correctly identifying the word “could” when it flashed on screen between similar words like “should” and “would.” Headsprout claims that kindergartners who complete its 80-lesson course end up with reading comprehension levels typical of 2nd graders, and I can believe it. I suppose you could get kids to the same level using paper workbooks and/or one-on-one teaching, but it would be incredibly tedious work, both for the child and the adult. Why not hand the job over to scientifically tested software?
Then there’s the new crop of interactive storybook apps for tablets. Many of these apps start with the stories and illustrations from existing children’s books, then use animation, touch, and the accelerometer to add entertainment value. A Vancouver, BC-based startup called Loudcrow Interactive is one of the leaders in this area. Kieran particularly loves Loudcrow’s The Going To Bed Book by Sandra Boynton and its “pop-out” version of The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
The Loudcrow books help with reading comprehension by lighting up each word as the (optional) recorded narrator speaks. On top of that, every page offers something fun to explore. In The Going To Bed Book, for example, when you turn on the hot-water spigot at the bathroom sink so that the animals can wash up before bed, the iPad screen fogs up with steam, which you can then squeakily wipe away with your finger. Kids love it. Heck, adults love it.
In fact, one paradoxical truth about iPads and Xooms and their cousins is that grownups love them because they’re so toylike, while kids, who are natural info-Hoovers, love them because they’re portals to all knowledge. While I was in Fairbanks, Kieran developed a fascination with Google Earth on the iPad. I spent a couple of hours showing him his house in Alaska, my building in San Francisco, and his grandparents’ house in Michigan, not to mention the Forbidden City, the Eiffel Tower, and Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii. The next day in the car, I told Kieran that he should come stay with me in San Francisco someday. He asked if I would also take him to the Forbidden City. (Sure, I said—that’s what uncles are for.)
Now, I won’t pretend that Kieran and I didn’t also spend a lot of time watching more frivolous YouTube videos about his twin obsessions, Hot Wheels cars and Thomas the Tank Engine. Or that I didn’t use my own iPad to check on the office e-mail or read magazines while Jamie and Jen worked on feeding the kids or putting them to bed. My parents used their iPad to shop, do e-mail, check on their portfolio, and track the weather back home in Michigan. In fact, there were times during the visit when I saw all four tablets going at once.
If you only saw us during those moments, you might think we were a shallow, antisocial, technology-obsessed family. But they were just moments—and every family in the developed world is going to experience them more often as inexpensive mobile computers spread and we figure out how to balance solitude and togetherness, consumption and conversation, education and fun, stimulation and relaxation. And anyway, it beats slumping slack-jawed around the TV. I think.
