This new app has an exclusive child safety option that blocks any attempt of the child to get out of the app once he is playing with it. Parents and adults can control that children don’t end up anywhere on the Internet by putting a password system. This Parental Control option consists in setting up a chosen password that will be required once you want to exit the app; this way kids won’t be able to leave until their parents -or the adults looking after them- allow it. It is also a great way to protect your phone from the dangerous curiosity of our little ones!

The Kidmons app offers to children a whole world of fun and entertainment, but they will also be learning and discovering new things. Kids will have access wherever and whenever they want to educational games through any Android phone. The app makes easier the accessibility since the only device needed is a mobile phone with an Android system. The games offered are exactly the same that can be found on the website but with a much more improved performance and quality.

Thanks to the wide selection of Kidmons games even the youngest children will be entertained. Music games for a future Beethoven, puzzles and memory games to put their little brains to work, painting and drawing games to let their inner artist grow… A great choice for kids from 3 - 4 years old to 8 – 9.

The games of this app are very amusing but also mainly educational. Puzzle for Kids: Safari will help children learn new animal names and how to spell the words. The classic Simon Memorize game will teach kids to concentrate and to listen and look closely; their observation skills will improve as well as their memory.

Parents just need their Android phones to keep their children entertained for a while. And they just need to download the app and start playing games with them if they want to spend some time together. Since nowadays we always carry our cell phones around, this app is the best idea –even for adults- for when you have some spare time to kill or you need your children to be quiet.

Download the app for Android right now!

Music provides our brain with many benefits such as concentration, attention and memory. That is why, having an early music education is important for kids and essential in order to fulfill a complete and rich intellectual development. Learning music or how to play an instrument shows discipline to children at a young age because of the continuity and practice required. It is also a great challenge to overcome and a commitment to make that helps developing healthy learning habits.

But in an age where electronics are a staple of every kid’s entourage, teaching the art of Mozart or Beethoven in a classic and theoretical way might be boring and uninteresting to the kids. This young generation has constantly an electronic device in their hands, so why not introducing everything they can learn from Mozart and Beethoven into their phones, tablets, computers and game consoles to get their attention?

The study titled Possible benefits of playing music video games and leaded by Psychology Professor Amanda Pasinski, investigates how music video games might be constructive. According to this study of the University of Nevada (UNLV) “for most people, developing musicianship to an expert level is a long and difficult process that can take up to 10 years or over 7,500 hours to complete, but it is ultimately correlated with a variety of benefits—from greater motor coordination and better synchronization skills, to better pitch and tempo discrimination”.

It has been proved that training on an instrument might provide and improve associated skills when compared to non-musicians, because studying music increases concentration and focus and has a great influence in the cognitive development. And this skills are not necessarily improved just by playing instruments, according to Pasinski music video games have the same influence: “we found that scores on the Profile of Music Perception Skills, a test of basic musical listening abilities, were equivalently high for formally trained musicians and music video game players, who both scored higher than non-musicians”.

Music video games could mean a cheaper alternative to music education without, of course, settling as the replacement of a music career for those who want to be professional musicians. They might also establish themselves as an alternate way to enjoy the benefits of music education for those who lack of time, money or perseverance to learn a musical instrument. “Music video gamers may get discouraged by the steep learning curve of musicianship, and music video games may provide access to musical experience without the rigidity of music lessons”, explains Pasinski.

The world of music video games offers a long list of options in many different platforms; from SingStar (Sony), to Guitar Hero (Harmonix) or Rock Band (Harmonix). “If virtual music game skills relate to real world performance, a game that may result in overlap with the skills seen in real musicianship is Rock Band”, says Pasinski who used this game in her study. The Professor got to the conclusion that “there does appear to be overlap between Rock Band skills and musical perception skills”.

The results of the study suggested that “if video game musicianship promotes comparable skills found in trained musicians, music video games may be a useful teaching tool for schools”. Added to that, the fact that children are generally attracted to video games might be positive to encourage them through a music game to eventually transfer to a real instrument. This way the kid will be equipped with the basic motor and auditory skills needed to play.

