The Weekly Click is back! We're experimenting with a new format, where we highlight one story and then provide links to the rest. Check out what FableVisionaries are clicking, reading and talking about this week! Featured Link:

Kids Content Rules the Educational App Category

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center, affiliated with Sesame Workshop, found that the majority of highest selling educational apps are targeted towards preschoolers. The Cooney Center presented at the 2012 International Consumer Electronic Show (CES) on January 12, 2012 about their findings of the current app market for iOS users. Researchers examined the 200 top-selling educational apps in this market and found that the market for fun, innovative, and integrative apps is expanding. Developers (like FableVision!) should leverage this market to supplement children’s learning, shaping their online experiences.

The Cooney Center also found that there is a big divide between low and high income parents and their knowledge of the digital landscape, an important issue in childhood education progress. Even more mind boggling is that Apple still hasn’t put a standards system in place for published apps- anyone can be a developer, but ratings and labels are arbitrary. If a developer decides that his/her app is educational, then it can be labeled as such. On a platform with endless choices and possibilities for children to play, learn, and explore, such regulations are difficult to impose but critical for their educational journey.

Educational Technology:

Sesame Makes Augmented Reality Educational

Just point and shoot and those previously lifeless toys gain new and exciting ways to explore.

Apps to Check out:

Melody Street Orchestrates New App

Through the website and the apps, kids will be able to orchestrate and conduct their own musical symphonies.

Cut the Rope!

Education:

In Race to the Top, the Dirty Work is Left to Those on the Bottom

Obama’s education program, Race to the Top, has caused the Education Department to reinvent their rating methods.

Interactive Media

Apple announces iBooks 2, iBooks Author to “reinvent textbooks”