I posted a link a while ago to
a guide to buying digital books for kids. The movie Cars 2 is about to be released tomorrow and Disney has already released
an app to go with it. The app is an enhanced book. It has some of the features that you'd want in a digital book - first and foremost, it's high interest! You can listen to the story being read to you - and of course the reading is very professional. This is Disney, after all, and they are very good at what they do! Watching Maggie's
review of it, over at
apps for iPads, I was wondering whether this would be an appropriate app to use in school. It certainly has nice features - like highlighting the text as it is read aloud - but I can see kids choosing to listen and look at the pictures, while completely ignoring the text. Fortunately, there is also a feature that allows kid to record themselves reading the text. That could be very useful as a way of checking to make sure that a child told to go and read to him/herself has actually done so. (Of course, reading to yourself and reading aloud could be considered different skills!) Using an iPad2 to project this story might hold some kids' attention better than a teacher reading aloud - the pictures will be easier to see and there is the bonus of the sound effects and animation which might make it a little easier for English language learner (ELL) students to understand some parts of the story. This storybook is bound to be much simpler than the actual movie, and this again is helpful for the ELL students. There are some fun games for the kids to play - though I suspect that some of the puzzles and activities may be too simple in comparison to the reading level of the text. Coloring (especially when the app can be set to choose all the colors for you so the finished product is 'perfect') and tossing tires, while good fine motor skills activities are not necessarily developmentally appropriate for a kid who can read at this level. And kids who
can't read at this level (actually, even those who can) will want to spend their time playing the games instead of reading along with the text . . .
The app is currently being sold for 'just' $5.99, instead of the regular price of $8.99. Compared to the cost of a book, and given the extra features, it is perhaps not unreasonable. However, given the logistics of buying one copy of a book like this and then figuring out how to make it available to kids, I don't think schools are going to go for it. We're looking at having 30 iPads per grade level, K-2, next year. Realistically, we could not afford to buy 30 copies of a book unless it was a significant part of the curriculum, so it is more likely that we would want only one or two copies of an app like this, just as we would want only one or two copies of a particular hard-bound book for the library. If this book were on only one of those iPads, it could be a real pain trying to direct kids to use the specific iPad it was on.
I'd love to have this app available on an iPad for something like indoor recess time, or our before and after school program and kids will love to have this on their own iPad, but I see other priorities for school money right now!
