Tag Archives: ipad

Cynthia Chong is an educational media researcher whose research focuses on how the design of educational media can affect young children’s learning and the way they interact with them, as well as how parents and teachers use these technologies to teach. She recently began reviewing educational apps for 3- to 8-year-olds on her blog, A Matter of App. We’ve invited Cynthia to tell us a little bit more about this blog and why it’s important for parents, educators, and designers…

How does one know that an educational experience is actually helping students learn? Our company Motion Math makes educations games for the iPad and iPhone that let kids play with numbers. It’s easy for us to think, as we’re making our apps, and watching students play them, to believe that learning is happening, especially because we spend a lot of time ensuring that our designs follow good pedagogical and usability principles. However, the history of educational technology is littered with many false promises and disappointing results, most recently given an overview by Matt Richtel of The New York Times. For these reasons, and for our own self-understanding, it’s important that we sometimes hold our learning technologies up to scientific scrutiny.

The leaves are changing, the air is getting crisp… and your teeth are hurting just LOOKING at all the candy stacked up in the grocery aisles. Yes, it’s October and Halloween is just around the corner! To celebrate this most playfully creative holiday, we’re very excited to announce that the Cooney Center is partnering with Mobile Learning Finalist Launchpad Toys to create a Spooky Story Contest for kids and parents to create and share their favorite Ghost Stories and Terrifying…

… stays at App Camp?  I certainly hope not!  Because I was lucky enough to attend last month’s Dust or Magic Children’s App Design Institute, and the pure magic of this conference needs to be shared. For the second year in a row, an intimate group interested in children’s apps came together for a three-day event that included presentations from designers, reviewers and other industry experts as well as demos and brainstorm sessions.  There is no way I can summarize…

With the recent release of the iPad 2, I was not at all surprised when Catherine suggested that I write this week’s blog about kids and the iPad. Considering the bulk of work we’ve been doing in the area of kids and apps, I thought this would be an easy topic. But when I actually sat down to write, I found it difficult to settle on a niche. In the last few months in The New York Times alone, David…

Give a young child a couple of toys or a box of crayons and he or she is likely to play for hours, deeply engrossed in an imaginary world. In both art and dramatic play, children construct settings, create fictional characters, and act out fantastic storylines that would be the envy of many Hollywood scriptwriters. Yet, ask that same child to write out a story in a blank notebook or a word processor and you would be lucky to capture…

It may come as no surprise that kids want gadgets over toys this holiday season. According to the Duracell Toy Report, the top 10 most wanted toys for Christmas among kids 5-16 are squarely focused on tech, with iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads topping the list. Read full article, Children Want Gadgets Not Toys for Christmas

In today’s information-obese world, book reading has become a refuge from my click-happy, easily distracted, multitask-ery. But as books extend their reach into the digital landscape through the Kindle, iPad and the new Barnes & Noble Nook, I have to wonder: Does a book by any other platform still smell as sweet? The Internet and digital media have often been blamed for the decline of children’s interest in reading books. In a 2007 report by the National Endowment for the…

The Cooney Center is thrilled to announce our newest report! A mobile media revolution that is changing the lives of adults, and now children of all ages, is under way across the globe. This report focuses on how new forms of digital media are influencing very young children and their families in the United States and how we can deploy smart mobile devices and applications-apps, for short-in particular, to help advance their education. Get more information and download report

Check out this recent Wall Street Journal article: Using the iPad to Connect: Parents, Therapists Use Apple Tablet to Communicate With Special Needs Kids The iPad is quickly being utilized for kids with speech and communication issues and can have real breakthrough effects for this population. Apple CEO Steve Jobs says that these therapeutic uses weren’t something Apple engineers could have foreseen. Mr. Jobs said that emails he gets from parents resonate with him. “Our intention is to say something…