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Posts tagged 'iPhone interactive stories'
Posts Tagged “iPhone interactive stories”
Have you wished Benny the Cat a “good morning” yet?
Benny is a super cute and engaging ginger cat with a fluffy tail and pointy ears. You cannot help but love him as if he was your own pet. Children, as young as 1 year old, can play hide and seek with him, choose his favorite food, pet him, make his bed and much more.
Here’s a Q&A with the author and illustrator of “Benny the cat”, Tamar Hak:
How did Benny come about?
‘Benny the cat’ is the first children’s book that I have both written and illustrated, as opposed to having only dealt with the illustration side of things up to that point. It all started when I got a call from the people at Touchoo with a proposal to write and illustrate a children’s book intended for mobile devices using a touch screen interface. I was very excited with the challenge and could not wait to get started. My goal was to come up with a simple yet fun storyline that would appeal to children everywhere, while making as much use as possible of what this interactive interface has to offer.
What inspired your idea for the book?
One of my greatest loves in life is animals. I grew up in a small house crowded with pets, the memories and experience of that have had a very positive influence on me. To this day I cannot possibly imagine myself ever living without pets of my own. Coincidentally (yet not surprisingly) one of my favorite drawing subjects is animals. I therefore decided to take this opportunity to share my love for animals with kids and at the same time provide parents with a tool for introducing a certain pet to their child.
How did you come up with Benny’s character?
I chose a cat (a kitten) to be my book’s main character, first and foremost because it is simply my favorite pet. I started off by searching the web for kitten photos whilst thinking about what its character traits might be like. I knew that the book itself was going to be simple and straight forward one so I wanted to make up for that by making Benny’s character extra interesting and likeable for both children and their parents. Finally, I decided it would be a ginger cat (I have a soft spot for ginger cats as I in fact have one at home) small, chubby and fluffy with a whimsical spark in its eyes.
What technique did you use for the illustrations?
I love illustrating by hand and one of my favorite techniques is colored pencils. In this project I used a combination of graphite and colored pencils which no doubt made it harder in the transition to digital media as well as through the animation process but I felt that it was worth the effort considering the results.
Can you list all the pets you ever had?
Cats, dogs, mice, hamsters, all kinds of parrots and birds, rabbits, guinea pigs, fish, frogs, turtles, silkworms, snails and porcupines. I think there may have been more…
What are some of your favorite children’s books?
I absolutely loved all the Moomin books by Tove Jansson, Erich Kastner, and Shel Silverstein.
About Tamar:
I grew up in the Tel aviv Area in Israel. I painted and sketched since childhood and later on studied at “Thelma Yellin” High school of arts and “Shenkar College of design”. Nowadays I work as an art director in the advertising industry and as a freelance illustrator and designer. In my spare time I like to sing, eat humus and go for long walks (not necessarily in that order).
I am sitting on the couch with my 20 months old son and feeling a bit nervous. For me, this is the ultimate test if we did a good job on our newest Book App.
After working on Benny for a long time and feeling so proud and excited during the entire process, it now comes down to the nitty gritty bluntest truth of all, my son’s opinion.
Will he like Benny? Will he say “again!” over and over until I get sick of it? Let’s find out…
I put the iPad in his hands, he turns it on and immediately sees there is a new App on the horizon.
He can’t or refuses to make a puzzle but he knows how to maneuver the iPad and iPhone like it’s nobody’s business.
He starts playing, busily flipping pages, dragging and dropping, sliding, petting, tickling, searching and yes laughing… phf.. what a relief!
He doesn’t like it… he loves it! “Again..Again..Again” Aaah…music to my ears.
Our cute little Benny is obviously ready to make his debut and I can’t wait to hear some more feedback from all of you mothers out there!
This was KerenE staying in Touch(oo)
What an exciting week! We were chosen as one of the lucky ten most promising start ups to present at the TWS Conference 2010.
Here are some pics of our CEO Omer Ginor presenting Touchoo, what we are about and our future plans, that will be posted soon also on the About Us Page.
Omer Ginor CEO of Touchoo presenting at the TWS Conference 2010
And then, to our surprise and honour, we won!!! Here are Omer and KerenB receiving the sought after award.
It’s been a very good week and I can’t wait to see what exciting things are in store for us next week.
This was KerenE keeping in touch(oo)
Our storybook App Thumbelina is getting great reviews, which is a good feeling. An even better feeling is when parents write us to tell us about their children’s positive reactions to our App. But the coolest feeling ever is when a parent sends us a video showing us their child’s reaction to our App, like India’s mother did.
Check out this video and see what I mean for yourself.
This was Keren E keeping in Touch(oo)
1 Little Boy from a developmental angle
The development of the concept of numbers with the child has a close link to the development of language, and broadly speaking – to the mental capacity to process sequences. As such, the development starts manifesting shortly after speech, when the child, in his second year, starts naming numbers, still without understanding their symbolic meaning.
This initial phase can last for a year or more, yet it is necessary for the internalization of the number sequence and the principles of counting and calculating that will follow.
In the second stage, the child begins to understand the concept of “One” and later of “Two”, around the same time as he recognizes his basic body parts (some singular and some pairs).
In the next stage, the ability to recite starts developing, as the infant internalizes the process of uniquely matching the series of numbers he knows (initially up to three or up to five) to a series of similar objects. Reciting proficiency doesn’t mean that the infant understands the link between the last recited number and the counted quantity. Children of three to four years of age can recite up to five, and to answer the question “how many building blocks are there?” they would recount again and again, and not just say “five”. Fully understanding this link (typically in ages 4-5), testifies to the healthy ripening of the quantitative understanding and readiness to continue learning calculus.
The activities which construct this iphone application, 1 Little Boy for toddlers allow the infant recurring exposure to diverse counting and reciting experiences, in which he is exposed to the principles of number sequences, in an appropriate level of difficulty. The child can flip back the pages and visually internalize the proportion of numbers in a sequence, long before these relations can be fully integrated into his conceptual framework. Generally speaking, the visual story allows for optimal environmental learning* of the foundations of the number realm, not to mention its incorporation of the numeric factor into a content that is diverse in its own right.
- Environmental learning – Learning from generalization of example cases in the child’s natural surroundings. This, as opposed to structured learning, which refers to quantitative concepts as mathematical, interrelated objects. In recent years, research in the field of mathematical teaching have proven time and again that the environmental approach is significantly better at nurturing the fundamental quantitative understanding and that it is more appropriate to implement in this case. The structured approach, conversely, might be more beneficial in more advanced stages.
Thalma ashi is a leading developmental psychologist, and a former consultant to the mathematical team of the Israel education ministry.
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