App-O'-Lantern

Yes, I did carve that awesome pumpkin to represent a bead from our app, Let's Bead Friends, And yes again, it is a little early for carving pumpkins in my household. But, this fabulous "contest" that can be found www.appolanterns.com had me rushing out to buy a pumpkin at 8:00p.m.(at the grocery store no-less) with the goal of posting the app-o'-lantern by 10:30! Wasn't far off, the polka dots were relatively easy using an old fashioned apple core. The beading cord was the rope from an old swing found in the shed. It was the placement and lighting that had me stumped, there I was straddling two chairs with one flash light strategically propped up on the table, while a second flashlight was between my knees.... Oh yea, this was safe, I wasn't falling down that night, Oh no, I was on a mission with a deadline. After 50 or 70 plus pics using two different cameras I finally achieved a satisfactory rendition, and was off to the computer to post it. Luckily this was easy as I am now an up and coming computer geek. Thank you Andrew for making it all worthwhile by posting my app-o'-lantern to the contest site the very next day!

But seriously, we educational app developers are now banding together to help out one another with the guidance of Lorraine Ackerman and her hot site, momswithapps. Hold on to your apps!

Why Ee for Edge?

Why Ee for Edge? I've been wanting to write this post for a long time. I'm long overdue in explaining why we chose specific words to teach each letter of the alphabet. This is pretty heavy stuff so I may break this post into two parts.
Part I:
The words were chosen to represent the initial sound each letter makes. For the five vowels a e i o u, the choice was very important as they they are the basis for our language or the alphabetic principle*. Vowels are also very tricky because the sound changes from word to word. The new English dictionary distinguishes twelve separate sounds for the letter "A" alone! Where to start? ALWAYS start by teaching the short vowel sound first. When it comes to consonants, always teach the hard sounds first. Eg: c pronounce like "k" (cat) and g (gum). The soft sounds of c (cent) and g (gym) should be introduced later.
When teaching the alphabet I have found that it most effective if the alphabet is introduced first with the letter name, then a picture representing the initial sound, and lastly the sound the letter makes. Got that? Say, "A apple aaaa". Also, when teaching short vowel sounds it is imperative that you use hand motions to accompany them. Here is a demonstration of how I teach the vowels with the hand motions.
Watch Video

For many years I've been working with children that require early intervention in order to succeed in an academic setting. Struggling, reluctant, challenged, it doesn't matter how they are labeled, they all need an extra nudge to keep up with their peers. Often, it is a matter of developmental delays. Sometimes students simply lack exposure and/or experiences, therefore having underdeveloped skills such as a limited vocabulary. Whatever the cause, early intervention is sure to help each child reach their full potential.

Teaching the alphabet to children in the primary grades; preschoolers, kindergartners, first graders, and occasionally the second grader involves much practice. This practice involves being repetitive and as long the instruction is participatory in nature it is exactly this repetitive practice that leads to success. What does this mean? Children need to be involved, they need to use their voices and experience how their mouth moves.

*The alphabetic principle is the basic idea that written language is a code in which letters represent the sounds in spoken
words.

Do or Die in the App Store or Down the Rabbit Hole:

"Down the Rabbit-Hole" has become a popular term for going on an adventure into the unknown.

We did it! We made it into New and Noteworthy in the app store! Our 15 seconds of fame came and went quicker than we could have imagined. No matter, we are incredibly proud of our accomplishments and consider ourselves a total success!!! We did what we set out to do and our dream of being featured in the app store came true! Along the way, we learned a whole lot more about computers in general, app development, the intricacies of submitting to apple, and the idiosyncrasies of marketing. We rode the elevator up and down and experienced emotions we never knew existed. (Watch this video from our first blog entry, the double rainbow phenomena, now has had 13,482,184 views.) http://bit.ly/75ieRc

We also learned about revenue. After doing a bit of math and some serious research, we learned that it may take us 51 years to make our initial investment back! After a long walk/talk on the beach, we're thinking we won't be developing any new apps for awhile. Please check out this amusing (BUT TRUE!) comic about the price of apps.
http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps


That's not to say that we are not sticking to the mobile education concept, just entering it through another door. And please let me clarify that we did NOT enter into the app development business solely to make money. We are teachers that have an expertise in early childhood education and a passion to share what we consider some of the best practices. Remember, as many app developers and hosts of app review sites, we also have other jobs.


So here is a bit of the research. Please read through it thoroughly, if you really want the whole picture. http://bit.ly/awD9h0 If you are tired or lazy, just read this excerpt:

The purpose of this blog article is to examine the economics - and hopefully help guide potential developers and investors - into seeing where is the real opportunity (if any) and where are the dangerous pitfalls. If it is, as I have been claiming now for many months, that the App Store hysteria is developing into a tech bubble, and that most developers will never recover their costs, then the sooner you the reader can understand this, the sooner you can make the needed moves to minimize your losses (or to avoid future and futile attempts to enter this area). I am confident in the long run there will be a vibrant and reasonable-sized market opportunity. but today all numbers scream the opposite. The math simply does not add up. By Chris Glode

It may be Labor Day Weekend, which has the connotation of a weekend off, and Earl didn't touch our pristine location. The weather is gorgeous, but we're off to work. Not on apps, right now, but on something else. Down the rabbit hole we go....

