Gro Book: The Adventures of Sophie the Sweater

Gro Book by Gro Play is a book that may bring some nostalgia to some parents. It's one of those stories where you can choose different what happens in the story at various points and see where it leads you. I not only like these stories because I think they're fun, but also because I like that it leads kids to think about plot and storytelling while experiencing a story on many levels.

Given the multiple paths of the story, I think turning these types of books digital can be advantageous and really take it to the next level, which is why I chose to review Gro Book. Price: $3.99

Device Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Developmental Appropriateness: The story is fun with a reuse, environmental theme, especially given the format. But don't expect a story that has a great moral or memorable message - it's a story that works with the format. It's fine - but I would not say that the format particularly enhances the story itself. It's a little difficult to pinpoint a target age as I think the book is appropriate for a range of ages. I'm going to put it at 7, which is on the older side because I think 6 yos can more fully take advantage of all the different paths of the story. At this age, they can remember paths they chose before, and also now also make connections between some of their choices. Don't get me wrong, a 5 yo or younger will fully enjoy this story as well. Rating: 4/5 (aim for around 6 years).

Balance: There's not too much here in terms of taking advantage of the features offered by tablets. The software of course helps the path choosing, so that you're not keeping your fingers on certain pages and flipping forward to a specific page to see what happens like back in the day. But otherwise, there's just narration and the option to turn it on and off and to take away or add the text. I'm not sure how I feel about the latter. There's certainly something to be said for just listening to a story - but maybe not in ebook format where kids have come to expect some level of interactivity. There's actually a lot of text - so with no interactivity on the pages and no words to follow, kids may get bored. The simplicity is fine, there's just not much that elevates the experience. Rating: 3/5

Sustainability: With so many paths, there's certainly re-read value here. Some of the paths repeat so don't expect a new story each time at every turn, but there's enough different paths to keep you interested at least the first few reads. Rating: 4.5/5

Parental Involvement: Nothing explicit here. It would have been nice to include some questions for parents to ask while they read or after - especially to compare and contrast the different paths. Rating: 3/5

Total: 14.5/5 = 4 stars

*I received this app for free for review purposes


Trend Alert: Check out these other great apps that let you take part in the story:

For those looking for more interactivity and a classic story in a new way: Little Red Riding Hood by Nosy Crow

For those with younger Elmo fans: Elmo the Musical -Storyteller


The Survey Spot
Take this quick survey on parental gating on apps! If you've at all thought about children's privacy and safety while playing apps please take a minute to do the survey. Read the parental gating post for some context.

Click here to take the survey!!
The survey's for parents, teachers, developers, and whoever else. The more responses, the better the results - Help spread the word!

Trend Alert:"Adaptive" Technology

I am both excited and skeptical about adaptive technology - when the app has incorporated software that will adapt the level of difficulty of the content to each child's skill level. A few examples are: Agnitus - Games for Learning, Leo's Pad: Preschool Kids Learning Series, and Monkey Math School Sunshine.

I am excited about this trend because adaptive software can help give kids practice on exactly what they need and not risk them getting bored by items that are too easy or get frustrated and lose interest in items that are too hard. It can then also provide parents and teachers with more accurate information leading to better instruction.

I am skeptical because while I'm not an expert in adaptive technology, I've worked on developing and evaluating assessments where adaptive technology was considered. So I know at least a little about what it takes to have accurate adaptive tasks. Of course, we don't need to hold apps to the standards of a validated assessment, but in the least, we need to have 1) data (where the items have already been tested on lots of kids of varying skill level) - case in point is Agnitus. I first reviewed Agnitus almost a year ago when they first came out. My biggest problem was their progression - that it was too slow. Now, almost a year later, you can tell that they've collected a whole lot more data from their users and have been updating their adaptive software accordingly. The progression is now much improved. 2) The app would still need to consist of enough items so that the technology can do it's work pinpointing the skill level. Both Agnitus and Monkey Math School Sunshine seem to have a large bank of questions to pull from. So when the software has determined the child has mastered a certain type of question, it moves on. I'm not sure the same can be said for Leo's Pad and how it's being "adaptive." Each episode is more like watching a tv show with only a few moments where they've integrated some activities. Perhaps once all the appisodes have been released? Or it's being adaptive in a different way?

As you'll see, the marketing text for these apps don't really provide any information other than it incorporates adaptive technology. So here are a few things I consider when deciding whether or not to buy an app that claims to have adaptive technology:

1) Does it have enough data? Do they mention having collected any data/done prior studies? Ok - that would be rare. So maybe, look at when it was released. If it's a brand new app, chances are, they are only starting to collect the data they need to improve the adaptive software. Or, possibly, if they are using items from existing curricula or any hint that the items have been tested with kids before.

2) Does it have enough items? Can a few or even several items really be enough to pinpoint each individual's skill level? I would say no. How many items per skill is asked? Maybe kids just got lucky on the multiple choice. Adaptive technology can be tricky because you don't want to leave things to chance, but at the same time, part of the goal is to cut down on repetitive items.

3) Consider the type of skills it's measuring - is it suitable for adaptive technology? Especially in early math, it can be hard to judge a child's skill level with just right or wrong answers. Here's a website from Teachers College, Columbia University and EDC that points out where educators can easily overestimate or underestimate a child's ability based on their answers. If you're developing a math app for preschoolers, it's worth a look. Check out the "Understanding Children's Responses" section.

