According to a survey, an average child spends between one and two hours on their mobile phones or tabs every day. As a parent, you may have often brooded over this fact. Let’s face it, there’s no escaping technology since the millennium. Kids grow up with the internet!
While it is not realistic to keep your child completely free of screen time, there are always ways to regulate how that time is being used. And the no-brainer, the simplest way is the Learning Apps. Learning apps take the mind-numbing games and the features of social media that children are most into and turn them into engaging content.
Education - the basic demand of a parent, entertainment - the basic demand of a child, and learning apps have a perfect blend of both - Edutainment!
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Here are a few points you could consider before handing out your mobile phones to your kids:
1. Has Easy Access
There’s hardly any household without smartphones these days. Since most learning apps can be installed on mobile phones, children have easy access to content anytime and anywhere in the world. Unlike traditional books and computers, they are not hard to pack and carry.
With easy access, comes the convenience to pick up or continue your learning at a time and place of your choice and comfort. When it comes to learning with apps, you don’t have to press pause just because you got to step out!
2. Distraction
Mobile learning creates a lot of distractions. You hand your phone to your child to learn, but chances are they end up using social media, chatting, or even just playing games they shouldn’t be. Easy access to learning can extend to anything on the internet which might not be kid-friendly or even dangerous.
So make sure the learning app you are using is ad-free and distraction-free. Some learning apps also come with a screen-lock feature that locks the phone when the child exits the app, to help tackle this problem better.
3. Is Packed With a Wide Variety of Content
Books are an amazing resource for education, true. But they often tend to be not engaging enough, especially for toddlers, because there is no interaction and variety. One book tends for one purpose only.
Young children need variety and are more attracted to visual mediums that encourage active involvement like Videos, Games, Songs, Rhymes, and Interactive Quizzes… learning apps pack a wide variety of content formats for your child to pick from!
4. Hardware / Software Issues
With all the changing trends in the field of technology, it’s hard to say when a certain software can go obsolete. Your child might be used to certain features of your phone and feel comfortable using them to learn, but the moment there is an update or you change your device altogether, the child feels lost.
This might lead to frustrations in young nonadaptive minds, making them inadvertently closed to the idea of learning through devices.
5. Makes Progress Tracking Easy For Parents
As parents, one of the main concerns is not being able to track their child's educational progress. Learning apps have the learning journey mapped out making it very very easy for parents to see where their child stands! With easy and regular tracking, parents know where their child is excelling, and where they could use a little help, and push them to focus on concepts they are falling a little behind on.
Although, progress-based learning might sometimes lead to unhealthy expectations, resulting in unnecessary pressure on young minds. Every child has their own pace. One needs to be mindful and let the child learn at their own pace.
Conclusion:
Learning apps definitely lean toward being a boon in this technology-driven world but like everything, it certainly comes with their own negative edge.
Even the most interactive learning apps are not a substitute for real life. It’s important that young children spend time socialising, moving around, and learning how to interact with the world around them. So make sure your child has a balance of both worlds!
With the right usage, high-quality, interactive, and age-appropriate apps can help children learn and expand their cognitive skills. Learning apps can be a powerful tool for the holistic development of young minds and ToonDemy is one such tool. Try out to know more!