Hi everyone,

I'm thinking about developing an educational ipad game for young kids. I would appreciate it if I can collect some feedback about how parents are using iPads with their kids.

I work in IT but am a part time volunteer at an after school tutoring program. I love the iPad and think it has amazing potentials to transform education because of it size and ability to interact with children. So I want to try to develop an app for kids to play with first and see how it goes.

Apologies if this is against forum rules, I read the Q&A and it didn't mention anything related to this kind of question.

Here we go, questions below. Please answer only if you have some experience with iPad and kids.

1. How many hours a week does your child play with the iPad? How old is the child?

2. What type of apps does your child play with? games? education-oriented or purely for fun?

3. How do you pick the apps and download them? Where do you find apps, just searching on the itunes stores?

4. What is a game/app that you wish exists on the iPad targeted at your child?

5. Do you usually play iPad games with your child? Would you play a collaborative game with your child?

6. Are you bothered by advertisements in a game? Are there times when you are not bothered by them?

Thanks for everyone's help!

My child spends about an hour a day with the iPad, primarily on iPad books & some educational games. I am a reviewer for iPad kids books, so that's our main focus, but I see a lot of nice educational apps and share those with my son as well.

Are you familiar with Moms With Apps - it's a collaborative group of small family-friendly developers who primarily create educational apps for kids. You should check out their forums - Moms With Apps - Index

This has been a great resource for my husband, who is an app developer. We have an Android kids game that we're bringing to iPhone later this year and the forums have been an enormous help.

For finding apps - my site, Digital Storytime - iPad Childrens Book Reviews - iPhone Childrens Book Reviews has reviews of books only, but I also have a deal page that has free price drops on educational apps I handpick daily, usually 8-10 are up on any given day. It's a great way as a developer to sample lots of what's out there without spending a lot of money in itunes. Digital Storytime Daily Deal

I won't even review book apps with ads in them, btw. The consensus seems to be that parents are very uncomfortable with this.

And if I could see more of anything in the app store for my child (a preschooler) it would be more board games for two or more players that I could play with my child - family oriented games, educational games, etc. We would love to have these for travel and in general to get rid of all the boxed games that clutter our toy room with missing pieces, etc.

Great questions ... good luck!

Best,

Carisa
Digital Storytime - iPad Childrens Book Reviews - iPhone Childrens Book Reviews

Blog: The Digital Media Diet | One mom's take on kids, technology and the world of apps …

Carisa, I think you just swayed me to avoid iAds in our up and coming LITE versions of our educational apps!

Cheers,
- Brad

You're welcome! Glad to help. I also write a lot of blog posts about trends in kids apps (primarily book apps) with an focus on useful info for developers. I am happy to answer any other questions from the perspective of a reviewer or parent about kids iPad apps if you want to email me - digital.storytime@gmail.com

Best,

Carisa

Good questions, but general thoughts: I think ipad and kids books are going to be huge. I went to a friends house the other day and his 2 year old kid sat on my lap and navigated the thing like he was an expert. Sure you gotta have the dough, but I think educational books are great for kids on the ipad.

Not So Trivial is an awesome educational game. It is very engaging and challenging check it out on the itunes store.

1. How many hours a week does your child play with the iPad? How old is the child?

1 hour each

2. What type of apps does your child play with? games? education-oriented or purely for fun?

Games and creative apps like GarageBand, drawing-apps etc

3. How do you pick the apps and download them? Where do you find apps, just searching on the itunes stores?

AppStore

4. What is a game/app that you wish exists on the iPad targeted at your child?


5. Do you usually play iPad games with your child? Would you play a collaborative game with your child?

Yes and yes.

6. Are you bothered by advertisements in a game? Are there times when you are not bothered by them?

I hate ads!!! I prefer to pay for an app.

I think this market is going to take off. My wife and I became franchisees of a Huntington Learning Center about a year ago. They are quietly (extremely quietly) working on an IPAD solution to provide tutoring to kids. Going to take some time to develop but if you can start putting out some high-quality education apps, now is the time to do it. Good luck to you!

There are some wonderful thoughts on this market bouncing around Twitter lately ... follow me @iPad_Storytime or follow @momswithapps to get the latest. I have a lot of followers in the educational community and they are using apps in so many amazing ways that really bring new meaning to 'digital literacy'.

It's a very exciting time to be an educator, student and especially an app developer. Best of luck!!!

1. How many hours a week does your child play with the iPad? How old is the child?
Got a precious baby boy who is 1 and a half. He's been on the iPad since about 1. He plays about an hour each day.

2. What type of apps does your child play with? games? education-oriented or purely for fun?
We do a bit of both. (Im a new user so I cant post links- sorry about that) We play games that have an educational slant like: At the Park, My very first app, Balloons
I also read a ton of books to him that are interactive- like all the Dr. Seuss books and Peter Rabbit PopOut series from Loudcrow Interactive.

3. How do you pick the apps and download them? Where do you find apps, just searching on the itunes stores? I scour the net for all kinds of websites and also use iTunes recommendations!

4. What is a game/app that you wish exists on the iPad targeted at your child?
Not sure... I feel like the market is getting way too saturated now. But I would love to see school textbooks become a reality on the iPad.

5. Do you usually play iPad games with your child? Would you play a collaborative game with your child? Yes of course. We play together so that I can teach him how to play. Now at only 1 year and 6 months he can play by himself and even navigate the iPad by turning it on and finding the app or book he wishes to play.

6. Are you bothered by advertisements in a game? Are there times when you are not bothered by them? No not really. I've heard it is a good revenue source for developers as well.

As far as you wanting to develop an app- I am an educator and just developed one for kids to play together. I use 10 iPads in my classroom and wanted to have a way for kids to learn vocab and interact- not just become immersed in their own device... I also didn't like that my boy as young as he is was getting completely immersed in playing a game and not interacting with the environment around him. When it comes to raising youth, this is a bad point of tech as far as I'm concerned. Children must learn how to interact with each other...so many apps don't give that opportunity. I looked at tons of apps and found a developer that created a good app and asked them to help me develop mine. (My app is called Futaba word games for kids! its for ages 3 and up and has fully customizable content) The developer I used is INKids based in Australia. The total development time took only 3 months. I'd recommend them to help you out if you're interested in making an app for kids.