See what Alexa can do
My sons' family moved near me recently and I was dismayed to find the kids were 1 - 2 grade levels behind in school. The oldest two, a 4th and 3rd grader, were both at a beginning 2nd grade reading level (thanks West Palm Beach schools!). The younger twins, starting kindergarten a couple of weeks ago, didn't know their alphabet or numbers (their working parents had paid a government subsidized Pre-K school to not do that over the summer). Their parents said they knew their ABC's but all they could do was sing the ABC song; if you pointed at a letter and asked which one it was they had no clue what I was asking. "What's a letter?" They didn't know one from the other, much less how to write them. (Yes, parents, you are responsible for your kids education, not the schools. Enough said.)
As a former college professor, who taught how to integrate technology in a teacher training program, with 90 graduate units in education under my belt, I had to intercede. I started reading sessions after school with the older two kids where I used my older Kindle and my two Samsung Galaxy Tablets, a 7" and a 10", to share reading the same book as they took turns reading out loud while I followed along to give support as needed.
I was delighted to stumble over the Kindle Reader "Wordwise" feature that let's the kids touch a pre-selected difficult word and both see the definition and hear the pronunciation. (I hope eventually they can touch any word and have the same feature.) After an hour of reading I let them play with a couple of word games and they competed with each other to get higher scores. Little did I know that the games came with the option of "buying" hints to accelerate their scores -- until two $35 charges showed up on my credit card statement. While I was thrilled to see how engaged the kids were with the learning games I realized I needed more control over the tablets.
After some research I discovered the Kindles have both parental controls, and another layer of protection through the Kindle app, "FreeTime" (not available on the Samsung Tabs). AND Kindle has a "family package" subscription where I can share apps with 4 tablets plus two parent units. I bought four Fire 7s, along with screen protector film, cute foam protector cases with built in stand flaps, and over the ear head phones.
Yes, it took hours to set them all up. But it was easy and intuitive as I tweaked so many options: the time of day they could use the Kindle, how much time they have to use each media type from the "education" domain before they can play entertainment media, the amount of time they can use it altogether, both weekdays and weekends. FreeTime categorizes all available media as either educational or entertainment. You can set a time limit on each of the media types, e.g., apps/games, books, audible audio, and video, so that all of the educationally categorized media have to be viewed for your set time before the entertainment apps can be seen. I set up 1 hour of each media type with unlimited screen time so if they actually do get in 4 hours of learning in a given day they can play, especially on the weekend.
I have yet to view the educationally classified videos or audio content, so I may change my mind, but at the moment I would like to see the option to not allow videos or Audible as I anticipate it will eventually require maintenance time to liberate memory. There is a Storage management option that will archive unused apps and even let you use a SD card (not included) but I anticipate memory will periodically need to be manually cleared as well. I would also like to be able to only display on their home page the apps that I select for them. The number of available media on their home page, even if educational, are a constant distraction for them that requires me to supervise their use and redirect them back to the apps I selected that focus on the skills I want them to practice.
As I observed one of the twins use a Kindle (I hadn't tweaked yet) for the first time I was almost amused to find she could spend a seemingly unlimited amount of time with (to me) a mind numbingly boring "construction" app that simply pushed a donkey up a pile of bricks, made him jump down, and build another pile of bricks, jump down, etc. I would love to see what brain waves and endorphins were exercised in that app as she was almost addicted by the process. Needless to say, I had to pull her away from that app and threaten to take the Kindle away if she didn't go back to one of the letters or numbers apps I had selected for her. Fortunately she would rather do the educational games than watch TV or anything else. WOW!
Additional options let me select content by age appropriateness. The 4th grader wanted to play a kindergarten game her sister was playing so I had to expand the age setting in her profile to encompass the lower grade apps. Perhaps that's a better idea as the older kids can strengthen or even learn skills they didn't pick up in the earlier grades.
Right below that option is my favorite selection, "Enable In-App Purchasing". Off.
Bottom line - what an amazing resource for parents. If I had my way every kid in every school would have one.
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