Article on Wired.com: 2011: Second Wave of Children’s Mobile Apps Is Coming
Attributes of a Second-Wave Educational App
- The app can only exist on the mobile device.
- The app maximizes the opportunities presented by the technical capacity of the mobile device.
- It allows children to create.
- It connects children to each other and to the outside world.
- It looks beautiful.
Each of those points is explored in more detail in the article itself so you should read it. It also contains links to some apps which epitomise each point.
These decisions are much harder to implement than any of the arguments about platform or technology used. You’ll find it difficult to implement in non-native technologies (Flash, HTML) because they’re sufficiently abstracted from the platforms that they cannot take advantage of the plethora of unique sensors and attributes of each device. You’ll need to do this in native code.
Each challenge will require a separate skillset to be implemented. A chance meeting with Conann Fitzpatrick, who, along with Greg Maguire, is running a Maya course in the Belfast Campus of the University of Ulster today, got us talking about the different skillsets* which are needed to bring an animation or a game to fruition.
Whether the end result is to entertain, to instruct, to guide or to distract, the principles, the core skills are the same. We have already built considerable capability in platforms, in creativity, in new technologies and Northern Ireland has always been quick to adopt the new and shiny. Our weakness has traditionally been working together. Luckily, with Digital Circle, that’s a thing of the past.
*an example is rotoscoping. A lot of people with skills in Photoshop and the time to spend on it, could become good at this. And it’s one of the skillsets that an animation studio would need. So what’s stopping them?