Spelling Monster » Uncategorized

Holiday Updates.

Tracie Davis — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 14:13:27 +0000

First I would like to say thank you to all our supporters. Hope everyone that celebrates Thanksgiving had a good one, for everyone who doesn’t I hope you enjoyed your day. We have reached almost 25,000 downloads, and wouldn’t have without you. We had a great turn out for our Thanksgiving and Black Friday sale. It is so awesome to wake up, check analytics and see numbers in the thousands for the day. We were going to offer Spelling Monster free for Christmas and the day after but we received an e-mail from Apple stating that would be shut down more or less those days so no go. Don’t worry we are discussing other dates. I have to admit though I am really disappointed about this. We are undecided as whether to run it free on amazon for those days still.

Ok, on to what we are working on. We are trying to have an update before Christmas. Depending on your persecutive it will be big or small. For us and a lot of requesters it will be big. This update will have the voice feature added, so you will be able to hear the word as well as see it. We are hoping to also include a practice test, and 2 games, but times a ticking and we are still working on the voice feature. It’s usually easy for us buckle down when we get off work and work on Spelling Monster in the winter, it’s cold and gets dark so early. Except the holiday’s, where it’s really difficult. So much is going on with family and our children. So progress has slowed, but don’t worry if the practice test and 2 games don’t make it in this update they will be on the next update in January/February. We have had a decent amount of our user’s to upgrade to 2.0 but not everybody. You guys don’t know what you’re missing it’s a great update, with lots of UI upgrades. Ok well this is kinda of a short update. I think I am going to try shorter updates more often and see it goes. Hope everyone has a great holiday.

Divergent Spelling

Tracie Davis — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 11:00:44 +0000

Lets talk about divergent spelling also known as sensational spelling. Don’t know what this is?

Well simply put divergent spelling is the deliberate misspelling or non standard alternative to a spelling of a word. Why would you purposely misspell a word?

Well divergent spelling is a popular advertising technique. A lot of companies big and small use this. An example of divergent spelling would be Dunkin’ Donuts, Krispy Kreme, or Froot Loops. The misspelling are used to attract attention or to render a trademark, more suggestive then merely descriptive. You can find these types of misspellings everywhere from branding, pop culture, on the internet, and even in books. Though these types of spellings are imbedded in our culture I wonder how it affects young children. Explaining these “exceptions” can be difficult, but teaching when these exceptions are acceptable can be much more difficult.

When my daughters were small explaining that Krispy Kreme is not the proper spelling of these words individually was interesting. Not really knowing how exactly to explain why it is acceptable to misspell a word in this context is how I came to research divergent spelling. Then I changed my approach now we have fun games finding fun spellings of common words we know.

The Era of a Digital Babysitter

Tracie Davis — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 11:00:35 +0000

I stumbled upon an interesting article today. The name of the article? Are Young Children’s Apps Babysitters for the Digital Age. The article was nice with a great infographic. In this article the company did their own survey with-in their customer base. They wanted to find out a few things.

To start with they found out that moms are the main purchasers for their children’s apps. With a whopping 88% of purchases being made by women. Most of these women being between the age of 25-35. They also found out that 53% of children sometimes do play alone but that 39% play with their parent. Only about 9% play with a sibling. They also wanted to get to get a sense of when parents were letting their kids play with apps. As it turns out, 53% of parents let kids play with devices whenever the kids ask, just like any other favorite toy. 22% of parents let kids play when parents need a distraction. 18% of parents use apps when they want to create a learning experience for their children, and 17% when parents are driving. Based on this data, they believe that while keeping kids occupied is an important driver, learning and general play are also reasons to allow children to engage with mobile devices.

All of this got me thinking. Where do I as a parent fit into these stats? Do I use technology as a digital babysitter? Leave us a comment tell us what you think.