the ikids blog » music

App Review: Bebot

digitalchristopherrobin — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:56:04 +0000

Mozart As A Child

Mozart wrote his first symphony in 1764 at the age of just eight years old. This, of course, was preceded by an early childhood that consisted of studying the violin and playing concerts for European nobility. Had he been born but 250 years later, my guess is that his daily violin practice would have been balanced by some time spent with the iPhone app Bebot, and that his father would have been pushing him to perform on YouTube rather than just for the nobles.

I’m also willing to venture that someday very soon a latter day musical wunderkid will create breathtakingly fresh iPhone-powered music that we will all treasure. Experimentation has already begun, as evidenced by The Mentalist’s cover of MGMT’s song “Kids”. This video, which was first released earlier this year, is worth taking a look at as an example of some of the musical creation that the iPhone is enabling:

It may be tempting to dismiss something like this as a PR stunt — which it surely was — but that would be to miss the greater possibilities that a performance like this demonstrates. Put simply, the iPhone has not only enabled us to carry around the tools of an entire orchestra in our pocket, but it has facilitated the creation of completely new ways of musical expression. It is here where Bebot succeeds.

The app’s interface is simple — you’re presented with a robot butler character that you can make “sing” in different ways depending upon where you touch on the screen.

Bebot - Robot Synth

The simplicity of Bebot’s interface should not be confused with a lack of possibility. Within the settings sections of the app, you can assign and customize various synthesized voices and effects. You can change the scale, make different notes available, and allow loop creation. Truly the possibilities are limited only by your imagination. Obviously some of the younger kids may need help customizing the app, but even the littlest ones will be able to explore the soundscapes this app can create simply by touching and dragging their fingers across the screen.

Words always fail me a bit when attempting to describe music, which makes it hard to discuss some of the sonic possibilities that Bebot brings alive. The magic of this app is definitely best experienced first-hand — if you’re interested in seeing what your child can create with a new tool like this, you can get Bebot here. Highly recommended.

Top 20 Kids iPhone Apps

digitalchristopherrobin — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:15:01 +0000

It’s easy to love the App Store, but I do have one frustration – it lumps in kids learning apps with all educational apps, including those aimed at goals such as teaching Korean to businessmen and logic to prospective lawyers. In my mind, this makes it harder for developers to share their kid-specific content, and harder for parents to find quality apps. Someday, we hope, Apple will find a way to display kids educational apps in their own category within the app store. Until then, we’ll keep you updated on great options when looking for learning apps just for the kids.

Top Kids iPhone Apps in the App Store

Wheels On Bus

1. Wheels On The Bus
Price: $0.99
Description: Created by parents, Wheels on the Bus is a fun, interactive musical book, based on the popular children’s song. Come aboard the bus to spin the wheels, open and close the doors, swish the wipers, pop some bubbles, make a dog bark, and much more!
Read a Review
Get It From The Store

Cute Math

2. Cute Math
Price: $1.99
Description: Your little one can count baby penguins, pick the right amount of apples to put in a basket, move some happy birds around to solve addition problems, and drop apples off a tree to solve subtraction problems.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

Toddler Flashcards

3. Toddler Flashcards
Price: $0.99
Description: Toddler Flashcards has cards to teach children the names of animals, foods, things – as well as advanced stuff like the alphabet or numbers. Over 200 images, text in English, French and Spanish.
Review Coming Soon
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Voice Toddler Cards

4. Voice Toddler Cards
Price: $0.99
Description: A collection of talking flashcards. Cards speak in English and Spanish. You can also add your own voice to any flashcard.
Review Coming Soon
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Preschool Adventure

5. Preschool Adventure
Price: $0.99
Description: Contains simple activities parents can do with their toddlers: ocean colors, space shapes, monkey body, farm sounds, animal matching, dot-to-to numbers.
Review Coming Soon
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Word Magic

6. Word Magic
Price: $0.99
Description: A picture is shown and and kids select the missing letter for the word shown in the picture.
Review Coming Soon
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Five Little Monkeys

7. Five Little Monkeys
Price: $0.99
Description: Little Monkeys jump on the bed to music — kids can build counting and math skills by taking the monkeys on and off the bed. Interactive objects teach concepts like on/off, open/close and more.
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ShapeBuilder

8. Shapebuilder
Price: $0.99
Description: Shape Builder educates & entertains your little one with easy to move shapes that snap into place on top of silhouette puzzles. Real images are revealed when the puzzle is complete.
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Letter Tracer