This website was created to support a math assessment, but the content is pretty universal to early math understanding.
Temporary login for the website:

http://mathcgm.org

ID: mathcgm  

Temporary Password: mathkids11

This is not to say that math apps should not incorporate adaptive technology. It just depends on what you're trying to practice. Drilling math facts? Sure, adaptive technology would be great. The goal here would be for kids to be more fluent on math problems, so if they know addition problems pretty well, no need to keep going through them - move on to subtraction. Or similarly, memorizing vocabulary would be a good candidate for adaptive technology. Kids Vocab - Mindsnacks incorporates some variation of adaptive learning technology where you have to get each item correct x amount of times before they deem that you've learned it (kudos on actually providing an explanation for your audience!).

So while I'd like to see more apps with adaptive technology, I'd also like to see more information about why and how it's being incorporated.



The Survey Spot
Take this quick survey on parental gating on apps! If you've at all thought about children's privacy and safety while playing apps please take a minute to do the survey. Read the parental gating post for some context.

Click here to take the survey!!
The survey's for parents, teachers, developers, and whoever else. The more responses, the better the results - Help spread the word!

Trend Alert: Apps that encourage you to take your eyes OFF the screen.

As you can gather from my rating system, I place a lot of importance on parental involvement - more so than most of the other rating systems I've seen out there. For the most part, apps seem to only answer this criteria with reports for parents so they can review and track their kid's progress. Aside from the social benefits, a major reason I think parental involvement is important when it comes to learning is because parents can reinforce the content from the app with real world situations to help kids make those important connects. So I've been really encouraged to see several apps bring parental involvement and as well as the real world to the forefront.

A few examples:

PBS Parents Play & Learn

While this app has great interactive activities that center around everyday activities, what's more impressive are the related activities, or "teachable moments" they suggest for parents to do with their kids both in and out of the app. The related activities are not hidden under a "parent section" or under "more information." They are front and center. Granted, some parents may think these activities are obvious, but you'd be surprised how many parents may not have thought to do these types of activities with their kids - especially when it comes to apps. Especially given the young age that this app targets, it helps create a learning environment that's not just about the screen, but about the kids' surroundings and spending time with their parents in a meaningful way.

Apps from Fred Rogers Center at Saint Vincent College

Fred Rogers Center at Saint Vincent College has created some great apps. Admittedly, some are more polished than others, but at the core of most of them is family time. Alien Assignment and Out-A-Bout are two of my favorite apps because they seamlessly engage kids in their real world surroundings while involving parents in some direct way. Alien Assignment utilized the camera in the device and has kids take pictures of things they find in their surroundings that relate to the storyline of the app and then prompts them to give the device to their parents so they can check their work and get involved. Out-A-Bout
also utilizes the camera, but to create a story. Parents and kids go around taking pictures that are prompted by the app and the end product is a story with those pictures. In both cases, kids are up and about and not sitting around with their eyes glued to the screen.

Ok, so these apps aren't like hot off the presses new, but I remember being impressed and thinking that they were taking apps for young kids to a new level. I haven't seen too much similar stuff since from other developers, but I'm still hoping to.




Finally, I'd like to give some examples that aren't for young kids. Taking your eyes off the screen is not just a positive thing for young kids, but folks of all ages. Apps are on MOBILE devices - let's take advantage of that! There are the more obvious examples like exercise apps and some travel apps that give you virtual tours as you're at that location. But some flawed (these apps could use some usability improvements...) but less obvious choices like Sparkvue - which students can use to create science experiments as use the app as different measurement tools and LeafSnap - which incorporates a leaf recognition feature so you can go around snapping pics of real leaves to learn more about them - push the way we think about how to use apps.


And don't forget to take this quick survey on parental gating on apps! If you've at all thought about children's privacy and safety while playing apps please take a minute to do the survey. Read the parental gating post if you need some context.


Click here to take the survey!!
The survey's for parents, teachers, developers, and whoever else. The more responses, the better the results - Help spread the word!

Parental Gating

As promised, I'm introducing a couple of new features for A Matter of App: "Trend Alert" and "The Survey Spot." They're pretty self explanatory, so I'll jump right in.

Trend Alert: Parental gating is popping up in more and more apps. This is when features that are really meant for parents rather than the kids who are playing the app are "locked." The features behind the gate can be in-app purchases, links to buy other apps (cross promotions), links to social media, email, sharing, etc. The parental gate, which varies in how its implemented, stops kids from easily accessing this information, which if accessed, may lead to unapproved purchases, release of private information, etc. Here's an example:

There are other examples where you have to hold for a few seconds, do a math problem, or enter a passcode, but the purpose is the same.

Given the recent FTC children's online privacy update, parental gating seems like it's a step in the right direction. It certainly does not address all the privacy issues, but can help alleviate some of the concern.

But where do we draw the line? What exactly should be gated? Who should be enforcing the gating (parents? developers?) And for what age? A 10-year-old can do math problems and read the gating directions, so is there another form of gating that's more effective? Or maybe parents trust their 10-year-old to be responsible enough to not buy something without permission?

This brings me to "The Survey Spot." This new feature is just a quick and dirty survey to try to get some answers and for you to voice your opinion. I'm going to try to limit them to just one question (ok, one main question - and I may cheat and make it one long question ;)  and a couple of demographic questions). Should take no more than a few minutes.

So for the inaugural "The Survey Spot" - tell me what you think about parental gating:

Click here to take the survey!!

The survey's for parents, teachers, developers, and whoever else. The more responses, the better the results - Help spread the word!