A fictional letter by Warren Buckleitner from Daniel Terry and Harlan Crystal, who published Tap Zoo, currently one of the top Grossing Apps in iTunes. This letter originally appears in the May 2011 issue of Children’s Technology Review.
Psssst. Hey you. Wanna make some ca$h? A LOT of cash (like $millions?). Here’s what you do, and we promise, no laws or bones will be broken. First, find yourself an innocent slightly bored 5 to 7 year old kid with an iPad or iPod touch. Now come up with an item that kids can’t resist. We’ve had good luck with cute looking animals— stuff that makes a kid say “awwww!” Now make a free app with an icon that has kid appeal. That’s your lure; design it carefully. It needs to shout “come play with me!” You can copy a game (we used the Zoo Tycoon and FarmVille) and offer up a pair of free gorillas. Make it a snap to download and get started. You need to get the little kids invested and feeling like they own the zoo at the beginning. This is very important. If you want ideas for roping in a child, visit a casino and watch some compulsive gamblers. You can learn how to trick a little kid into wanting to keep playing. For example, every four minutes or so, we deliver a little bit of pretend money, making them think they can buy more animals if they stay with their zoo. It’s like a digital M&M, and those little suckers fall for it!
After they are lovey dovey with their gorillas, it’s time for the big tease. Show them other peoples zoos, teaming with tigers, penguins, sea turtles, monkeys — or perhaps even “the Big Castle!” It’s mean but it works. You can’t have supply unless you have demand, right? Associate the cool stuff with an order form, so those penguin-loving kids start getting on their parents. You see, a six or seven year old kid is too young to understand abstract things like passwords and credit cards. To them, its just part of the “get mom to give me stuff” game that every child is born with. And stop thinking of this kid as a person. She’s your mule to get to mommy’s bank account. The best part of this whole robbery is that you’re going to have Apple driving your getaway car! They keep a cut, but they also cut the checks. Apple is like is your Swiss bank account.
Make sure you use a currency system that sounds fake and harmless. Don’t call it “dollars” because that could tip off mom or dad. We use “stars” and one of our competitors, CapCom’s The Smurfs’ Village, uses “Smurfberries.” Another thing you don’t want to do is to tell the parents that a simple, functional zoo might cost well over $400, about the cost of a dish washer. Keep these dirty little secrets as hidden and cryptic as possible. Also, sell a lot of starter items for just $.99, to numb them up, so a parent will think, “well, that isn’t much, OK, squirt, here’s my iTunes password, now keep quiet.” Believe me, kids are great at getting that password. We’ve seen four year olds do it.
The buying part needs to be really thought out carefully. Make it so that when the kid touches the “Buy Stars” you tease ‘em with a model zoo, teaming with animals and then deliver them to iTunes as quickly and as frequently as possible. Sure, they’ll see the “Do you want to buy one Vial of Stars for $0.99?”warning, and they might hit “cancel” but non-readers have fair chance of hitting “OK.” Here’s another great trick. Sell stars by the barrel for $99.99! To a kid, a barrel sounds like more fun. Finally, make sure all sales are final. No refunds. How much money can you make? We’re over a $million bucks A MONTH! Dude, it’s so easy, it’s like stealing candy from a baby!
Sincerely,
Daniel Terry and Harlan Crystal, Co-Founders of Pocket Gems (www.pocketgems.com)
*Note: This is a pretend letter (by Warren Buckleitner) based on existing practices. Learn more about Daniel and Harlan at http://pocketgems.com/about/the-team.php. We appreciate the fact that they didn’t attempt to hide their identity, and welcome their response to this letter.