9. Letter Tracer
Price: $0.99
Description: LetterTracer is an educational tool that helps preschoolers and other pre-reading children trace and paint letters and number shapes. The exposure to letters and numbers helps prepare children for reading and writing.
Review Coming Soon
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Pick A Letter

10. Teach Me Toddler
Editor’s Choice
Price: $0.99
Description: Teach Me Toddler helps toddlers learn letter names, letter phonics, numbers, shapes and colors.
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Suzy Dress Up

11. Suzy Dress Up
Price: $0.99
Description:Create and customize Suzy’s wardrobe and accessories with options including: hat, shoes, jewelry, purses, pets, glasses, hairstyle, eyes, mouth, skin color, wings, costumers and more.
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PopMath Basic Math

12. PopMath Basic Math
Price: $0.99
Description: Pairs of bubbles float on the screen and your goal is to pop each pair. For example, if one bubble says “7″ and another says “3+4″ simply touch one bubble, and then the other to pop them both.
Review Coming Soon
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Animal Memory Match

13. Animal Memory Match
Price: $0.99
Description: Animal Memory Match is a fun filled memory match game for kids of all ages. Improve/test your children’s memory skills by matching pairs of cute and friendly animals.
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Best of Eye Spy

14. Best of I Spy
Price: $0.99
Description: A collection of children’s game and puzzles. Each puzzle consists of a picture with hidden objects. The challenge is to find the hidden objects within each puzzle.
Review Coming Soon
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Flash for Kids

15. Flash 4 Kids
Price: $0.99
Description: A collection of children’s game and puzzles. Each puzzle consists of a picture with hidden objects. The challenge is to find the hidden objects within each puzzle.
Review Coming Soon
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Letters A to Z

16. Letters A to Z True Learning
Price: $0.99
Description: Letters A to Z is a captivating set of animated flashcards designed to help toddlers learn the letters of the English alphabet in a fun and engaging way.
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Coloring Book

17. Coloring Book
Price: $0.99
Description: An outline of a picture is displayed, and then you simply touch the appropriate color and paint in the picture with your fingertips.
Review Coming Soon
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abc PocketPhonics

18. abc PocketPhonics
Price: $0.99
Description: PocketPhonics teaches the letter sounds for all the letters in the alphabet. It also visually demonstrates how to write each letter.
Review Coming Soon
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Math Flash Cards

19. Math Flash Cards
Price: $0.99
Description: Math Flash Cards is a fun to use math drill application that looks just like paper flash cards.
Review Coming Soon
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Lady Bug Tree

20. Ladybug Tree
Price: $0.99
Description: A simple game: tap on a ladybug in the tree and drag it into the jar. Helps with fine motor skills, counting and number recognition.
Review Coming Soon
Get It From The Store

This list is based on iTunes App Store data as of early July ’09. We agree with a lot of the titles on this list – many of these are truly great iPhone apps for kids — but we’re not completely convinced these are truly the best of the best. The nature of the app store makes it easy for some high-quality titles to slip through the cracks and hard for them to ever get rediscovered. On that note – are your kids using any great apps that you love that you don’t see on this list?

Let us know — we’ll be putting together a few other Top 20 lists in the coming weeks, but next time not based on sales.

Do share your favorites.

[Editor's Note: Descriptions listed in this article are adapted from the info provided by developers on iTunes. Our take on the apps can be found in the relevant reviews -- linked from above as available]

APP REVIEW: Ella the Elephant

digitalchristopherrobin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:26:48 +0000

Let me start with this: Ella The Elephant has beautiful illustrations. The app is a kids book that centers around a lovable elephant and her animal friends.

Ella the Elephant

Let me also say this — Ella can sing. And scat. And so can her friends. As someone with a passion for music, it’s hard not to like an app that features some great jazz. Ella’s spirit throughout the story is also easy to admire: she rallies her buddies together to make some great music. Who can argue with that?

Ella and the band

Still, I do have some concerns about this app. First off, being forced to watch a couple of ads every time the app starts up just doesn’t sit well with me. I understand that this is common practice on many kids DVDs — but it’s not how I hope educational content will evolve as it transitions on to a mobile device. I also understand — as an app developer — the desire to recover the costs invested in producing content like this. It’s not easy, it’s not cheap, and it’s natural to want to cross-promote other products. But there’s a way to do that elegantly and this just feels too “hard sell” to me.

My other primary concern with this app is that it under-utilizes the potential of the iPhone platform. Interactivity is an unbelievably powerful way to engage kids in the learning process. Unfortunately, this app doesn’t take advantage of that opportunity — essentially it is a video packaged up as an app. Again — it is beautifully illustrated with great music — but in my mind, it’s a video – not an app. Which would be reasonable if I were searching for kids vids on YouTube, but this experience costs $2.99 in the app store. At that price point, I expect more.

