omg – Harold & the Purple Crayon app!!

I just discovered this iPad 2 item while working with a colleague today on eBooks for her grade three class.  We started looking a few weeks ago for good stories to read and be read by her class, and I immediately thought of this modern classic by Crockett Johnson.  I still have vivid childhood memories of reading about the boy creating his nighttime world with a purple crayon, and even remember wondering what it would be like to be able to draw something on a page that Harold could interact with.  Now there is an app that does it.  It is almost as if someone read my mind and designed this engaging app for iPads – wish there were some royalties involved in thinking up ideas!

After uploading the Lite version, we tried the tutorial which allowed us to trace shapes without worrying about staying within the shapes’ boundaries, to touch objects to hear them named, and to have the story read out for us. Not sure what other goodies the full version has ($6.99 CDN isn’t too steep a price to find out, as the hardcover book was about $18 when I was last in Chapters), but we’ll see how much her students enjoy the lite version first.  We are also hoping that when iCloud is installed, there will be an important wireless link between the iPad and digital video projector so that storytime can be more of a multimedia event, rather than getting the class to crowd around the iPad.  If anyone has useful tips for wirelessly connecting tablets to projectors, please post a reply.

 

Posted in: Week 06: eBooks