Children can touch one of four games or practice with site words or word family groups, by viewing letters and words along with a reference picture and visual cues, to reinforce the association between pictures and words. Each letter and word is phonetically sounded out and repeated to reinforce letter-sound associations. Young readers are prompted to say the words heard repetitively. Content includes 75 sight words and 12 word families with 65 word family words. Activities include assembling a jigsaw puzzle in Jigsaw Words, playing a memory match game in Hide a Word, See and Find, and Bubble Words. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Turn your iPad into a top-down view of a tea party complete with slurps and spills, with a real-looking set of tea cups, juice glasses, pastries and so on. Your child can choose the table cloth, plates and cups to set the table by dragging with their finger. Next they pick their three favorite cookies and cakes, and then get some toys, dolls, or parents to sit around the iPad while they serve the tea or juice. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Inspired by Goldilocks and the Three Bears, this story takes you to a bamboo forest and the home of three panda bears. The goal is to teach you about Pandas, by mixing real facts with the story. Content includes 60 touchable animations, in 30 pages plus an information page with links about pandas. Other features include: Read to Me; Read Myself; Auto-play; and the ability to record your own narration. The publisher has a relationship with Pandas International, a U.S.-based nonprofit that works with the China Conservation & Research Centers for the Giant Panda (CCRCGP) in southwestern China. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Designed to let children build and manage their own zoo on an iPad or iPod Touch, this app combines good design and a child friendly theme with an equally effective ordering system, making it possible for children to buy items for their zoo with real money, providing they have your iTunes password. The app starts by giving you a starter zoo — a small island with two gorillas. You learn that building your zoo requires coins that are given you in timed doses, or quickly by buying the stars through your iTunes account (for real money). Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
If you’ve played any of the Oceanhouse Media books, you know how this app functions. The app features Read to Me – words are highlighted as they are read, Read it Myself – read the book in its traditional form, and Auto Play – plays like a movie, automatically reading and turning pages. In the story, Tacky and his penguin friends, Goodly, Lovely, Angel, Neatly, and Perfect are training to represent the Nice Icey Land in the Winter Games. When the games begin, Tacky and his friends find unusual ways to compete, like riding Tacky down the hill in the Bobsledless race. Based on the 2005 book by Helen Lester and Lynn Monsinger; published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This app is designed to help you learn the names, locations, major cities and sizes of the world’s 192 countries. You start by seeing four flashcards, along with a question like “Spanish is the official language of which country.” Wrong answers disappear along with an explanation, but correct answers (in this case the Dominican Republic), give the the ability to drop the country onto a platform. The goal is to earn enough countries to build a stack that reaches a high water mark. Content includes 1,000 questions, 192 flash cards, and an interactive map of the continents. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
See your voice coming out of a Chihuahua with Smack Talk ($1, 2-up), a sound morphing app that turns your iPad into an echo chamber. You say a short phrase, like “have a nice day” and see your voice coming out of an animal, nearly perfectly lip-synced. Once your voice is recorded, you can modify the pitch, pacing, and so on. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Ideal for children in need of some extra spelling and comprehension practice, My Word! Reader is designed for older readers. At the heart of the app is a story called “Are Bees Smart” by Selma Wassermann, presented via block paragraphs, with select words highlighted. Content includes six activities that have you spelling words by unscrambling them, matching pictures with words, and so on. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Called “Grover Book” in the App Store, this is a 12 screen interactive adaptation of the 1971 Golden Book of the same title. Each page contains an animated skit that features Grover (one of the Sesame Street monsters) and his attempts to keep you from turning the page. Why? Because there’s a “big scary monster” on the last page. Spoiler: the monster is Grover. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
This edition follows the same design formula as its two predecessors, as well as many of the other LEGO games. At its heart, it’s really a puzzle game. During each level, you control one of a small party of characters. At any point, you can switch which character you control with the press of a button. Different characters have specific attributes, which are needed to solve each puzzle and progress through the game. For example, you may need a Jedi character in order to move a large block into place. Another interesting thing about the game play is that if a character runs out of health, he or she simply jumps back up. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Based on the Palm/Smithsonian book, written by Dawn Bentley and illustrated by wildlife and natural history artist Karen Carr, It’s Tyrannosaurus Rex! is a prehistoric adventure for readers in preschool through grade 2. The story takes readers on a journey through the Cretaceous period where they are introduced to the idea of how Tyrannosaurus Rex and other ancient creatures roamed the earth. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review.
