What's New Here?

states

Stack the States

Review Excerpt: Do you know the state flag for North Carolina? Or which state borders Canada? This multiple-choice quiz game rewards you with more than a correct answer. Content includes ...
spacebook

Spacebook

Review Excerpt: This collection of 5,000+ astronomy photos is the kind of app that a young Carl Sagan would certainly have on his or her iPad or iPhone. Think of it as a customized ...
sight

Sight Words Learn to Read

Review Excerpt: Designed to teach your high frequency Dolch sight words, this app asks children to match the words by touching fish that contain words. Each fish is showcasing three ...
sid

Sid the Science Kid – Sid’s Slide to the Side

Review Excerpt: Sid has a problem — his new sneakers have too much friction. This problem is described in two narrated stories, presented in a way that you help Sid the Science ...
pookie

Pookie’s Snow Day

Review Excerpt: This is a very pleasant, beautifully illustrated experience, although it is limited in terms of content. Consisting of nine interactive screens by Kati Nawrocki, children ...
playart

PlayART

Review Excerpt: This app turns your iPad into a classic-art flannel board, stocked with the key elements from five artists — Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Henri ...
play123

Play 123

Review Excerpt: Here’s a collection of ten “virtual manipulatives”  –  innovative minigames that are easy to learn and full of responsive play opportunities ...
nutcracker

Nutcracker, The

Review Excerpt: Timbuktu’s Nutcracker by Francesca Cavallo and Philip Giordano uses an innovative vertical (up and down) scrolling technique, where the activities and ideas unfold. ...
trucks

More Trucks

Review Excerpt: This is the second truck-themed app from Duck Duck Moose. It works best as a one player game. Contents include a side-scrolling game where you move a truck by swiping ...
zombies

Math vs Zombies

Review Excerpt: This app makes it fun to practice your addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. Here’s how it works: you start out by watching a stream of zombies ...
mask

Mask Jumble Animals

Review Excerpt: This app turns your iPad or iPhone into a magical mirror that can turn your face into an animal mask. The app uses face recognition technology (of the variety used in ...
Screen Shot 2013-04-18 at 9.04.35 AM

An Examination of Research on Technology and Early Literacy from 1940 to 1990

by Warren Buckleitner, Originally written in May of 1994, updated in 2013 for the Dust or Magic eBook Retreat. Q. What do flashmeters and iPads have in common? A. They join the gadgetry ...
luigi

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon

Review Excerpt: Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon is the sequel to the 2001 GameCube release. This time, Luigi explores six haunted Mansions to find the pieces of the shattered Dark ...
LeoLionBand

Leo Lion Band

Review Excerpt: Children can mix-and-match their melodies by building a band out of animated animals. Content includes three songs (Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, If You’re Happy ...
momotaro

Legend of Momotaro, The

Review Excerpt: With a design inspired by a scroll (or Emakimono) instead of a page, this beautifully illustrated folk tale contains ten scenes, each containing “hidden secrets.” ...
ibmthink

IBM Think

Review Excerpt: This app turns your iPad into a hands-on museum designed to let you explore some big ideas — stuff like how different kinds of maps have developed, the role of ...
hive

Hive Activity Centre, The

Review Excerpt: Five activities feature the animated bee characters from the Disney Junior TV show. There’s a jigsaw puzzle, a game of concentration, racing, coloring and a spot ...
highlights

Highlights Hidden Pictures Puzzles

Review Excerpt: These days there are hundreds of apps that ask you to find the hidden object on a touch screen. But for most people older than 20, the original “Hidden Picture” ...
findletters

Find the Letters HD

Review Excerpt: Designed to provide practice discriminating between commonly reversed letters, this is a large set of leveled hidden picture puzzles. The picture is hidden behind a ...
doki

Doki Explores the Ocean

Review Excerpt: Created by LivoBooks in partnership with the Discovery Kids, this app is supposed to help you learn about sea life. Features include the ability to toggle between English, ...
chalkbox

Chalk Box Story, The

Review Excerpt: This is a good idea, the art is excellent, but the content is limited, and there’s no option to freely draw. The story is based on the idea that if a box of chalk ...
bigcatrace

