Weekly Click June 21st, 2012

Boy it's hot out there (we guess, we've been inside all day), we hope you're all staying cool. A balmy June Thursday can mean only one thing -- another FableVision Weekly Click! We're talking about all of our favorite topics again this week: books, movies and animation. Featured Article

Reading Rainbow is Back!

We hate the be the latest in a cacophony of voices shouting, "Remember the 90s?" (the answer a resounding "YES--it was only twenty years ago") but if you were a child of 90s television you probably have some memory of watching LeVar Burton's Reading Rainbow. Burton, most commonly known for his roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Roots, produced and hosted the show from 1983 until it was cancelled in 2005.

Burton has spent the last few years revamping the series for the digital age and officially unveiled what he dubbed "Reading Rainbow 2.0". On June 19th, 2012, Burton announced the launch of the Reading Rainbow app. The app will contain the same content as the television show including 150 interactive books.

We love to see technology adapting to new and current trends. Burton makes a great point in the article that Reading Rainbow was a product of the era it was made in. Children were still hooked on television, so to put a show about books on air made sense. However, how we distribute, consume and process information is radically different in 2012. We stream music and movies and our children use our mobile devices to entertain themselves. At home they play video games or watch pre-recorded TV. If we're going to instill in our children a love of reading, the best place to get their attention is going to be as an app.

It's $9.99 (USD) a month for a subscription service. Content will update regularly, but there is no timetable listed. If you have a child that hasn't taken an interest in reading, or if you have a child who's already a bookworm looking for something to play on your iPad, this might be a great bet.

The Changing Hue of Movie Posters

Do you like movies? If so then you might like Vijay Pandurangan's visualization of movie poster colors from 1914 to 2012. The results might surprise you, they might not. As it turns out, movie posters have been getting darker over the years. This might have something to do with blues and dark colors naturally catching our eyes, or it might have something to do with how poster printing and preservation has changed through the years. Pandurangan's blog spreads some more light on his process, which he admits needs tweaking. He states that he will be revising his visualization in the coming months. While you're there, take a look at the comments section. His readers are smart and have some great thoughts, hypothesis and criticisms of the work that Pandurangan will hopefully take into account for version two.

How to Read a Racist Book to your Kids

Perhaps the most difficult part about raising a modern child is that the morality and ethics of past generations is often at odds with our own. How then do we reconcile old, outdated art rife with racist or bigoted subject matter? Stephen Marche at the New York Times takes a look at just that subject. The answers aren't easy, especially when dismissal or elision can be misconstrued as tacit approval. Marche's over all point is a good one:  it's important to think carefully about ways to have these discussions with our children. "When" sometimes isn't as important as "How" or "Why" (As you can see the "When" in his case presented itself). How we deal with sometimes difficult topics of race, religion and gender will in turn effect how our children view those topics. And often, it's not as simple as "we just won't read that book". These topics permeate all cultures, and even if a story or piece of children's art is not totally politically correct, we can find ways to make them teachable moments while still enjoying the overall story.

Swelter

On a lighter note, we have a great (and appropriate) video from Jacob Streilein called "Swelter". It's a two-minute video about a boy and his father looking for  a cool drink to relieve them of the heat. So pretty much what we're all doing here in Boston. It's a superbly animated piece. Take a look and maybe grab yourself a glass of cold water.

Swelter from Jacob Streilein on Vimeo.

Weekly Click: June 14, 2012

Welcome back to FableVision's Weekly Click. This week we're going to be looking at what the rise of digital publishing means for young readers, changing marketing demographics in the technology sector, the four kinds of fun in good games, and we catch up with our friend Noah Z. Jones. Featured Article

No More Reading Wars!

If you were with us last week, you saw that we talked about the effect interactive apps have on a child's vocabulary. The results, while not outstanding, were encouraging. Children receive a boost in vocabulary when using apps tailored to education and learning. This week, The Huffington Post has a great (and lengthy) article that details a study done to see how children and their guardians engaged with print versus electronic books.

Much like last week, the results are encouraging. Children and adults engage about an equal amount when reading print books, basic e-books and their "enhanced" counterparts. The study does find, however, that children tend to recall fewer narrative details from enhanced e-books than with their print and basic counterparts. While enhanced e-books are a fun diversion, if parents hope to squeeze any educational benefit from their reading sessions, they should choose e-books without interactive content. The post goes into great detail, so we'd encourage everyone to click through and read it when you get the chance.

For creators the take away here should not be "Do Not Make E-Books", but rather to understand how children (and adults) interact with a story to reduce impediments to their understanding. Although, it makes us wonder how interactive e-books on STEM subjects compare to their dead-tree counterparts? Interactive activities, lessons and experiments seem like they would go a long way helping kids understand difficult subjects like physics and calculous.

While we're on the topic, here's a great list of FREE e-books for children. Not all of them are classics and some are kind of unsuitable for 'modern' children (ironic), but the list is well worth a look! There are lots of formats to choose from that will work on just about any e-reader.

Sorry Young Man, You're Not the Most Important Demographic in Tech

If you don't happen to fall into the "18-35 year old Male" demographic, you may feel a little left out when it comes to tech companies catering to your interests. You wouldn't be wrong. For a long time that demographic has been the most coveted target audience. Men have been seen as the money-makers and trend-setters, especially in the world of technology. But that looks like that's about to change. According to a new poll, women now lead in almost every category of tech adoption. Hopefully, this will signal a sea-change not only in how we advertise tech (which the article notes has been woefully sexist for some time) but in how the industry regards women in general. We're starting to think that the "Rise of the Brogrammer" has been overstated.

XeoDesign and the Four Fun Keys

Speaking of women in technology, XeoDesign's Nicole Lazzaro has outlined the four keys to creating games that captivate and hold gamers' attentions. Those four keys are: Hard Fun, Easy Fun, Serious Fun and People Fun.  XeoDesign has designed an app around these four key elements called Tilt, and it's available in the app store now. It's interesting to think that great games actually cycle through all four of these key elements and how each of them corresponds to a different element of play. We love the way these ideas make us think about games, gaming and play and look forward to integrating these concepts into our own design process.

Almost Naked Animals gets into gaming

We come at last to our old friend Noah Z. Jones. Not long ago Cartoon Network picked up a SECOND show from him: Almost Naked Animals (the first being Disney's Fish Hooks), based on the blog of the same name. Now it looks like ANA is going to have a series of games adapted from it. One will be an interactive online game where players run a hotel as characters from the series. Two unnamed mobile games are planned for release later this year.  While details are a little scarce, we're excited to get our hands on these games! Lots of us over here are addicted to Tiny Towers, so it's only a matter of time before we're clicking around our own hotels as tiny, pixelized, almost naked animals.

If you can't wait, here are some fun games already up on their site!

Creative Juices 2012: Freshly Squeezed!

Our third annual Creative Juices art show was last week, and it was our best yet!

Creative Juices is all about showcasing the many talents of the FableVision staff, and our creative pursuits outside of the studio. Some of the artwork on display this year included sock monsters, pottery, draw-your-own monster, felt critters, floral arrangements, illustrations, photography, comics, artful beverages, video games, animation, and even a dress made of balloons! Thanks to all of you who came to the show, and special thanks to SCBWI for collaborating with us.

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Check out more pictures on our FableVision Facebook photo gallery, as well as retrospective blog posts by artists Renee and Ellen.

Top Five Things I Learned From the Fred Forward Conference

It's been an exciting three days down in LaTrobe, Pennsylvania at the Fred Rogers Center for the 2nd Fred Forward Conference.  It was so great seeing old friends, colleagues, partners, clients and meeting lots of new super smart and talented new people.  There were a lot of panels and discussion about guidelines and recommendations, communication about educational media, and quality in media products.  Please check out our #FredForward tweets at @FVStudioBoston or head over to our Facebook photo album if you want to relive the conference minute by minute, but for now, I will present... Top 5 Things I Learned at the Fred Forward Conference I'm a huge fan of top five lists.  It's long enough to be digestible; short enough to be memorable.  So without further ado, here are the Top 5 Things I Learned from the Fred Forward Conference:

1. ZPD. We should always remember the Zone of Proximal Development when developing and testing  games for kids.  Kids should be (and want to be!) challenged.  Your game should be challenging enough that they don't dismiss it as too easy.  Scaffolded enough so that they believe they can do it.  We shouldn't give up on a game just because a kid doesn't "get it" right away in kid testing.
2. Visual Superiority Effect. We do this a lot already at FableVision, but it was a good reminder that kids are more likely to attend to video than audio.  Visual instructions are far more powerful than audio instructions.
3. Conference Learning is Weird. Conferences revolving around innovation in education need to be innovative in how they educate.  We can and should walk the walk and talk the talk.  Sometimes the most knowledge you gain from a conference is on the bus ride and at the dinner table.
4. Simulations are Weirder. We should be making interactive media that offers something that analog media (i.e.; real life) can't offer.  Simulations will never replace the way kids actually learn, which is through their senses.
5. Teachers are Our Best Partners. Teachers face incredible pressures and challenges in the classroom.  We need to listen to, talk to, work with and involve them on how to best incorporate the media we create for the classroom.

Now it's time to get back to work…and to make the work even better.

Creative Juices Art Show Tonight!

Hi everyone, we wanted to remind you that TONIGHT June 1st, we will be hosting our first art show of 2012: Freshly Squeezed. The whole Studio has been busy all week with preparations: cleaning the studio, putting up art, making space and wondering how to hide all these wires! All of our hard work has paid off; the night is finally here. If you've never had the opportunity to attend, it's a great chance to visit the studio, meet our team and check out all of the amazing things we've been working on both in and out of the studio!

We're going to have music, food, drinks, great art on display and lots of fun people to meet and talk with. Our doors will open to the public at 6pm. So put on your dancing shoes (or sneakers, we won't judge), grab a friend and head on down!

We'll be live-tweeting the event, so follow us on Twitter and join the conversation. Our event hashtag is forthcoming, so stay tuned.

Here's the official invite, feel free to send it around to your friends. Hope to see you all here!