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Friday, June 22, 2012

CD-ROM Favs 'Arthur' and 'Little Monsters' Arrive on the iPad

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The iPad may be the shiny new toy, but the issue of kids tossing aside old forms of media has been around for some time.
Before mobile devices, the home computer represented the conflict between traditional and interactive media. And while parents then were worried books might get lost, Living Books came along in 1992 and brought them to life on CD-ROM, making them appealing and truly interactive.

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One or two pages of "Little Monster at School" was all it took to teach a young child how to master a mouse. Mouse clicks brought silly animations, and the words on the screen were read aloud. It was a new way to learn to read and kids and parents were hooked.
Fast forward twenty years and a new generation of digital kids is about to get hooked on the Living Books series. They’ve been updated and enhanced for use on iPad and iPhones by Wanderful.
Mark Schlichting, the creator of Living Books, told Mashable that translating the original series to iOS allows the stories to come to life. Each title has hundreds of interactive hotspots, a rich story experience, and of course, the familiar characters kids know and love.
And Schlichting knows what kids like. His NoodleWorks Interactive recently received a KAPI (Kids at Play Interactive) award for best educational iPad app. Schlichting himself received the KAPi Pioneer Award for his innovative work as the creator of the Living Books series.
Schlichting says the way to engage kids at a young age is simply to make it fun, and to make use of the play patterns they follow." We believe learning is fun,” he said, “and that’s why we focus on opportunities for kids to learn through the joy of play."
In other words, where an adult might tap lightly tap on a screen, or tap once and wait to see what happens, kids will tap and tap again until they get a response. That quick response is built into the activity, so they enjoy the play pattern as they learn.
In my demo of “Little Monster at School” the characters indeed come to life; they talk, read text aloud, animated objects sing and dance, and music ties it all together. There’s a premium version for budding bilinguals with multiple languages that can be switched with just a tap on the screen.
Schlichting, working with his original team from Living Books to create these apps, says “Living Books were the first truly interactive storybooks, they defined the category.” Books were mobile back then, he says, now we’ve moved to content on devices. “The content is really engaging and just plain fun; we’re excited to reintroduce these titles to the current generation of young readers though a myriad of devices.”
There will be three titles available from Wanderful at launch on iTunes: “The Tortoise and the Hare,” “Little Monster at School” and “Arthur’s Teacher Trouble.” Additional titles will be added in the coming months. Apps will be available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch on iTunes and the Mac versions will be available in the Mac App Store later this month.
Check out the gallery above, share your favorite memories of these CD-ROM classics and let us know if these titles will appeal to your budding readers.
This story originally published on Mashable here.

View the original article here

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