Abstract: iPad has really changed the rules of the game in the field of education, has improved teachers’ teaching methods and has increased students’ learning efficiency and depth. Mobile-based children’s games should be developed for different needs of children and parents.
Editor’s Note: This script is based on what Lin Xinglu, founder of MobEdu, shared in Issue 59 of Greek Park. The event’s theme is how we can learn in the future.
Video of speech: http://events.geekpark.net/videos/7ead95a5-6f17-472e-9fc4-8da27f79cdce
Speaker’s Introduction: Lin Xinglu is a post-80s who has rich working experiences in IT industry. He joined InfoHighway at the age of 17, later hopped to China Motion, Hi-tech Wealth, etc. In 2000, he co-developed DoNews together with Liu Ren. Then he participated in founding many Internet companies with Cai Wensheng. He co-founded and was appointed as CTO of 265.com, which was sold to Google in 2007.
Lin began to pay attention to the field of children’s education in 2010, and has developed 78 applications. His first launched online children’s application was called Children’s Animal World, which was dedicated to his one-year-old daughter. Later he extended to edutainment, as well as kindergarten-related products. Therefore, his team developed some DIY card games, and released more than 100 children’s online picture book applications last year after 10,000 hours’ efforts. It enables children to participate in story editing in the process of reading. And their parents can record stories ahead of time on business trips.
At present, the main product of MobEdu, Children’s World, has received 10 million downloads without publicity. Children’s World is a childen’s browser that is like a combination of iTunes and App Store and You Tube. The screened content will be put on the platform to solve the problem that bothers parents to find good materials.
Different levels’ users and their needs
MobEdu currently develops products for children aged from 0 to 6. Their products are interesting, personalized and easy to operate. Lin found that different users at different levels would have various needs in the platform.
For parents, they hope there could be functions like addiction prevention, parental control and parent-child interaction. Thus, MobEdu sets up boot access in iOS system, which will lock an application in a single application and it won’t damage the iPhone. In Android system, they generally make children’s locks or children’s desktop improvements.
They conclude the mentality of developing products for children, which starts from the parents’ mode to ensure the safety of children’s receiving information, and then extends. Take children’s future intellectual pet toy as an example, there should be three commonalities no matter in developing intellectual toys or children’s education:
Safe. Parents hope that it’s a safe product for their children.
Interesting. It should be appealing to children and they won’t throw it away in a few days.
Beneficial. Parents want it to be helpful for their children to learn some knowledge.
Change of Internet Ecology
The development of sensors and high-performance intelligent terminals has brought about a new revolution. The emergence of iPhone in 2007 was the watershed of smart products. In 2000, the Internet terminal equipment was not mature, the Internet ecosystem was not perfect, and the network environment was very poor. But when the network environment of 2.5G was not good enough, WiFi came into being, which gave a chance for the explosion of iPhone’s market, and for the improvement of mobile terminals, and for the trend of the combination of hardware and software. With maturity of intelligent terminals, great changes have taken place in human-computer interaction.
In 2013, global toy sales reached 92.5 billion dollars, and Activision Blizzard sold 1.75 billion applicant toys related to game Pads, with revenues reaching 2 billion dollars. In the same year, MobEdu began to make micro-innovations in smart toys. They put mobile phone into fluffed toys, which turned the toys into smart robots that can sing rhymes and tell stories. It gives children good company and safe interactions from toys.
The appearance of iPad makes Internet education irreversible
Lin believes that traditional thinking hinders the innovation of the Internet in the field of education, but the phenomenon will gradually change. Since 2014, digital education has been fully implemented in Korea, and many schools in the United States have purchased large quantities of iPads. iPad has significantly changed the rules of the game in the field of education, has improved teachers’ teaching methods and has increased students’ learning efficiency and depth.
You will find that a one-year-old child can operate an iPad naturally. iPad will become a vital tool for future platforms, which we should not exclude cause it will be a irresistible trend.
There have been many apps for children’s learning about programming development in other countries. Robot Turtles can let four to seven years’ olds learn programming language and hardware knowledge. While Hello Ruby make the process of leaning programming into a electronic picture book by combining the use of iPads. It’s easier for children to understand the logic of programming.
From: Geek Park (May 17, 2014)