José Manuel Azorín, Professor of Education at the Albacete University in Spain, explained how some specific music games could be applied at school. In his study The music video games. A resource for music education in Elementary School?, he gave some examples of benefits that can be found in this type of games. According to him, the game Beatmania (Konami) brings great possibilities to the development of the eye and hand coordination, the sense of audition and the consciousness of rhythm. SingStar is a great option to work the vocal abilities and Guitar Hero, which introduces musical instruments to children, helps improving the coordination and rhythm since you need to push the right button at the right moment according to the music.

Azorín and Pasinski agree on the benefits of Rock Band. The Spanish Education expert thinks that this video game can ease the learning of the combination of instruments and rythms and the instrumental technique of the piano and the guitar. As well as Pasinski, he doesn’t think it can replace real instruments but it “makes the education and motivation towards the instrumental practice possible”.

As a matter of fact, there are games that use actual instruments to play; it is the case of Rocksmith which connects real electric guitars to the game console or computer. “The progress is significant in relation to other music video games as we will be learning how to play a real guitar thanks to a video game”, says Azorín. Including this kind of games in the classrooms and using them as educational methods can be a serious option; “we need to use the attractiveness of video games and apply it in an educational perspective. If we manage to captivate the students with a game like Rocksmith where real instruments are used, we will be training students, musicians, men and women with capability of analysis and musical enjoyment”, he concludes.

In 2006 West Virginia schools started a project that used the dancing video game Dance Dance Revolution (Konami) to encourage physical activity. This state, which is among the top three for worst obesity problems, planned to install the video game as a complement to physical education and health class in order to attract those students who weren’t fond of sports. According to The New York Times, kids were more excited to play Dance Dance Revolution than basketball and felt less pressure because the students didn’t get as competitive as in other sports.

Ludwig van Beethoven once said that “music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy”, and he wasn’t wrong. According to a research presented by the neurobiologist Nina Kraus at the American Psychological Association a musical training “can help disadvantaged children strengthen their reading and language skills”, as well as it allows kids “to focus better in the classroom and improve their communication skills”. The Journal of Educational Psychology also published a study by researcher E. Glenn Schellenberg that proved organized music lessons “benefit children's IQ and academic performance”. Pasinski also underlined on her study that “trained musicians have shown better and more rapid learning and discrimination of syllables and words – even if the musical training was restricted to childhood and practice had lapsed, as well as improved language-learning ability and expanded vocabulary as measured by increased verbal memory”.

Video games and how they influence children have also been studied; a review of research in American Psychologist concluded that “playing video games, including violent shooter games, may boost children's learning, health and social skills”. The BBC published in 2015 an article explaining the changes that video games make to your brain. Visual abilities, brain growth and avoiding mental decline were the main benefits mentioned.

Combining music and video games seems like quite a good idea in order to improve the cognitive and intellectual development of our new generations. So why don’t you start right now? Try to play to Piano Online with your children and just watch how they slowly start improving their mental abilities.

It is a fact that educational games have a positive impact during the learning process of our kids. Children retain more easily the information when they relate what they have learned to entertainment. By playing games kids can develop for themselves social skills, increase their curiosity and creativity or improve their learning.

Most of the time kids might think that educational games can be boring and tedious, that is why video games are a great alternative. These ludic platforms really grab children’s attention because of their modernity and entertainment, it stimulates and motivates them because they don’t see playing at a videogame as a duty but as a fun thing to do. And they get to learn and develop their skills while playing. 

Learning through video games is a concept not everyone accepts since video games have been related to leisure and spare time for a long time. They have also been identified as negative for children and teenagers as video games are seen as violent and a hypnotizing waste of time. Although, the youngest generations are arriving to a world that is getting increasingly technological and education also needs to adapt. 

Professor and expert in learning with video games, James Paul Gee, supports that “video games work just like we know books work”. Every kid has the same opportunity to learn according to the American law, but “the opportunity to learn is not the book. It’s whether you can bring experience to the book”. That experience Gee refers to is the game.

