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It is true, though I'll give two minor concessions/clarifications: My 2 year old is basically 3 - his birthday is in Feb, close enough that calling him 2-year-old is bending the truth, but not technically breaking it :) The alphabet thing is totally true - Largely due to Endless Alphabet, which is a rare really well designed learning app - but I will say that learning what sounds go with what alphabet letters is a specific type of education that really plays to the screen strengths and isn't as transferable to other types of education. The fact that I don't have another example like that one to demonstrate the power of educational apps shows that this might be exception rather than the rule. On Endless Alphabet, when you drag the letters around (something kids get right away) it repeats the letter pronunciation again and again in different ways, and it still cracks them up. Then we finish dragging them, you get treated to a little funny animated video that are really well made. So they could play with that for hours, and knew all the pronunciations from there, and the order from the song (well the song is basically how I still know it). We'd test them when we pass signs on the street/sidewalk, and they did struggle, but both would get all the letters before they turned 1. You wouldn't believe how badly most kids apps are made, even the big ones like hooked on phonics. Things like supporting multi-touch are essential since they don't have great motor skills, and not nailing that can be really confusing and frustrating for a child, who tends to think everything is because they can't do it, not because the app didn't implement it well. And the rest of the "Endless X" apps teaching other skills (maths, music) don't work as well as Endless Alphabet, I think it works exceedingly well for the specific memorization task of matching sounds to icons. |