Crime, Punishment, and a Toca Boca Event!

Bjorn gives Mali a personal demon of
an at-that-time unreleased TocaBoca app.

Hey locals, Toca Boca's co-founder and CEO Bjorn Jeffrey is in town tomorrow, giving a workshop at Community Gatepath! Details below, and you should go. Because Bjorn is a great guy, Toca Boca is a great apps company (I've even written guest posts about autism for them), and GatePath is a fantastic org. But before I give you the event details, I want to tell you a little story about Bjorn, and Mali.

(I can't believe I never told you this story.)

In 2011, Toca Boca apps were among my kids' very favorite iPad distractions (they continue to be much-beloved). Mali loved Toca Hair Salon. Leo loved Toca Tea Party. And I blogged about how much my kids loved those lovely, beautifully designed apps.

One day, in late 2011, I received an email from Mr. Jeffrey, letting me know that he was going to be in San Francisco, and would I care to meet up? I said I would. We planned to meet at the Ferry Building. I told my kids. They were jealous.

And then the day before the meetup, which happened to be my birthday, I got a call from Mali's school. I needed to come pick her up because she not only had punched another kid, but had informed the kid that any tattling would bring additional physical retribution (the kid tattled anyhow, and claimed asylum in the school office). The school didn't take kindly to premeditated assault among second graders, which I understood. They also suspended her for the next day, which I did not understand -- how is getting to miss school a punishment, again?

To add to the not-aversive nature of her "punishment": as I did not have a suspension-day sitter for Mali, so she got to come with me to meet Bjorn. Who was gracious and informative, and gave our girl all sorts of demos of yet-to-be-released apps like Toca Kitchen -- which Mali played with while Bjorn and I talked about the intentionally non-text-based, exploration- & play-oriented design of TocaBoca apps, and why their design approaches makes their apps so well-suited to both international and special needs markets.

Maybe the non-aversive approach to punishment worked after all, as two years later our girl has yet to have a repeat suspension. And I am in a position to tell you unequivocally: Bjorn is an excellent speaker and app demo giver, and you should go to his presentation. Here are the details:

Please join us for an incredible (and free!) presentation by Bjorn Jeffrey, Toca Boca CEO and Co-Founder

Saturday, May 3, 2014
10:00 am -- 12:00 p.m
Niall P. McCarthy Center for Children and Family
1764 Marco Polo Way, Burlingame, CA

Come learn from the world's leading digital toy developer:

• Be inspired by Toca Boca's history and success
• Learn about the insights and research that goes into creating Toca Boca's world leading apps
• See demos and trial some of Toca Boca's top selling apps

Free fun giveaways to be presented to all participants and attendees will have a chance to win Toca Boca t-shirts, posters, and monster socks.

Childcare is available -- RSVP to indicate if you will be needing childcare to clocke@gatepath.com or 650-259-8544.

Toca Band: Best Music App for Leo Ever

We're a family of Toca Boca fans, which is no secret -- I'm pretty sure we own all their apps, and we jump up and down every time a new one comes out. So: Yay! Toca Band arrives today!

Leo has always loved music apps, but this one is special, this is the one he's been waiting for -- as he can show you himself in the video below, which shows him diving right in, seconds after opening Toca Band for the very first time. Watch him go:

Do you see? Do you see how easy-to-use -- and fun -- and open-ended -- and goofy -- and creative this app is? Yet still structured enough for Leo to feel comfortable exploring? He doesn't need to read; he doesn't need to understand the characters' scat-style, often word-free "singing;" he doesn't need to stop and figure out how to use anything. The swipe-based selection menu at the bottom of the screen is easy for him to navigate, and to pluck characters from and then plonk on stage in different musical combinations. He enjoyed checking out all the different sounds/beats/loops, then popping the characters on the center stage star, exploring their individual percussive or vocal or musical characteristics and how they meshed with what was going on on the main stage -- and then popping right back to the main screen.

This this this. This is how apps should be designed. If you ever contemplate creating apps to delight and entertain kids -- all kids, including autistic kids like Leo -- then you need to take a long, hard, detailed look at apps like Toca Band, and start trying to understand why and how they work.

Leo's little sister Mali was waiting behind her brother the entire time he was playing the new app, desperate to have her own turn. And when she got it, she immediately started experimenting with innumerable musical combinations on the main stage, running over and asking us to listen to each one -- and they were fun to listen to, she was able to get really creative. Seeing what she and Leo could do made me itch to dive in, too. In fact the only reason I'm not playing with Toca Band right now is because I'm typing. The only reason.

