’s engaging visuals and quirky characters. And the best part?

The show is educational!!! The animals and objects are physically made of their letters (see image of Pig), and every episode focuses on one mission:”Let’s build a word!”

Admitting my bias before I review the app, I can honestly say Word World is one of the best kids shows I’ve ever seen. Word World has a lot of power to shape the edutainment app-sphere.

Like the show, the app (Build a word) is focused on building words, which are transformed into objects with a simple pinch of the captured letters. The app concept is perfectly consistent with the mission of each episode: find the right letters to build the word at hand. The fun part is trying to grab the letters as they bounce around the screen!

At first, my little ones struggled with the app’s functionality. It was difficult for them to grab the letters, and they occasionally lost the letters while dragging them into the slots. Their clunky little fingers quickly got better, however, and the challenge now is keeping my kids entertained by the relatively small number of words to spell.

The Word World app makes kids forget they’re learning to read, and at a 99¢ pricetag, it is more than a steal.

App Review: Kid Book

digitalvictor — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:40:46 +0000

Kid Book is a simple, well illustrated app with audio to match. It has some promise and some room for enhancements.

When you dive into the app you are shown an animal inside a colored shape. Each time you tap the phone you get a new audio piece (first the animal sound, then the animal name, then the shape and finally the color of the shape…lather rinse repeat). To advance you simply click the left or right arrow at the bottom of the screen, and you get a new set of items.

This app, like many others does most of the basics well but fails to give kids a reason to keep playing. There is certainly a choose-your-adventure argument to be made for letting kids float through an app. Based on my kids use of the apps, however, it is also really important to give kids something to look forward to or they will neither play for long nor return to the app.

Monkey Preschool Lunchbox is just one of several apps that has figured this trick out (review here). After a few rounds of the game, kids get to choose a sticker. Other apps I’ve seen use scoring or unlock features as kids successfully navigate through them, giving kids a sense of accomplishment and motivation to go forward.

Overall, the foundation laid for Kid Book is very strong, and I believe with some rethinking around the purpose of the app, it could be tweaked to become a fan (and maybe even Apple) favorite! Keep your eye on Stolen Lunch for more apps.

App Review: ABC Animals

digitalvictor — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:41:42 +0000

ABC Animals has a familiar tale: turn learning the ABC’s into a flash card experience that is ripe with illustrations and audio to match.

And yet the makers of the app, Critical Matter Inc, have thrown their own twist on the story. Behind each card they have placed instructions for kids to draw letters. As kids follow the helpful instructions and trace the letters, their little fingers are greeted with pink ink (digital of course) that they can splatter across the canvas.

The draw-the-letters feature of the app is fun and unique, but is also the source of my one complaint. The app opens immediately on the flash cards, and does not offer instructions on how to get to and from the drawing feature.

When I first tried the app I accidentally found my way to the back of a card, began to draw and then stumbled back to the front of the card. It took a minute to realize a double tap flipped the cards back and forth. Sounds like a silly complaint but my near 3 year-old did not find it any more intuitive.

Zander did try out the app a bit and liked the illustrations, the audio and the most of all the drawing. In short, my little guy liked the app. I believe it is an update or two away from showing its full potential…A pretty app, and a unique app. Kudos to Critical Matter Inc.

App Review: Whizzit 123

digitalvictor — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:00:12 +0000

Whizzit 123 is a pretty solid app. It is designed to give children ages 2-5 a fun learning environment to tackle numbers and objects. Using audio cues kids are given a task, such as counting spirals. As each item is clicked a starry animation appears, along with a narrator voice counting each item.

After being selected, the item remains in perpetual motion or is highlighted to show it is no longer clickable. After all items are clicked a child’s voice proclaims,”Yayyyyyy!” and the narrator repeats the number counted and name of the object.

It’s a simple equation with fun animations, modest graphics and good audio cues. Overall I would consider this app, developed by Fair Lady Media, to be in the ‘B’ range, making it worth the modest $.99 pricetag. Kudos to Fair Lady Media.

App Review: First Words: Animals

digitalvictor — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:00:53 +0000

Oops they did it again! The app masterminds at Learning Touch have nailed yet another First Words app, this time for Animals. My two and a half year old, who is more interested in toy trains than iPhone apps, really enjoyed this one (in addition to the First Words: Vehicles app with a train in it!).

The concept for this one is the same as the others: let kids spell words by dragging letters onto their respective spots in a word. After your child successfully spells a word, the letters are repeated in order, the word is spoken and the featured object animates with sound.

As my son dragged letters to their appropriate boxes, the narrator spoke them and he repeated them. The correlation between playing the app and learning letters and words is obvious. My little guy doesn’t even notice the repetitive nature of learning the letters because he is more focused on the fun of dragging the letters, and getting the featured lion, tiger or bear to animate.

High marks all-around for First Words: Animals. Highly recommended.

App Review: Catch and Count

digitalvictor — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:53:11 +0000

Catch and Count is an app I downloaded months ago because, truth be told, I saw it in the top free apps for education. Oftentimes I am lured in by cutesy icons but in this case I grabbed one that was popular…

This app is a bit quirky and odd. The idea is to catch eggs, dropped from a stork-like bird, in a pickup truck that you drag left and right. As you catch the eggs the number of eggs caught is spoken in your preferred language.

The best part about Catch and Count is the ability to choose multiple languages or even record your own audio for the numbers. It’s a pretty clever tactic to engage a kid by leveraging the parent’s (or child’s) voice.

Aside from this technical feat, this app didn’t really grab me or my 15 month-old. While it was easy for my little guy to drive the truck, his attention was gone pretty quickly. Perhaps I will try out another Sai Services app, to be fair.

App Review: First Words: Vehicles

digitalvictor — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:00:57 +0000

First Words: Vehicles is an all-around great app! This is a genuine learning tool for kids that are alphabet-functional, or just enjoy fun images and piecing together puzzles.

Once you fire up the app, you see a cartoon drawing of a vehicle, along with the vehicle name spelled out in empty squares. Below the empty squares are letters, waiting to be placed. It’s almost like Scrabble, without the irritating friend that majored in dictionaries.

Fun? Check. Cartoon images my kids and I like to look at? Check. Easy functionality? Check. Ability to up the ante and make it more difficult? When you remove the hinting, the empty boxes no longer show the letters to be placed, which requires your child to be able to spell the words…check!

When I saw the $1.99 pricetag on this app, I definitely upped my expectations, and First Words: Vehicles delivered the goods.

Easily worthy of the pricetag and a great way to teach kids their vehicles!

I normally write more but in this case the app speaks…err spells for itself. Kudos to Learning Touch for building it!