Angry Birds Game Online: App Creator Develops 'Angry Birds Playground' Education Program to Promote Learning
Finland is already known for having the highest quality of life in the world, despite suffering through intense cold spells and lengthy periods of darkness.
Now one of the country's most well-known companies, Rovio Entertainment is tackling a worldwide issue. It wants to improve early childhood education by releasing an app called Angry Birds Playground.
Based off of the wildly popular Angry Birds series (where the players objective is to send birds flying through breakable obstacles) the new venture is specifically made for children between the ages of 3 and 6.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, Angry Birds Playground is a fully-featured app that, while fun to use, is meant to engage children with "math, science, music, language arts, and physical education" exercises.
Sanna Lukander, Rovio's vice president of learning and book publishing, sat down with the Guardian to talk about the wide reaching implications of this app.
"It's not just games we're talking about here: it's a full 360-degree approach to learning, where games are just one part of it. It's not learning by sitting down and playing with a digital device," he said. "There's a real substance to it, and a healthy balance between rest, play and work. We feel it's necessary to talk about healthy nutrition and physical exercise, as part of this approach to learning, balance and wellbeing."
Meanwhile, the app has a staunch advocate in Finnish Minister of Education Krista Kiuru.
"We have to wake them up in a different way," she stated.
"We don't want schools to be like airlines: 'Please turn off all your digital devices.' Then after seven hours, you can get them back again," she went on to say.
Currently the app is available only in China and Finland. A version of the app was shown off in the Finnish Embassy in Washington, D.C. earlier this week.
A U.S. release date has not yet been announced.
What do you think of Rovio's efforts to make school a more fun and engaging learning institution? Do you think that smartphone and tablet apps (and electronics as a whole) have the power to engage children in the learning process like never before? Let us know in the comments section below.
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