Disqus
I haven’t written a post about Babies and Mobiles for a while, mainly because my baby has now grown up in to a 2 year old toddler. But given how proficient she is with Mobile devices, I figured it might be time to write another one.
Before I get stuck in to the post proper, a quick shout out to the developers of the App she likes the most: First Words: Animals, by Learning Touch!
Right, so as I was saying, I had written a series of posts about how Mobile devices can prove useful in bringing up children, and mainly had restricted myself to talking about things like baby monitors, and so on. But since that time, my daughter is now fully conversant in the world of Mobile! It started off when she recognised the difference between a toy Mobile and a real one – at that point I started wondering whether in fact she might be able to use one. Given I run an iPhone, and there are LOTS of kids apps for it, I figured to download a few and give it a try!
Well maybe I opened Pandoras box – my daughter can now:
- pick up the phone and press the home key to bring it out of standby
- unlock it with a swipe
- swipe the homescreens to the homescreen where I have some kids applications
- pick the one she wants
- use the application and interact with it
- swap to other apps if she gets bored
And I suppose to some extent this is a glowing recommendation of the App store, since there are loads and loads of Apps aimed at children, of various different ages. The favourite App in our house currently (as mentioned above) is First Words: Animals, by Learning Touch – it’s a game of sorts, but with casual productivity – teaching spelling, pronunciation, and sounds, for a number of common animals. Implicitly, there is also co-ordination of hand to eye, concentration, and dexterity of control by using the touch interface of the iPhone too.
To be clear, I don’t let my daughter use any App for more than 10 minutes at a time, and it’s supervised play too – mostly because I think it’s important to set boundaries on what time periods acceptable to use the device, but also just in case she decides that the iPhone would be better placed in the bin, or swimming in the loo!!
At any rate, for those of you that have young kids, and an iPhone/iPod Touch (or in fact any touchscreen smartphone that supports an Application store), then I’d suggest seeing what they make of the applications – in a controlled fashion, there are a number of benefits to them playing with Apps – the only downside immediately I can see is that my daughter is more comfortable and capable with a mobile device than I am 
First Words: Animals (£1.19) [iTunes link]
About The Author
Ben Robinson
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
