You may be wondering if allowing your $300 device in the hands of a three-year old is the wisest of moves. And, this I often wonder myself, as I watch my son shaking my iPhone rather violently to get the iGlowStick to light up — a definite fear of seeing your phone sail across the room removes some of the thrills for the parents. However, for the kids, they love it!

Here are some really fun apps for kids that build on an original post I wrote some time back: “Kid-friendly iPhone and iPod Touch“. I added “EV” for “Education Value” (how educational it is) and “PV” for Play Value (how interactive and fun it is). As any parent with active kids will tell you, getting 10 minute breaks that keep your son or daughter entertained, can make a huge difference. It’s wonderful if the app is educational too, but at least it has to have good, clean fun.

Educational:

Tickle Tap Apps have a series of very gentle learning apps for your toddler. CountCaddy ($1.99)
is a cat that helps kids with counting, while Field Flier ($1.99) is more free-form; allowing your child to help the birdy explore his surroundings while learning verbs. Both are well done, calming, and good for younger children (under 4). (Good support from the company also.) EV= high, PV = good

EliasABC and EliasZoo (was free, now $1.99 each) — simple, clean graphic and easy movement to help toddlers learn either ABCs or animal sounds. EV = high, PV = good

FeedMe (free) — Living in Hawaii, you know how important other languages are. Feedme is available in different languages, including Japanese. Interactive and educational, my son really enjoyed playing it with his mom. EV = good, PV = good

Number Fun Time (free) — fun app for kids to learn numbers. “Where is number four?” EV = good, PV = good

iWriteWords (lite/free, $1.99) — very good way to help kids learn how to write and spell words. Colorful, entertaining, and encouraging. Well worth $2 to watch your child learning how to write letters on his own! EV = high, PV = high

Monkey Preschool Lunchbox ($.99) — A funny, happy monkey teaches kids colors, counting, letters and more. My son really likes this one; very interactive and educational, plus he gets “stickers” for completing sections correctly. EV = high, PV = high

Pre-K Safari (lite/free, .99) – kids learn about the animals in the Serengeti while studying ABCs. EV = high, PV = good

Fun:

iGlowStick (free/pro $.99) — this is just a lot of fun, pull the two corners of the stick to break it, then shake it, and watch it glow or animate. Fire, snow, bats, and more are included in the pro version. My son loves showing this one off to others. EV = questionable, PV = high

Cybertoy – Transformers ($1.99) –
for transformer fans — for $2 your child can convert these virtual robots into cars or trucks, have them dance to music, or shoot lasers. EV = none/nada, PV = good

Lego Photo (free) — not sure if this is for kids or geeky parents, but we both like it. Take photos and have them “lego-ized”. EV = low, PV = good

SpongeBob Tickler Lite (free) — poke or stretch him and SpongeBob will make funny sounds. Bit annoying to parents, entertaining for kids. EV = none, PV = high

TalkingCarl (.99) — much like the above SpongeBob — poke and stretch Carl for funny sounds. Plus, he’ll repeat what your child says in a funny voice. EV = none, PV = high

JumbaluZoo (free) — mix and match colorful animal characters. EV = low, PV = good

Having a couple of these on your iPhone or iPod Touch can mean turning “wait time” into “play time”. And, even if you don’t have kids, pulling one of these out for your nephew or niece can mean you might actually be able to finish a sentence with them around.

If you’re interested in learning about other cool iPhone apps, either for kids for adults, let HMAUS know; (members can sign in and add comments, or, just contact us). We could even provide a MacLearn on the iPhone to demo some of these, if interested.

Related posts by author:

• Kid-friendly iPhone and iPod Touch: Tips on setting up your iPhone or iPod Touch for your child
• Zen Apps for iPhone/iPod Touch: Apps to help you keep your cool and release some stress

Mactoberfest was, for the first time, combined with Leeward Community College’s new Geek Day on October 24th.  It was a great idea, but there was a major problem – it was too short! There were 17 presentations in 5 hours and each was worth participating in. The sessions should have been strung out sequentially so you could attend all of them. Seventeen hours later . . . you’d be done!

But choices had to be made and about 120 good folks did that! The HMAUS sponsored talks were standing room only!  Rolf Nordahl presented Mac 101 for newbies and switchers. Gregg Kamei presented iPhoto, and Mark McMahon handled iTunes, iPod and iPhone. Burt Lum and Ryan Ozawa closed the day in the HMAUS track with Social Media 101.