Big Cat Race

A good idea that is poorly implemented, this app tries to turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into an pedometer by using the accelerometer. The screen goes black when you run and it is confusing ...
artsee

ArtSee Studio

Review Excerpt: iPad cases for children abound, but if your intention is to turn your iPad into a child’s easel, ArtSee Studio (WowWee.com, $40) is the best bet. Designed to offer ...
slideseek

Alphabet Animals: A Slide and Seek Adventure

Review Excerpt: Letters are turned into illustrated animals in this simple alphabet-book app. The app features the art of Suse MacDonald (the celebrated children’s illustrator). ...
abcfarm

ABC Farm

Review Excerpt: This is a collection of 210 (or so) clear open-source photos of farm life, and farm animals. Each is organized by it’s starting letter (for example, R is for Rooster). ...
troop

A Troop is a Group of Monkeys

Review Excerpt: This app is designed to introduce a very specialized set of vocabulary words: plural nouns for animal groups (such as “a pride of lions” and “a parliament ...
Screen-Shot-2013-04-15-at-7.02.25-AM

Amendments To COPPA and Protecting Children’s Privacy

By Elizabeth Bruns and Kimberly Nguyen, Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP From the April 2013 Issue of Children’s Technology Review (pages 11-12). Last December the Federal ...
ctr_editorschoice-2013x1200

Editor’s Choice March 2013

Here’s a summary of 14 top-rated products from this months issue. This month’s list includes some of the entries in the 2013 BolognaRagazzi Digital Prize. We’ve also included ...
apr13b

CTR April 2013: Amazing Gardens, Apps for Kindergarten, COPPA is Coming

CTR is an ad-free,  subscriber-only publication and review database.  We welcome new subscribers, for $30/year (for 12 monthly issues). The following is an issue preview. April 2013 ...
Screen Shot 2013-04-04 at 12.16.50 PM

10 Affordances of Multi-Touch

Here are the slides from my EETC presentation on April 4, 2013, in PDF format PPT 10 Affordances
fingertip

Pushing the Boundaries of Digital Storytelling: Ten Examples

Here is is the PDF of the presentation that I did on March 26 at the Bologna Children’s Book  Fair. Pushing the Boundaries of Digital Storytelling by Warren Buckleitner. Comments welcome.  
ralph

Wreck-It Ralph Storybook Deluxe

Review Excerpt: While this isn’t our favorite Disney Storybook Deluxe app, it’s still very solid, and it offers a nice extension of the candy and cookie themed racing movie. ...
ulysses

Voyage of Ulysses, The

Review Excerpt: How do pull kids into Greek Mythology and make it interesting? The Voyage of Ulysses contains 26 screens full of innovative interactive strategies to let you explore ...
gorilla

Ten Giggly Gorillas

Review Excerpt: Ten Giggly Gorillas is like Five Little Monkeys. The story is enjoyable and the optional Read to Me narration by Angela Catterns is well done. The main feature of Ten ...
stoyrtoys

StoryToys Grimm’s Snow White

Review Excerpt: Available for both Android and Apple mobile devices, the $2 app features a solid design and playful 3D graphics. This particular story mixes a Snow White and the Seven ...
spyhunter

Spy Hunter

Review Excerpt: Spy Hunter is a revision of the original combat driving series, where you once again take on the role of the “Agent,” the driver of the G-6155 Interceptor supercar. ...
sing

SiNG Party

Review Excerpt: SiNG Party is a musical performance game based around popular songs. In “Party” mode, the lead singer uses the Wii U GamePad controller to view lyrics and receive ...
polar

Scott’s Polar Trip

Review Excerpt: In this original story, Scott arrives at the North Pole on his submarine, accompanied by Jazz the cat. In the story, a Inuit boy named Inook helps Scott, and shows him ...
racer

Ridge Racer Vita

Review Excerpt: This Ridge Racer game features “high-contrast graphics and advanced lighting effects powered by the PlayStation Vita.” Our tester Corey said, “although ...
pip

Pip and Posy: Fun and Games

Review Excerpt: These days you can find thousands of jigsaw puzzles, games of concentration and coloring books in the app store; but few are crafted this well. There are five games ...

Twitter

© 2013 Children's Technology Review. All rights reserved.