Perhaps that is harsh — my daughter does like Ella. But she also likes it when we search for Cookie Monster on YouTube – and that’s free.

Bottom line? Try the lite version of the app first and see if this your sort of thing. You can get it free here.

NEW!! NEW!! NEW!!

digitalchristopherrobin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:24:55 +0000

The tale of a kid asking their parent for a trinket is an age-old story, but lately I’ve found myself living the digital version of it — my daughter Emma is two, and she has recently taken to grabbing my iPhone, navigating to the app store and handing it to me with an expectant declaration of “NEW!”

I cringe less when she asks for a new app than when she wants a glass of Coke, a bit of chocolate or some other indulgence. Many of the apps help her learn, challenge her, and occupy her. A new one is much cheaper than a trip to Toys R Us or Target. And as a parent desperate for a moment of sanity, the apps are a godsend for me. They are always around, whether you’re at the doctor’s office, in the car, or at home.

Some of them she loves, some of them bore her quickly, and some are just too demanding for a two year-old. But by and large they are an entertaining and educational part of her rhythm.

As for me, it’s fascinating to watch her shape her concepts about how to interface with a machine and what you can do with one. It’s a computer – wait – it’s a phone – wait – it’s a camera, it’s a stereo, it’s a map – and on it goes… When I was a kid, music came on vinyl, stories happened in books, and code lived inside of my Commodore-64. She has more flexible ideas about where content comes from and how you can play with it.

I do believe that acquiring this digital fluency early will prepare her for the world she will live in, and yet still will admit to the occasional concern regarding the amount of screen time she gets at such a young age.

But my bottom line is that as long as she’s learning, having fun and it’s part of a balanced life, then it’s a good thing.

Check it….

And if you happen to be looking for a new app, you can get the one Emma is playing with here..

App Review: Five Little Monkeys

digitalchristopherrobin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:06:55 +0000

Anyone with toddlers knows that daily life is a lot like having monkeys crawling all over you. Five Little Monkeys is an entertaining kids app that captures this essential truth and turns it into sing-a-long fun for the kids.

Jumping On The Bed

The app opens by allowing you to select your preferred music type — country, rock or pop. Having selected your theme song style, the app transitions to a scene like the above — monkeys jumping all over the bed. You can then touch the monkeys and get treated to an animation of them falling off the bed and bumping their head. Following the lead of the song that is the app’s inspiration, Mama then calls the Doctor only to be informed that the monkeys should no longer be allowed to jump on the bed. While the song plays, the words animate across the screen in a familiar see-and-say fashion.

I was a bit skeptical of this app when I first saw it — but my daughter had a different opinion. Perhaps it’s because she’s a huge Curious George fan or maybe it’s because she just loves music, but in any case this app is one of her favorites. My take remains that this app is primarily a fun diversion — but I suppose I can’t rule out that she’s learning words by singing along.

Bottom line — if you’re looking for a strong educational focus you can probably find better options. But if you’re trying to find a highly entertaining musical diversion for your toddler – then Five Little Monkeys is a great choice. You can get it here.

App Review: Wheels On The Bus

digitalchristopherrobin — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:56:49 +0000

Wheels On The Bus deserves notice if only because it is the most popular app within the education category. There’s a reason for its success too – it’s a highly engaging, fun experience that puts kids inside of an immersive environment that they can explore. Essentially an iPhone version of an old-school pop-up book, the app is centered around the children’s song that is also its namesake. The app is broken down into a few scenes, each of which feature a snippet of the song and a couple of touchable elements that kids can interact with.

In the first scene, you can swipe on the school bus and watch it drive down a road.

Wheels On The Bus - Scene 1

In the second scene, you can open and shut the doors on the bus.

Wheels On The Bus - Scene 2

In the third scene, you can interact with the bus driver and make the teddy bear bounce in his seat.

The Wheels On The Bus - Scene 3

And so it continues. Other fun aspects of the app are the ability to have the song play in a variety of languages including English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German. In case you’re looking for more to do you can also record yourself singing the song.

The strength of this app is its engagement value – the graphic design is top-notch, the animations are fun, and the variety of languages is a nice touch. That said, Wheels on the Bus may not be quite as strong of an educational app as some of the other kids-focused options out there. Don’t get me wrong – there’s a lot to be said for singing songs in lots of different languages, it’s just that the app is not as focused on learning as it is on fun. Which is okay – and for any parent looking to keep their kid entertained while at the doctor’s office or in the car, this is a must-have.

Get it here..