Bottom Line: A very useful social studies app for homeschoolers and teachers. Not a game, but educational vignettes of children from different countries which give a peek into their everyday life.
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Touchable Earth was created by Tudor Clee and his team at Touchable Earth Inc, and is a very different type of app compared to the majority of the other kids' apps in the app store. It reminds me of the (sometimes dull) videos that we used to watch in primary school Social Studies class, and even though there is no age specification, the content would probably best be absorbed by later elementary and older children.
It is an educational app - that is, not game-based - and it’s more likely to be of the most use in a classroom, or homeschool situation, than as an incidental learning tool. This is probably not an app that you can hand over and hope not to see your child for 15 minutes; it’s not engaging enough for that. But what it is is a very vivid window into the lives of children from different cultures.
There are six different countries explored within the app - Nepal, South Africa, Kurdistan, India, China and Romania - but only Nepal is unlocked for the initial download cost. Each additional country costs $0.99 individually or $3.99 to unlock all current content. This in itself was off-putting to me initially, but the sheer quantity of content for Nepal alone is worth the download cost and you can then decide whether you wish to explore some of the other modules available.
The developer’s modus operandi is to have ‘kids teaching kids’ about their different way of life, and each country module is broken up into sections such as Our Culture, Our Family, Our School, Let’s Learn and more. Each section has a high quality video featuring an enthusiastic child describing something about their country, culture, everyday life, in a chatty format that makes you feel as though you are being spoken to in person. There is the option to have a transcript displayed as you listen, which is extremely helpful, because even though these children do a wonderful job in saying their pieces, some of them speak very quickly and exuberantly in heavily accented english. There are also native words interspersed with the english, and to have this new vocabulary visually available is really handy.
This is not a bells and whistles type of app and the format is very basic, but there is so much information involved in the videos that make up the mainstay, that every viewer will get more than just a peek into the everyday life of children in some very different countries to our own. What surprised me the most though, was the quiz at the end. Even though there is a huge amount of information imparted in each module, the quiz at the end consisted of only three questions, and these three questions stay the same each time, though they are ordered differently. With the videos being so carefully and thoughtfully prepared and presented, I was disappointed that the developers included such an ineffectual quiz.
There is the ability to save three users within the app. This is handy as each user can ‘star’ particular videos that take his/her fancy, or for future reference. And as I envisage this app being used as a teaching tool, having additional users is very useful.
Any teacher can teach their class about a country’s flag, language, cultural dress etc through pictures and text, but I think that the personal feel of the videos in Touchable Earth will really help content stick. From a multicultural and ‘crossing borders’ point of view, this app demonstrates a wide diversity in a friendly and approachable format. I think that teachers and homeschoolers will find this very useful in their curriculum.
Eleanor Holland likes to travel, but has 5 star tastes. She does not, unfortunately, have a 5 star income. Therefore, she does not travel. Touchable Earth paid a priority review fee to have this app posted in a expedited manner.
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