Tag Archives: play

Sonia Livingstone was recently asked to write the foreword for Children and Families in the Digital Age: Learning Together in a Media Saturated Culture edited by Elisabeth Gee, Lori M. Takeuchi, and Ellen Wartella. Here’s what she had to say. Where shall we start, and where shall we focus our gaze, when making sense of the influx of digital devices that fill our homes and workplace, absorbing the attention of both children and parents, promising so much yet often proving frustrating,…

Last week I almost wrecked the imaginary birthday party my daughter was throwing for Strawberry Shortcake. I was sitting on the floor in her room next to Plum Puddin’, Lemon Meringue, Orange Blossom and a few other three-inch-tall plastic guests, when she looked up and casually asked: “What’s more, daddy, four and a half or five years?” I jumped up, got the wooden blocks out and started piling them up in five columns. I was hoping that the concreteness of…

Last month, here at TribePlay, we celebrated the two-year anniversary of Dr. Panda games. Since its initial release, the Dr. Panda series has expanded to over 14 educational games for kids. Dr. Panda games are uncommon in the sense that they do not focus on math and languages, but on life skills: skills that help kids recognize and deal with situations in everyday life. In the two years we’ve been making kids’ apps, we have become strong believers in the…

Play-I is developing Bo and Yana, robots that teach kids five and older some of the the basic concepts behind programming. Using a visual programming interface that weaves  music, stories, and animation, children are encouraged to think strategically with if-then statements that guide the robots along.  The robots are expected to ship in summer 2014. In this guest post, Play-I CEO Vikas Gupta explains how even the youngest kids can learn to program through playful exploration.   You’re given a…

Since the beginning of Toca Boca, we’ve always tried to invent new ways of playing with screens. Some come very naturally—like creative play—where the touchscreen device gives kids super powers for their creations. Other areas are a little more abstract and take some more thinking. In this more challenging category, we have Toca Builders, which addresses construction play. How can we use a flat 2D touchscreen to help kids create and play with models and patterns? From an adult’s perspective,…

In recent years, augmented reality (AR) toys have gained increasing prominence at the International Toy Fair held in New York. Many of the industry’s biggest players have launched AR lines: Mattel’s Apptivity products build upon the strength of existing brands such as Batman and Hot Wheels; Hasbro’s Lazer Tag works with a compatible app to insert digital targets into the user’s environment; and the toys in Disney’s DreamPlay line, launching in the U.S. this fall, will enable kids to play…

Looking for a creative way to engage young students with their summer reading? How about encouraging them to re-tell that story themselves via Toontastic, an iPad app that makes it easy to create and share cartoons? The Toontastic team wants to encourage summer readers to share their favorites, and have even lowered the price of the app to just 99 cents for the next three weeks! Andy Russell shares the scoop:   Ah Summer Break… a magical but all-too fleeting…

Last weekend’s CES was the big event for everyone watching out for innovative technology — and according to reports, the conference exhibitors focused heavily on tablet devices, especially the iPad (see David Pogue’s review of CES in the New York Times). We were thrilled for our colleagues who won KAPi awards at the Kids@Play Summit, especially E-Line Media for most creative game platform (Gamestar Mechanic) and Krista Marks’ Kerpoof Studios. For more about the innovations in kids media that were…

Becky Herr Stephenson is a Research Fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. She attended the Kids@Play Summit at CES 2011, which focused on the way technology is changing how kids learn and play. She shares some highlights with us here: The Kids@Play Summit at CES reaffirmed for me that the best technologies are those that are obviously disruptive — technologies that challenge our expectations about what learning and schooling should look like, about who can participate in creation and…

Here are some of the stories and videos that caught our interest this past week – highlights feature the growing movement to include iPads in the classroom and a Q&A with Michael Levine, Cynthia Chiong, and Carly Shuler about the recent report, “Learning: Is There an App for That?” Check back next week for reports from CES 2011, taking place this weekend in Las Vegas. Study: Doctor Visits Give Opportunity for School Readiness Check-up EdWeek’s Inside School Research blog looks…