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!

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

Cheers,
- Brad

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!

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.