LCC’s Digital Media faculty and students presented Illustrator, Flash, Alice a 3D modeling program, Ning for making a free website, Picnik for online photo editing, home security and iApp development. They were hands-on but aimed at the beginner.  Meanhile students and staff did demonstrations on Voice Thread, making a Hawaiian tattoo, drawing an anime character and Dreamweaver for artists and displayed their work.

As always we had door prizes and the top prizes were an 8 GB iPod Nano with video, a $65 backpack and a watercolor print donated by HMAUSer Candace Fernander. Mac Mouse Club and O’Reilly Books donated books and other prizes.

A big mahalo goes to our great presenters and volunteers, to LCC’s Kathleen Cabral and Cindy Martin who coordinated and marketed the day, to Christian, his faculty and the Digital Media student who set up, cleaned up, assisted and did presentations!  Good job!

Read what HMAUSers had to say.  
What stood out for you?

Marcy and Bob Katz on Social Media 101 with Burt and Ryan. “What stuck for Bob was that he learned to be careful of what you say on a social media site.  I learned that I don’t really like any of them and don’t need them in my life right now, unless I want to know what is going on in the lives of my two daughters.  It was a well presented and organized presentation…Burt and Ryan zeroed in on addressing issues from the audience and showed and told us what the differences were between social media sites.”

Mark McMahon shared this great iTunes/iPod tip. iSquintis is a free online service that allows you to convert AVI type files you might have into smaller files perfect for your iPod Touch screen. It’s a free program that adds the converted file directly into iTunes for easy storage and syncing. http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19769

Adrienne Palmer went to the iPhone app development session taught by Blanca Polo of LCC. “The tip that stuck in my mind the most was that programmers need to have a lot of patience.” With 65,000 apps as of this August and over a billion downloads, this advice makes sense. Kelvin Kakugawa shared one of his latest app with the group! Go Kelvin!

Adrienne also went to Creating Tattoos with Photoshop and Illustrator. “The tip that stuck in my mind the most was: that it’s best to draw in Illustrator and output into Photosåhop.” Illustrator is a vector drawing program which does a great job on creating objects that can be made as tiny or as big as you like without losing its sharpness. Photoshop then can add shading and effects to finish off the image. LCC has a huge Wacom digital pad that serves as both the drawing surface and computer desktop. Cool.

Cynthia Oshiro “…filmmaker Tom Boyle talked about film, technology, and Hawai’i.   A Punahou classmate of Barack Obama, Boyle shared his YouTube commentary on Obama’s family background. He also screened the trailer to his latest film, Truth or Dare, a horror film . . . with scenes set in Honolulu cemeteries and haunts. The film was shot with a Red One digital camera and edited with Final Cut Pro.”

Marie Kunimura went to Mac 101. “Rolf gave a history of the development of OS X interwoven with a discussion of the Preferences in OS X which helped a newbie or switcher like me understand how to customize a Mac and install peripherals.”

Marie was so convinced by Gregg’s iPhoto workshop that she went home and spent some money. “I learned that iPhoto is doable for me. I ordered iLife just for iPhoto. I liked the book making capability, and the easy photo enhancement. Easier than Photoshop Elements and suits my needs.”

Ron Albu went for the big gun apps. In “Animate Yourself! Daniel Boulos, a LCC Faculty, created a project where students used the iSight camera to take a photo. Then we edited the photo for size and copied and inserted it into a premade Flash animation. It was a fairly easy project which demonstrated how Mac programs work together to create a finished product. Marcy and I enjoyed helping each other figure out the finer points and also were able to save our projects to our MobileMe accounts. The student assistants were very friendly and helpful.” By the way, did you know Daniel was an animator for Walt Disney, Dreamworks and Warner Brothers? Cool, huh?

Ron Albu also really enjoyed Drawing with Adobe Illustrator by Alan Leitner of LCC. “He put a lot of work into creating a project we could whip through with NO experience using Illustrator. He had a sample project and had us basically connect the dots. As one who feels he has no artistic talent, I had a lot of fun. Again, the student assistants were very helpful and there was a lot of neighborly cooperation in working on our projects. I was impressed with what can be done. If you liked high school geometry, you would have liked this project. I will attach my product even though it is not a finished work of art, but merely an example of what can be done in 45 minutes.”

It was a good day, a very good day!

Read the story here.