And nowadays kids get the experience through their mobile phones or computers; whenever they need information about anything or want to know something they basically turn to the Internet, and in a few seconds they find what they want. The traditional way of teaching is getting obsolete and new technologies are being needed in the classrooms.

These are indispensable tools to get the students attention and motivation because they introduce the curricular content to the children from a closer and more modern approach. It is important to educate children from a digital point of view since they are going to need this kind of skills everywhere. We have to deal more and more with machines and informatics than with actual people, and communication has been transferred to social media, emails and text messages.

Getting to know the Internet is actually very important for their own safety; how to use it correctly and in a responsible way, to be aware of the dangers they can find and avoid them, and to identify what information is reliable.

Learning by playing has always been the greatest trick to get kids’ attention when it comes to studying. This technique awakens the interest and helps them understand that learning and having a good time are not at odds. But, in this case, video games require more concentration from the child: he first has to learn how to use the game console, then understand how does the game work and play. However, nowadays kids are used to all these technological devices so they will be more responsive and curious.

Besides, educational video games are interactive and very visual which is important for small kids who pay easily attention to the things they see through their own eyes as they don’t know how to read yet. Games such as Coloring game or Paint online bring them the opportunity to play –but also learn and work- with colors, shapes and pictures. The greatest benefit about this digital version of educational games is that they can be played online, so kids can train their abilities whenever and wherever they want with a Tablet, computer or mobile phone.

These are games kids play on their own so they learn new concepts by themselves and by making mistakes and solving problems with no help, making choices and taking decisions. It also improves the children’s memory capacity because they have to remember how the video game works and they usually remember what kind of exercises and games he has done.

“When human beings understand anything, whether it’s a text or the world, they understand it not by abstract generalities, but by literally being able to run in their head a simulation of images, actions and experiences that the words refer to. When a human being is doing that is when they are thinking, because they have to get ready to take an action and they want that action to succeed, they think really well. But when you ask them to think about stuff but there’s no action they are going to take and they don’t really care what the outcome is, they think very poorly”, explained James Paul Gee to Edutopia.

The gaming expert says in his book Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines that “the designers of many good games have hit on profoundly good methods of getting people to learn and to enjoy learning”. According to Gee that would be the reason why video games are quite more motivating than the classic education methods, and that’s is why schools should start popularizing this new way of learning in the classrooms.

It has been noticed that introducing video games as a tool to make a class and teach lessons has brought out the motivation of the students who prefer to learn having fun than just sitting and listening to the teacher. They mainly see it as a game so the fear of making a mistake or having a wrong answer disappears completely, which removes all the pressure and helps the kid starting to like studying. This is why some schools and teachers have started to introduce this techniques in their classes.

Microsoft is planning on introducing the famous video game Minecraft in schools. An educational version was already created in 2011: Minecraft Edu, which helps teachers to incorporate the game to their classes. Microsoft bought Minecraft in 2014 and this summer 2016 the multinational wants to expand the presence of the Minecraft Edu app in schools. They are planning on putting a price of $5 per year for each student. More than 7.000 schools in different countries have Minecraft Edu and are already using it as a teaching and learning tool. But it’s not the only video game that has arrived to the classrooms.

In 2013 a Physics teacher called Shawn Young created a role game as a teaching method to use with his students. Classcraft is an educational version or World of Warcraft and helps the teacher motivate the students and keep their results and behaviors on track. While Minecraft is a great game for geometrics and solving mathematical problems, for instance, Classcraft improves also the teamwork and increases the student’s involvement. The game consists on making teams in which each student has a different power and mission: warriors, priests and mages. Depending on their actions (which can be the behavior in class or their marks) they can gain or lose experience points (XP) or health points (HP) and affect their team.

The clue is to combine books and new technologies such as video games. It is important to take into account that the new generations are looking for modern methods and they live 24/7 connected to a technological device, so in order to get their attention and improve their education we have to adapt to the new times and to them.