Technology News for Children

                            

Children’s Stories App MeMeTales Comes To Android, Offers Free Books All Summer

                                                                                                      
MeMeTales, a super-cute (and guilt-free!) children’s books application arrives on Android today, following its iOS release and public debut at 500 Startups’ demo day last October. Originally from Seattle, now a San Francisco-based operation, the company was founded by husband and wife team Maya Bisineer and Pree Kolari, and offers a library of picture books designed for preschool and elementary-aged kids and their parents.
Through partnerships with publishers like PBSKids, HarperCollins, Little Pickle Press, Shen’s Books and others, the platform includes access to a variety of quality books to choose from, but unlike other e-book libraries for kids, it also “gamifies” the experience for the young readers.
In MeMeTales, kids earn points and stickers for reading books and get to unlock book-related games, when available. Parents are kept in the loop and notified of their child’s progress, as the kid racks up the rewards, too. For publishers, MeMeTales is also offering an online publishing platform that allows them to share their books with the MeMeTales community.
Since its launch, founder Maya Bisineer tells us that MeMeTales has reached 81,000 app downloads, 37,000 registered users, and has seen nearly 400,000 complete book reads through the app. They also saw an average of 1,800 complete book reads per day in the past week. Plus, says Bisineer, over 20% of the app’s users return the app daily. All good metrics for a relatively new, education-focused app.
Becoming a connoisseur of these type of apps myself, I enjoy the stories and illustrations in MeMeTales quite a bit, but the actual reading experience still needs a little work. The nav bar remains when reading, font choice is kind of boring, and sometimes the font overlays the picture (on iPhone, that is – it looks better on iPad). I love the more immersive feel of something like Farfaria, for example. But MeMeTales is young and improving.
Alongside the Android launch, the company is updating its iOS app as well, and is partnering with PBSKids and several children’s publishers on Readathon 2012, a special summer reading initiative. The company will be giving kids access to free books and learning materials from its publishing partners every week for six weeks during the summer. (Normally, MeMeTales sells the books it offers, after the first 20 which are free at sign-up).
“We are big believers that technology, combined with community can push the envelope on making a real difference. We really hope we can inspire other app developers to look beyond being ‘just an app,’” says Bisineer. “We have built technology that makes it possible for publishers to let kids ‘borrow’ their books for free via the app and website during the Readathon,” she explains, describing how the summer reading program works. “At the end of the week, the books go right back into the store for people to purchase,”
In addition, for every child who joins the Readathon, MeMeTales is donating a meal to a hungry child via FoodForEducation.org. (They’ve reached 1,256 meals donated so far.) The goal is to donate 10,000 meals if they reach 10,000 readers or 100,000 book reads. The Readathon curriculum has also been integrated into several existing preschools, summer camps and weekly Mommy and Me Storytimes across the U.S., says Bisineer.
The company raised $100,000 from 500 Startups and others last year, and is looking to raise another round in the upcoming months. Bisineer says they have a couple of investors committed, but nothing they can announce publicly at this time. You download the mobile app here on iOS or the newly launched Android app here.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/26/childrens-stories-app-memetales-comes-to-android-offers-free-books-all-summer/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

 

Reading Rainbow Might Stop the iPad From Ruining the Brains of All Children

            Sam Biddle                                         
                                                                                                    

For a generation now creating advanced things and placed in corridors of power, LeVar Burton was a god-king: both Star Trek's Geordi La Forge, and the guy who taught us to like books on Reading Rainbow. Now, the two Burtons are fused—and it's pretty incredible.
LeVar Burton has an app—it's available starting today. Sure. Lots of people have apps. But it's doubtful anyone cares as much about their app as LeVar Burton. I step into an expensive hotel room in Midtown Manhattan, and Burton springs up, greeting me by name, shaking my hand, talking almost immediately about reading. There's an iPad in front of him.
But this isn't just any product pitch—which is good, because Burton lacks all the unctuousness of a salesman or marketing player. He just... cares. His enthusiasm for an app designed to encourage little kids to read is almost overwhelming. How many people care about anything this much? And how much can I possibly properly appreciate an app designed for tiny kiddo brains? I can't—so we brought our own: two boys, 3 and 5-years-old, stuck in that valley of super-hyperactivity spanning the end of school and the beginning of summer camp. As Burton lays out the app's basics—a free download, a $10 per month subscription for unlimited kid-friendly titles, a vibrant cartoonish interface with hot air balloons and floating islands that capture the original series' acid trip charm—the kids fidget. The older immediately covers himself in pretzel crumbs, the young starts chirping for mom's attention. The kids are kids. It's summer and they'd rather not be in a Midtown Manhattan hotel room on a beautiful day. Nobody would.
But then something incredible happens. We hand the older boy the iPad and fire up the Reading Rainbow app. He's transfixed. The only word is transfixed. The fussing and pretzel-crunching stops, and his little brother curls next to him. They don't fight over who gets to hold it. They both know intuitively how to use it—complete naturals. He picks pirates, animals, and space as his three preferred topics to generate recommended books. He starts reading along with Burton's pre-recorded narration. The Wi-Fi sucks and the download stalls. He doesn't care. The kids are—patient? Attentive? About a book.
I ask Burton if he thinks this is ultimately good, this sticking of LCDs under the eyes of children. Having seen lots of absentee parenting by way of iOS—kids handed a stray iPhone as they might be handed a pacifier, to shut them up in public—could the ubiquitous computer hurt little heads? Can the touchscreen warp fingers that've been flipping (and smearing chocolate on) paper for hundreds of years? "We can try to sequester ourselves from technology," Burton shakes his head. But this is pointless, he explains. Kids like those two mesmerized by an app are an inevitability—and if we can make them mesmerized by a book instead of a game, we have to take the chance. We must. Burton is emphatic. "Ed[ucational] tech!" Burton grunts, pounding his palm with his fist. It's imperative to him that we get kids using these everywhere-screens to become readers, writers, and thinkers, before they become something else. "We've already lost an entire generation of children. Maybe two," he laments. This one, for whom touch screens are a given, should be different. It must be different, and you can see in LeVar Burton's almost crazed eyes that the dude really, really, really wants kids to read more. And it seems like they will—if there's one young charm you can count on, it's that a little boy will tell you something is stupid and is bad and smells like poop if he thinks so. They're a brutally honest lot. But our kindergarten demo team gave shy smiles and thumbs up.
Burton doesn't act surprised in the slightest. And why should he? He lived this world 30 years ago: "I mean, come on—Geordi was carrying an iPad around the Enterprise!"

http://gizmodo.com/5919771/reading-rainbow-might-stop-the-ipad-from-ruining-the-brains-of-all-children