Pocket Consoles Are Latest Educational Toys

A new generation of hand-held electronics have entered the children's educational toy and game market. By James Tweedie Besides Nintendo's DS and Sony's Playstation Portable (PSP), hand-held gadgets for instance cellphones, Apple iPods and readers (characterised by Apple's iPhone, iPod and iPad ranges) have hitherto been adapted for and marketed to adults and teens. Now a fresh generation of pocket consoles happen to be launched tailored for children, including Fisher-Price's XL Learning System, Leapfrog's Leapster Explorer and VTech's MobiGo. Available in Green or Pink, Leapster carries a touch-screen display and built-in stylus, and retails at under 40. Directed at children from toddler and preschool age to nine years old, Leapster features educational games covering subjects from art and music to geography and maths. Games can be found in the sort of slot-in 64 Megabyte cartridges, but you may buy and download software 'apps' called 'Leaplets' from an online shop by connecting the device, with its 512Mb internal storage memory, with a PC or Mac computer. Leaplets appear in various forms: e-books to teach vocabulary and spelling, videos to train counting, language flash cards, and games. Cartridge games include Mr Pencil Saves Doodleburg, a kind of electronic children's craft kit game based around drawing, writing letters, numbers and shapes. Disney Princess: Pop-Up Story Adventure teaches linguistic phonics skills, story comprehension and musical pitch. The Jewel Train Leaplet teaches logic and reasoning skills by challenging kids to patch together a train set to arrive at a certain destination. Teenagers will require to Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which seems to work geometry to fractions in to the action. Other games include popular franchises Dora the Explorer and Toy Story 3. MobiGo, which comes with a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a touch-screen display retails for 50. It features a headphone socket for no-noise fun, but be warned it operates on 4 AA batteries, so invest in rechargeable unless you want to spend a fortune. Game cartridges select 17 along with the device can take up to four downloadable educational mini-games, many of which you must buy. Cartridge titles include Dora the Explorer, Toy Story 3 and Mr Men and Little Miss, but the console is sold with the six-game Touch & Learn Game Pack. Touch and Learn includes Wild Fun, where kids must opt for the odd one from a set of animals displayed on the screen. In Space Challenge, players tap on spaceships to try and do number sequences and addition problems. Shooting range uses the laptop keyboard to type letters matching those on cardboard duck targets. Ice Escape is usually a logical chidren's puzzle game where the player moves ice blocks to manufacture a bridge for just a little penguin. In Fantastic Forest, kids help a squirrel leap from tree to tree by drawing lines and geometric shapes on the watch's screen, when it's in Music Maestro players improve music by tapping on the screen.

Jefri Hilda @ 10:29 PM

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