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[question] What edutainment apps do you recommend?

5 Post author: Gunnar_Zarncke 20 September 2014 08:55AM

Follow up to: Rationality Games Apps

In the spirit of: Games for rationalists

My son (10) wants a smartphone and I reasonably expect that he wants to and will play games with it. He appears to be the right age to use it. I don't want to prevent him from playing games nor do I think that possible or helpful. But I'd like to suggest and promote a few apps and games that *are* helpful or from which he can learn something. 

Obvious candidates are 

There are lots of low profile apps filed under learning in the app stores but most of this is crap and it takes lots of time to explore these. 

I also found some recommendation for learning with Android apps and will point my son to these. 

I'd like to hear what apps do you or yours children use. Which apps and esp. games do you recommend for future rationalists?

Comments (9)

Comment author: ChristianKl 20 September 2014 11:16:27AM 8 points [-]

Duolingo is nice for learning languages. It's gamified and therefore I think it will be easier to get a child to learn with it. Getting a child to do Duolingo for English and whatever secondary language he will learn in school is going to have huge returns.

Speed Anatomy is an efficient way to learn where different parts of anatomy are located.

Comment author: James_Miller 20 September 2014 03:11:39PM 3 points [-]
Comment author: FiftyTwo 21 September 2014 12:19:03AM 4 points [-]

Light bot is a somewhat similar game that teaches basic programming principles

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 21 September 2014 07:45:28AM 2 points [-]

There are two versions: Lightbot (9+) and Lightbot Jr (4-8), both for IPad and Adroid.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 21 September 2014 07:23:35AM 1 point [-]

Sounds interesting, but only for iOS. I'm already commited to Android.

Comment author: FiftyTwo 21 September 2014 12:14:52AM 2 points [-]

Get a good podcast app (e.g beyondpod) and subscribe to informative and entertaining podcasts, I absorb a lot of information this way

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 21 September 2014 06:25:23AM 1 point [-]

I like this suggestion. I always thought that listing to music all the time is an inefficient use of MP3.

I wonder whether music can be used to teach more complex things. I understand that in some oral cltures our ancestors used songs and dance to transmit knowledge. Can physics be taught this way?

And this reminds me of Dance your PhD.

Comment author: ChristianKl 21 September 2014 12:45:29PM 2 points [-]

I understand that in some oral cltures our ancestors used songs and dance to transmit knowledge. Can physics be taught this way?

Not directly physics but biology:

Glucose, Glucose is nice. http://www.science-groove.org/Now/ provides a few additional songs from the same source.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 21 September 2014 03:17:43PM 1 point [-]

Cool. I also liked the scientific method song.