The Toca Band "Stage." You can swipe the characters below to select different ones.
Placing a character on the center stage star opens up their own screen
-- with more musical options.

The only caveat I'd give is that if your kids push back against requests to turn their iPad's volume down (ahem, my progeny), then this app is yet another argument for Apple to enable a global iDevice volume limiter. Especially if your child gets really explorey with multiple musicians and center stage percussion characters, because Toca Band makes achieving dissonance and cacophony just as simple as harmony and counterpoint. All valid musical expressions! But not ones a precoccupied parent like me is going to want to hear at top volume for hours on end.

As device volume limit is not within the developer's control, I have no problem stating that Toca Band is a fabulous app. It is a Shining Example app. It is an app that lets my son be smart and creative. It is an app Leo adored on sight.

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Disclosure: Toca Boca sent me a preview code for Toca Band. But, as always (and since Leo's iPad has 450+ apps) I only write about apps that really stand out.

Mali App Demo: Toca Robot Lab

Mali's and Leo's Toca Boca app fandom has been recognized, as you can see by the excellent Toca Boca tee she's sporting in the video below. Malil is demonstrating one of the apps she has in heavy rotation, Toca Robot Lab -- which lets her create robots and then guide them through mazes before they are dispatched to the great robot unknown.

Once again, our thanks to Toca Boca for making motivating, easy-to-use apps!



We are grateful to Toca Boca for gifting our family this app (and the t-shirt) but the opinions expressed in this space are ours and ours alone. As always, we only review the apps we consider worth reviewing -- though we have a sizeable app review backlog.

Mali Loves Apps Too: Toca Hair Salon, Presidents vs Aliens, & BrainPop

Mali's portrait of our friend
Liz in Toca Hair Salon

Every so often, Mali likes to pipe up about the apps that she likes, too -- when she's not lecturing random tolerant pediatricians about microorganisms or declaring that she's played soccer for two years and so has learned everything there is to know about the sport. When she negotiates with her siblings (and her parents) for iPad time, it's usually so she can dive into BrainPop, TocaBoca Hair Salon, or President vs Aliens.

Toca Hair Salon ($.99) is from the same folks who brought us Leo's perennial go-to freeplay app Toca Boca Tea Party. I could tell you more about it, and why it has Mali currently declaring that she will be a hair stylist when she grows up, but Mali is determined to tell you about its merits herself (and no, I did not prompt her to turn the iPad around and give this demo from the viewer's perspective -- she did that spontaneously.)

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She will also play the U.S. presidental history trivia game  Presidents vs Aliens ($.99) indefinitely, which surprised me, as she's never previously shown much interest in topics like politics or history. But she enjoys this app -- and, thanks to playing it, can now identify all the U.S. presidents by sight (or official portrait), the order in which they held office, and their political party. Plus she now refers to Nixon as "Tricky Dick!" This app is by the same developer who brough us Stack the States and Stack the Countries, which all three of my kids enjoy. PvA video demo, with Mali once again in Game Show Host mode:

The app that makes her fight for the iPad every day, though, is BrainPop's (Free) daily animated movie. I've never seen anything like these cartoon conversations between a young guy (Tim) and his robot companion (Moby) for helping young minds easily slice, dice, and digest complex topics, ranging from Airplanes to Hurricanes, from the Science of Boogers to Napoleon.

The best part for me is not Mali's learning, though that's great, too -- it's that we get to have great big rabbit hole conversations afterward, like why was Napoleon exiled twice, why they chose incredibly isolated St. Helena for his second bon voyage (Elba being right off mainland Italy, easily checked and compared in Google maps), how St. Helena is the second-oldest existing British Colony after Bermuda, did you know that our country used to be a British Colony too ... yeah. It's good stuff, and all the tangents can be followed instantly if your iPad is online.

Recommended for igniting/feeding hungry little minds. Kids don't have to be readers to watch the movie, due to the narration, but the reinforcing quizzes afterward require reading or a literate assistant.

Back to Leo apps next time! Though I suspect the latter two apps might appeal to Leo's trivia-minded spectrum-mates.

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All reviews are my (and my daughter's) opinion only. All apps were purchased or downloaded independently.