One of our favourite children’s book and app publishers, Nosy Crow, will release updated versions of their award-winning storybook apps on Monday 11 June. From this date, all apps will include word-tracking technology to create highlighted read-along texts: the words turn from black to red in time with the audio reading. The multi-awarding winning 3D Fairytale apps The Three Little Pigs and Cinderella, and highly-acclaimed Bizzy Bear apps, Bizzy Bear on the Farm and the upcoming Bizzy Bear Builds a House, will all carry the new feature.
The text-highlighting feature will help to convey a relationship between the spoken and written word for pre-literate users of the apps. As Kate Wilson, Nosy Crow’s Managing Director, says: “We see reading book apps as part of a child’s education in literacy and literature. We think that, for the youngest child who does not yet have the ability to decode text, the highlighting of the text as the audio is read emphasises the connection between text and meaning, while for the older children, the highlighting of the words may help to provide a more direct scaffold to their existing ability to decode.”
App updates will be made available on iTunes from today (Monday, June 11), and Bizzy Bear Builds a House will be released on Wednesday, June 20.
By Miranda West, Kids Editor, TLP