Jonathan Gay works as a project manager for a pre-school in Newton, PA and has created a project he named Art of the iPad. He wanted to see how creative very young kids could be using new technology without the usual prerequisite of training.
Not wanting to use any of the existing art apps for children, Jonathan decided on using ArtRage (US $6.99), a fully featured painting app with a simple interface that includes pencils, brushes, rollers, spray paint and other tools that can create quite realistic painting effects with a swipe of the finger. ArtRage3 is far more than a coloring book and is not geared to use by kids.
In turn, each child, who was given next to no instruction, had a go to see what they could come up with. Jonathan watched the first child. “I watched him scan up and down the device and I watched as a sudden spark lit up the room as soon as the student touched the screen for the first time.” The child was amazed as as “all of a sudden, his finger became a burgundy crayon that produced a line across the page.” The class took to the iPad with no trouble at all and quickly adapted to the idea that their fingers can create.
Children used different tools. They mixed paints to come up with a new colors, some layered paint to build textures and one even used the eraser to create white lines. Art, on a simple level, seemed to transcend age as the children used techniques and styles not usually attributed to their age group.
Source: The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW.com), April 24, 2011
Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP File
Aidan Kusuma Weblog 