I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while.
For the past year, Gus and I have had one heck of time exploring a ‘kid-safe’ tablet application called Zoodles. We’ve watched Elmo dance and sing, Jason Mraz on YouTube.com and even interacted with puzzles, games and drawings.
Zoodles is a smart idea. The builders of Zoodles took on one big task that my other tablet applications seem to suffer from….multi-touch screen mistakes. The problem stems from apps like NetFlix or YouTube itself. Everything is fine until you touch it. One slide of the finger on NetFlix and the movie pauses. Venture further and it exits. Very frustrating for a toddler and for the parent.
Zoodles utilizes the ‘lock’ feature disabling certain system calls. It’s a brilliant idea and even though they didn’t create it they provided youngster specific information in a non-intrusive manner.
As I will show in a picture below, it can provide many facets of the imagination including video sing-a-longs, counting games and even finger painting. So, the genius part is that it is all tracked to show progress.
Every week I get an email that gives me clear and precise data on the subject matter of the games and selections made. Everything from Amount of Time spent on Cognitive Development (see below) to Life Skills. It will even send you small thumbnails of the drawings that have been made.
To get to the point, Zoodles has been a big part of our life allowing my son to learn, have fun and use the tablet ‘like dada’. It gives him great confidence when he is able to pop the virtual bubbles or catch all the monkeys. I do believe it has been a development tool that has been unparalleled to most other devices.
I highly recommend anyone out there to grab this download and try it yourself. Within a few minutes, you can be enjoying hundreds of thousands pre-screened activities for your child that you can monitor.
