How to fight the surplus of technology during kids days? How to avoid all the time they spent in front of a tablet? How to make the moment of play both active and educational? These could be three of many questions that the designers at frog asked themselves in developing Yibu, a wooden toy set to approach technology.
Nowadays the implementation of technology into medical environment is an hot topic, like the one of collaboration between robotics and toy design to service disability. There are plenty of case studies to demonstrate how progress in these fields is run by enlightened minds and by project teams made by people with different and sometimes opposite backgrounds. Most of times, exactly for this reason, they reach unexpected results.
We live in a world where technology breakthrough run fast, so we asked ourselves how toy designers can use technology to educate. New technologies for the users change, and often simplify, the way in which we approach our daily reality and not only. Among many sectors involved there’s also the education: school is slowly leaving its skin made out of books, exams and memorization to wear the one of new ways of teaching, often based on learning by doing.
The incresing use of technology in our daily lifes is changing consumers behaviour, generating a thin line between the physical and virtual world, giving place to a new sector of toy innovation among analogic and digital.
A computer for kids can be something that could be difficult to figure out. Ok, think about something saying to you: “Hello! I’m KANO. Thanks for bringing me to life. What should I call you?”. This is the first sentence that the Kano computer says. Kano is a DIY computer kit designed to help kids assemble a computer and learn basic coding skills.
What’s the reason? Today, children grow up surrounded by objects that appear magic. It’s rare for them to actually know how a computer works. The main aim consists in teaching non-experts how computers work ‘under the hood’.
“Teach children to code before they can read.” This is the aim of Cubetto, a coding toy aged 3 and up. Why learn this discipline? Coding is one of the most talked topic in our century and it is probably something to…
Toymail is a new way to let kids stay in touch with their grownups and friends. Kids can receive and send messages through their toys. It’s like voicemail but in more experiential way. How does it works?
This smart toy connects wirelessly to a home wifi network to receive messages sent anytime, from anywhere in the world. When there’s a new audio message waiting, the toy alerts
Children have an innate love for stories. Stories allow kids to communicate thoughts and share feelings with others and it can be innovatively improved using wooden toys that can teach kinetic arts.
LINKKI from Eun Young Park on Vimeo.
LINKKI is a kinetic construction toy based on planar linkage mechanism which children can use to design movements, make kinetic arts and learn basic STEM subjects while playing.
I have always been wondering what a toy designer that cares for education is supposed to do in order to bring his/her vision to the market, and so to the people.
Now, learning by play is the best way for children to have their young minds open and free, facilitating the exploration of new skills. In this sense a toy designer that cares for education at first should find out how to engage kids with what he/she intends to teach. For instance Maths.
It is a latest trend the one of making kids inventors of their own toys by helping them to make real their ideas, inviting them to start creating lifelike structures that they can really use. Suppose that you get a great idea but, you do not know how you can transform it into something real..