Sunday, November 17, 2013

Starting Fresh

With the launch of our updated version of Leo Spanish and Leo English spelling apps, Ingrid and I feel a renewed sense of excitement that bringing together our passions of creativity, technology, and education is possible, even if it seems to take, a...really... long... time. Taking one’s time, however, comes with some advantages, not the least of which is technological change.

Although Leo v1 was created with Adobe’s Flash, we decided to switch to the mobile development environment Corona SDK for the update since it seemed to be the most broadly supported and actively growing platform. And, in the two years that have elapsed since Leo first appeared in Apple’s app store, Corona SDK has advanced in leaps and bounds. Support for multiple platforms is made easy (Leo is now available in the Apple App Store, Amazon, and Google Play) and coding for a myriad of screen sizes and dimensions largely automated. This means that we have more time to focus on the important stuff - interactive design, art, and game play.

Our next project focuses on early math, with the specific goal of making the necessary and tedious task of practicing simple equations fun and rewarding. Some things, like basic addition, subtraction, and the times tables just take a lot of repetition in order to become fluent. In my next post I’ll outline our strategy for taking on this challenge.