Good news for the kids as Disney, an American diversified multinational mass media corporation launches the first of its new Imagicademy series of educational apps, accompanied by a separate app for parents that aims to help them track their children’s learning. Mickey’s Magical Maths World has launched first for Apple’s iPad tablet, with Android devices to follow in 2015 in the series, which is aimed at 3-8 year-old children.
The Imagicademy series will have future apps focusing on art and creative play, science, reading and social skills, based on brands including Frozen and Doc McStuffins.
Jeff Sellinger, senior vice president of Disney Learning said ; “The focus is on creativity and imagination through kids doing and making,”.
The first Imagicademy app is free to download, and includes five sections focusing on early maths skills including counting, sorting and simple addition and subtraction. Children can try each world, but to unlock all their features, parents will pay £2.99 per section or £13.99 for all five via in-app purchase.
Mickey’s Magical Maths World’s release comes alongside the launch of Disney Imagicademy Parents, a companion app for iPhone and iPad. Its features include a news feed of their children’s creations and achievements in the Imagicademy apps.
The Imagicademy parental app provides a feed of children’s creations and achievements. Sellinger stressed that Disney’s parental app does not require children to be using the Imagicademy apps. It’s being pitched as a source of ideas for physical and creative play in the real world too.
How does Mickey’s Magical Maths World shape up? It’s clear that a lot of craft has gone into the first app in the series: not just into the five maths mini-games, but into the menus that provide access to them.
Well, less menus, and more interactive environments: children swipe between the five worlds, and can happily amuse themselves tapping on characters and objects to see what happens. Meanwhile, items that they have created within the individual sections – rockets and robots – appear here too.
Children collect digital badges for their achievements within the app, and are encouraged to look for easter eggs: jumping in a muddly puddle on one world gets their robot progressively dirtier, for example.
Sellinger showed a preview of the next app, Mickey’s Magical World of Arts, which is due to be released in January. Its sections include music-making, building designing and a feature where children can not only draw and colour in their own 2D character, but also digitally insert it into a range of scenes from Disney films.
That will be followed by Frozen World of Science in April, although Disney’s plans for Imagicademy also go beyond apps. There will also be books and toys, including “smart toy” plush toys due to go on sale in the US in summer 2015.
Imagicademy is also part of a wider trend of big children’s/family brands doubling down on education in their digital products.
