The app contains fun-filled games on the app that will allow children in their formative years to develop essential thinking skills. By using the Batibot app, children can learn basic concepts like matching, sorting and grouping. Moreover, the app can also assist the young learners to identify shapes, colors, numbers, the alphabet, and letter sounds. The children can also practice tracing letters with the proper strokes.
The Batibot app, which can be downloaded for free on Android devices, also helps the children develop their appreciation for storytelling.
“Through our umbrella program for education called #LearnSmart, we’re trying to make learning fun, engaging, and interactive for students with the help of digital and mobile technologies,” Smart public affairs head Ramon Isberto said.
Developed in collaboration with the Community of Learners Foundation (COLF) and startup partner OrangeFix, the Batibot app is the first learning app in Filipino that is aligned with the national kindergarten curriculum of the Department of Education.
Acknowledged as an educational tool, the Batibot app contains interactive features like the classic game “Alin Ang Naiba,” where children are asked to identify what doesn’t belong from a group of objects and pictures. