SINGAPORE – With creativity and critical thinking cited as key skills for the future, schools are increasingly recognising the need to embrace tools and technology to nurture these soft skills. At the same time, parents want their children to embrace healthy lifestyles.
Based on the award-winning Eyeyah! print magazine, the experience merges an interactive digital magazine with puzzles and games, and is optimised for ipad and aimed at 8-12yrs+. It consists of nine playable scenes, interspersed with animated fun facts — each designed by a professional artist, and built around different learning points. As users play games, spot vegetables and come up with captions for illustrations, they will learn about the danger of excess sugar, food groups, food waste and food marketing.
There is a strong link between learning and having fun. When children are engaged and motivated and feel minimal stress, information flows freely and they achieve higher levels of cognition, make connections, and experience “aha” moments.
Eyeyah’s previous interactive, supported by Media Literacy Council, uses the same approach to talk to children about internet safety and media literacy and has been used to support lessons in five Singapore schools. Supported by TOTE Board, the interactive experience comes with an Educators toolkit that contains activity sheets, lesson plans and in class activities to foster conversation and deeper learning.
Says Tanya Wilson, mother of two and co-founder of EYEYAH!: “We enjoy the challenge of taking delicate subjects such as internet safety and healthy eating and making them fun and accessible. Stunning graphics capture the child’s attention and puzzles and games keep them engaged. This is the second in our series of non-addictive educational apps and we look forward to releasing more.”
The app is live on the Apple app store here and can be downloaded free of charge until 30 July 2020. For use in the classroom, it is supported by detailed lesson plans built around some of the scenes in the experience, these can be downloaded for free on the Eyeyah website. Eyeyah has been building itself as a trusted brand since 2017, and in line with that the app doesn’t collect any data and features no advertising.
