Reading Rainbow App for iPad
Access: $9.99/month or $29.99 for 6 months. Allows up to 5 children to have their own individual profile. Requires iOS 5.1 or later. Compatible with iPad. Available at Apple App Store.
Summary: The Reading Rainbow app has a curated library with hundreds of fiction and non-fiction books for children ages 3-9. Kids travel to themed islands such as Animal Kingdom, Genius Academy (Science), Music Mountain, Awesome People and National Geographic Kids to discover books. Recommended “just for you” books are customized to child’s age and interests. There are two modes of reading (Read To Me & Read By Myself) and interactive activities in every book. LeVar Burton hosts newly produced educational video field trips with the occasional oldie from when parents originally watched. The collection is expanded weekly with new books and videos. There are online sticker rewards to motivate reading and a parent area where the books read and time spent reading can be monitored.
Connection to UDL Guidelines: The Reading Rainbow App for iPad provides affective engagement with storybooks and reading that is more interactive than printed text. The themed sections (fiction and non-fiction), as well as recommended books, allow for child specific interests to be further explored. The education videos can enrich themes. Children have choice over the books they’d like to read. Pages are swipeable, buttons are large and the layout is intuitive. The overall theme and feel of the app is safe, warm and inviting to new and emergent readers.
Reasoning: For pure affective engagement and a love of stories, it’s hard to find a better storybook app for children on the market today. The Reading Rainbow App was created to make stories engaging, interactive, and fun for children. Children have choice as they swipe through the “themed islands” to find books organized by themes that interest them. Children can select if they’d like books read to/with them or if they’d like to read independently. Pages come alive with little animations and funny sounds that the children can interact with. Short five-minute video field trips take the themes deeper, are in child friendly language and are reminiscent of the Reading Rainbow parents knew on television. There are online sticker rewards whenever a new book is completed and the overall interaction and feel of the app is safe and encouraging to young readers. Each child has an online backpack that holds up to five books. Like a library, a book needs to be returned whenever a child wants to add a new book to their backpack of five. The Reading Rainbow App is a fun and engaging support to learning to love reading, stories and information. The focus of this app is enjoyment of, and a love for, reading. Research has shown that “when kids choose what they get to read and when, their vocabulary and language skills tend to improve, as does their overall knowledge and ability to think for themselves. The Reading Rainbow app seems particularly well-suited for that kind of reading experience.” -Raphel, A. (2014). The Limits of Reading Rainbow. In The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/07/the-limits-of-reading-rainbow.html
There are plans for new service to come to the Web, mobile devices, game consoles and Internet-connected televisions, in addition to Android and set-top boxes like Apple TV and Roku, Xbox and Playstation versions that are being developed.
Summary: The Reading Rainbow app has a curated library with hundreds of fiction and non-fiction books for children ages 3-9. Kids travel to themed islands such as Animal Kingdom, Genius Academy (Science), Music Mountain, Awesome People and National Geographic Kids to discover books. Recommended “just for you” books are customized to child’s age and interests. There are two modes of reading (Read To Me & Read By Myself) and interactive activities in every book. LeVar Burton hosts newly produced educational video field trips with the occasional oldie from when parents originally watched. The collection is expanded weekly with new books and videos. There are online sticker rewards to motivate reading and a parent area where the books read and time spent reading can be monitored.
Connection to UDL Guidelines: The Reading Rainbow App for iPad provides affective engagement with storybooks and reading that is more interactive than printed text. The themed sections (fiction and non-fiction), as well as recommended books, allow for child specific interests to be further explored. The education videos can enrich themes. Children have choice over the books they’d like to read. Pages are swipeable, buttons are large and the layout is intuitive. The overall theme and feel of the app is safe, warm and inviting to new and emergent readers.
Reasoning: For pure affective engagement and a love of stories, it’s hard to find a better storybook app for children on the market today. The Reading Rainbow App was created to make stories engaging, interactive, and fun for children. Children have choice as they swipe through the “themed islands” to find books organized by themes that interest them. Children can select if they’d like books read to/with them or if they’d like to read independently. Pages come alive with little animations and funny sounds that the children can interact with. Short five-minute video field trips take the themes deeper, are in child friendly language and are reminiscent of the Reading Rainbow parents knew on television. There are online sticker rewards whenever a new book is completed and the overall interaction and feel of the app is safe and encouraging to young readers. Each child has an online backpack that holds up to five books. Like a library, a book needs to be returned whenever a child wants to add a new book to their backpack of five. The Reading Rainbow App is a fun and engaging support to learning to love reading, stories and information. The focus of this app is enjoyment of, and a love for, reading. Research has shown that “when kids choose what they get to read and when, their vocabulary and language skills tend to improve, as does their overall knowledge and ability to think for themselves. The Reading Rainbow app seems particularly well-suited for that kind of reading experience.” -Raphel, A. (2014). The Limits of Reading Rainbow. In The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/07/the-limits-of-reading-rainbow.html
There are plans for new service to come to the Web, mobile devices, game consoles and Internet-connected televisions, in addition to Android and set-top boxes like Apple TV and Roku, Xbox and Playstation versions that are being developed.
Critique of the tool: The cost of the Reading Rainbow App is its biggest constraint. I could not find any information on price-breaks for schools although there are rumours of future plans to make it available for free to schools with low-income families.
Complete lines are highlighted when “Read to Me” is selected. The app would be stronger if there was also a function that highlighted the individual words being read to the child.
Another constraint is that because the pages are all interactive, a child cannot read along with their finger by tracking the words they are reading.
Affordances include the slick and intuitive design, that it’s an engaging, fun and entertaining app to interact with, that there are hundreds of books to choose from in themed areas, which also include engaging videos. The nostalgia aspect cannot be overlooked as the theme music takes parents back to their own childhood.
Complete lines are highlighted when “Read to Me” is selected. The app would be stronger if there was also a function that highlighted the individual words being read to the child.
Another constraint is that because the pages are all interactive, a child cannot read along with their finger by tracking the words they are reading.
Affordances include the slick and intuitive design, that it’s an engaging, fun and entertaining app to interact with, that there are hundreds of books to choose from in themed areas, which also include engaging videos. The nostalgia aspect cannot be overlooked as the theme music takes parents back to their own childhood.