Designed to introduce deductive reasoning using animal attributes, this App give clues such as “lives near water” or “has smooth skin” to help children narrow in on an answer. In the app, the animals are hiding in the jungle and your child has to help Babu the Meerkat find his friends by matching the clues with the animals they have met on their way. Attributes include physical appearance, size, living environment, and eating and sleeping habits. This is the first iPad app in Tribal Nova’s iLearnWith Educational Program, which is a cross curricular game-based learning program that helps prepare children for school. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Now you can turn your iPhone into a … pretend phone, for your toddler. It also runs just fine on an iPod Touch or iPad. It to help a child memorize important phone numbers such as yours or Grandma’s. A child can also press an “animals” icon to convert each number key into an animal that makes a sound when touched. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Those silly five little monkeys. Now they’ve moved into your iPad, with this Oceanhouse Media adaptation of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt picture book, by Eileen Christelow. Christerlow serves at the narrator. As with other Oceanhouse Media books, there are three modes — Read to Me, Read it Myself and Auto Play, and no hidden animations. Instead, the original pictures and words of the story are highlighted, and each story element can be touched to hear it labeled. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
In this set of 20 carnival inspired games, you will leap into the air on a Rocket to Mars, catch coins on a roller coaster, twist your body in Crash Test Dummy, avoid tornadoes by pumping your arms as fast as possible in Hot Air Balloon Race, copy a monkey with the Monkey Barker in Monkey See, Monkey Do, and more. Designed for one or two players. Note that the Kinect sensor is required. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
In Bubbling Math, children race to touch the right answer to math equations, ranging in difficulty from 2+2 = 4, to division of numbers up to 100, including division by two digit numbers. Content includes nine graphic levels to unlock, each with different music. A parents screen tracks progress over time, for one player. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
What if you could turn YouTube into a huge alphabet book? That’s the idea behind the ABC series of apps from Peapod Labs. Content includes 80 well-screened animal videos and several hundred clear photos. Source URLS are provided. You can also keep track of the all the animals you have explored. Note, an internet connection is required to play videos in ABC Wildlife. See also ABC Music and ABC Go. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
- Dust or Magic Children’s AppFest is free, public, and happens Sun May 22 in Monterrey CA from 1-4 PM. Details at http://t.co/9YJ7BxR #
- I uploaded a @YouTube video http://youtu.be/Q7xwbFtQsG8?a Cars 2 Video Game — a Preview #
CTR 134 May 2011
May 2011
Volume 19, No. 5, Issue 134
ANNOUNCEMENT: Don’t miss the Children’s AppFest, May 22nd in Monterey California. It is free and public, and part of Dust or Magic AppCamp.
News & Commentary on Children’s Tech
After a disaster like a train wreck, it’s not uncommon for a flood of experts to arrive to try to figure out what went wrong. But rarely do we step back from a children’s interactive media disaster, as measured in terms of irrate parents, damaged corporate image, crying children, or bad ratings, and ask “why?”
In this month’s CTR, we’re going to take a closer look at children’s interactive “dust” as part of the talk I’ll be giving at INPlay. This includes seven factors that lower ratings (page 5), the Top Ten Excuses for Bad Ratings (page 6), a closer look at Apple’s HOME key (also on page 6) and a proposed Code of Ethics for the Publishers of Children’s Interactive Media (page 7). Also on page seven, I write a pretend letter from the creators of Tap Zoo, which is currently one of the top grossing apps in the iTunes App Store.
What do you think? Comment on the NAEYC/Fred Roger’s Center Position Statement on Technology and Young Children
In spring 2010 the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media (Fred Rogers Center) began working on a revision of the NAEYC 1996 position statement. Called “Technology and Young Children—Ages 3 to 8” the document is important for helping us all better understand how to exploit the power of technology for the growth and development of children, while minimizing the downsides. The position statement will be issued jointly by NAEYC and the Fred Rogers Center. Now is the time to review the latest draft. To provide comments, send an email to TechandYC@naeyc.org by and provide comments by May 31, 2011.
May is a great time to build a treehouse
What could be more low tech than a treehouse? That’s why it is fun to go online to learn to learn about how to build one. Don’t miss this month’s LittleClickers, where we explore such things as how to find the perfect tree, and how to make a treehouse that will be around in ten years. See page 4, or visit http://www.littleclickers.com.
The CTR Subscriber Portal is live!
We’ve done it! The Children’s Software Finder has been replaced by the new CTR Subscriber Portal, where you can search back issues and 13,000 archived reviews. Subscribers, if you are having trouble logging in, please let us know! Thanks to Don and Tony for all their help in making this huge step for us.
Children discuss apps, at last year's AppFest
Announcing the Second Annual Children’s AppFest at Asilomar Conference Grounds—Public Invited
Come explore state-of-the-art children’s apps, and meet some of the faces behind the apps your children play. Children are welcome. Details at http://www.dustormagic.com, or you can read the press release here, in pdf format
WHEN: May 22, 2010
WHERE: Pacific Grove, California at Asilomar Conference Grounds, at Merrill Hall from 1-5 PM
- Ya'll make sure you give this a read. Draft: Technology in Early Childhood Programs #NAEYC http://t.co/qezf3Ui #
- Rumor confirmed: Tallest preschool teacher on earth will attend #DustorMagic AppCamp. http://t.co/IiZkwIU #