Go, Dog, Go!

"Dog Days of Summer"... never did understand that phrase. So, I looked it up.

Webster defines “dog days” as...
1 : the period between early July and early September when the hot sultry weather of summer usually occurs in the northern hemisphere
2 : a period of stagnation or inactivity

Stagnation or inactivity? Not in this business! If you aren't working 24/7 and then some, you can't keep up. Technological breakthroughs are happening everyday, every few hours even! Bit.ly is old news. For those of you who may not know bit.ly, (http://bit.ly) it's a URL shortener.

This is our app's URL before bit.ly works it's magic:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/abc-on-the-go/id387046507?mt=8

This is the same URL after bit.ly: http://bit.ly/bItKah

The last two weeks have been an emotional roller coaster - up, down and all around - a quick up, then an extremely fast decent. Think Tower of Terror. Okay, maybe not that bad, but definitely a flurry of activity and emotional highs and lows. You work diligently to get your app tweaked and ready for submission. Then it's the wait and wonder game. Once you've submitted your app for review, you get put in a que. Review times average anywhere from a week to ten days. Our latest app, ABC On the Go, hit the iTunes store exactly one week ago today. Once your app goes "live" you need to hustle to get all the other pieces together. My partner and I wrote and rewrote our press release until we were bleary eyed. With every revision it got shorter and more simplistic. People don't read that stuff, one glance at the number of stars and it's straight to the reviews... Remember, keep it simple!

I digress. To continue... after strategically setting an "embargo" to hold the press release until Monday morning at 5 a.m. CST, our ABC On the Go press release was picked up by the revered Macworld. They then posted a review on their site! We were elated! It's not easy to get noticed in this dog eat dog world here in the app business. Let me clarify, there are 250,000 apps (and counting) in the app store and 14,345 education apps alone! Those are tough odds.

Well, we made it into the top 100 paid education apps and watched our numbers climb. They went up... and then down. We watched this see saw with bated breath. We would move up five... then go down two; this went on for a solid week. We could hardly sleep! We were glued to some mobile device or another tracking our rankings. Between email, Facebook and twittering day and night (not to mention that we have day jobs) we rode that elevator up and down until we were dizzy. Next thing we knew we were we out of the top 200! Emotional nosedive.... Just out of curiosity, I checked the New and Noteworthy section under Education AND low and behold - THERE WE WERE! Nosebleed!!!

I would be remiss, if I did not mention, Lorraine Ackemann of momswithapps. We have been so lucky to connect with her, she's become an incredible resource to all educational app developers. She's created a google group that works together, shares ideas and insights and maybe most importantly, networks. Lorainne's guidance and expertise is helping all of us help one another to succeed. Watch Lorraine on ABC News just yesterday: http://bit.ly/duCAgI

Charlotte's Web

We have been putting all of our efforts into trying to blog and connect with other iPhone app developers, who also develop educational apps. This whole web business is about networking and to succeed you need to work together! And let me tell you, it is incredibly rewarding to see what goes on behind the scenes. People making connections, people helping people, new forums cropping up everyday, where like minds from literally all around the globe are creating "communities."

The link below is from momswithapps

Read this TERRIFIC article by Lynn Rasmussen!

Apps as a Learning Tool for Education

iThink I can - iThink I can....

Are you wondering how we ever came up with the name i-itch for our company? Well, honestly, every other name we thought of as a good representation of our endeavor was taken. Really? Yes. We tried short, one syllable words, we tried mythical characters, we tried literary references, we tried our two names in at least 100 different ways, and countless hours with various iWord combinations, and they were all taken.... We didn’t settle for i-itch, it really grew on us.


The slacker boy with the bad rash really did epitomize our educational methods. When teaching children the letter “i” we model the act of scratching, which incorporates tactile and kinesthetic elements. This is more commonly referred to as the multi-sensory approach. It’s been proven to be a more effective way to teach, a more effective way to learn and most importantly, improved retention.

Then there is the other component to successful learning that both my partner and I are absolute devout believers in - learning by doing. And the experience should be FUN! It’s true! If learning is presented in a fun way, the learner learns more, retains more, and is inspired to continue learning. This process develops lifelong learners.

"Learning is not a product of schooling but the lifelong attempt to acquire it." Albert Einstein
Originally we were set on Educating and Entertaining Simultaneously as our mission statement. It said exactly what we believed and it had flair using, my favorite literary device, alliteration. About midway into the initial project we switched to Apps that Delight and Develop. We learned how important it was to include the word apps in our tag line. Oh what a steep mountain the learning curve can be! "Puff, puff, chug, chug, I think I can - I think I can...."

Where's the Ad-hoc?

It was my partner who knew early on that we were being conned. I'd convinced her that making an iPhone app first and then working our way back to a good old fashioned ABC book was the way to go. She'd already discovered the magic of the iPhone, as she was one of the first people to jump into the"icraze." This group doesn't discriminate by age, gender, or socioeconomic stature. Anyone can become a member, as long as you own an iphone. And chances are, if you own an iphone you are going to want an iPhone4, and if you own an iPhone 4, you are going to want an iPad... And that is why if you give a Moose a Muffin....

Back to being conned, we'd discussed how our alphabet was going to be transformed into a state of the art technological breakthrough for teaching children their letters and corresponding letter sounds. We'd set up a corporation, applied for a trademark for our logo, copyrights for art work, and sent a large deposit to get things started. Whoops! We were told our app would hit the app store mid November. Believe it or not in the fall of 2009 there were not many alphabet apps out there, we felt that we had little competition with our teacher developed, research based, wonderfully illustrated, educationally sound, iPhone app concept.

This is when Malcolm Gladwell's teachings come to mind. In Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.
My partner, although never meeting the slick, young entrepreneur in person knew something wasn't right and she knew it right from the get-go......

Lesson 1. Trust your gut!

It took me months before I could even admit that it was possible that we were being scammed, and then one day our domain name was inhabited by an intruder! And we were still not even close to an ad-hoc! "Ad-hoc is the method given to developers to test their app or to get client approvals and such," according to Lawrence H. Leach of Technical Ramblings.

That was the END of that business relationship... and the beginning of the transition from trusting school teachers to savvy business women. We chalked it up to an invaluable lesson learned early on!

Up next: From Educating and Entertaining Simultaneously to Apps that Delight and Develop www.i-itch.com.

Eddie Haskel

July 30, 2010

GoodNight Blog

Getting two very favorable video reviews posted was the highlight of the week at The Daily App Show (ABC Shakedown and Let's Bead Friends) ...until.... we realized two of our apps were also being spotlighted by the Daily App Show right on their homepage! Anchors, keep being told we need anchors to get our name out there and get noticed... What are we? Creators of quality educational iphone apps. You might continue to wonder how we got involved in this fast paced, techno savvy industry.... And I did promise to tell.

Less than a year ago, it was late August, and a houseguest was out visiting again. An acquaintance of my son’s who was taking advantage of a free bed in the Hamptons. Why I didn’t pick up on the signs when this 21st century Eddie Haskel, (the disingenuous troublemaker on "Leave it to Beaver," who could turn on the charm when adults were around) came a second time, I’ll never know. Wish I could discuss this with June Cleaver.

So slick was he, and claiming to be in the iPhone app development business, he had me snowed. I’d been in possession of my very own iPhone for maybe a week and was bowled over with it’s magical features.

On my dining room table lay a set of student illustrated ABC cards used successfully as a highly effective, skill and drill method of teaching the alphabet to struggling learners in my classroom. Suddenly, my quaint plan of transforming this concept into a computer game was being turned upside down, inside out and into an iPhone app. All because this house guest had me pegged for ......

More Motivation for the Mind

I mentioned yesterday that I had been speaking with a friend of a friend's who gave me total affirmation to stick with this endeavor and inspired me to begin this blog.

And Scott, wherever you are, thanks (I think) for convincing me that blogging could help our PR campaign by anchoring our website and products with the help of forum tags. Got all that! Hope so. It has been quite the learning curve since we two old hens have emerged from the classroom and landed ourselves in the midst of this trans-media revolution.

I have to say, it wasn't the reference to "vertical integration of mobile strategies" that rekindled my enthusiasm for making and promoting iPhone apps, and it wasn't the link to double rainbow , which has gotten over 5 million views on YouTube.


See how contagious genuine enthusiasm is?!?

And, no, it was not the talk about augmentive reality that did it. It was the story about your friend, who made it big, with a site called My Pet Chicken. Watch the video.

My First Entry

As I begin my first blog, I’m excited and nervous. Where do I begin?!? Today seems like a logical place. After an incredible phone conversation with a friend of a friend's, I came away feeling totally pumped to continue on this pursuit of making educational iPhone apps.

From there, I went downstairs and directly into the filming of a video shoot to promote our educational iPhone apps. The children being filmed? Our graphic designer’s (and dear friend!) daughters. The production team? Mine and my partner’s sons, both film students. Did I mention that I have a partner? You can find out more about us at our website: www.i-itch.com. Do a background check and learn what we’ve been up to and what you've been missing. Don't forget to come back here!

Film shoot went well considering the heat and the age group of our subjects – 2 and 6. Gotta tell ya, my partner and I were EXHAUSTED by the end of the evening. But I have to say, the whole effort was made worthwhile when later, during dinner, the younger of the two sisters pipes up saying what we thought was, “I want my water now” and pointing inside the house.
She kept repeatedly demanding what we thought was "WATER, I want my water NOW!" Finally after help in translating from her older sister we realized she was not asking for water, she was asking for "Letters, I want my letters!" OMG! She wanted to play our ABC app again - ABC Shakedown Plus!

ABC Shakedown and ABC Shakedown Plus are our babies. We've been nurturing the development of a rare species of iPhone apps, unequivocally educational ones! We'll be celebrating their conception and first birthday next month, and oh what a journey it has been.....

Stay tuned for: How we lost $7,000. in the infancy stage
Where and Why, two old hens found themselves in the app business
What Vertical Integration with Mobile Strategies really means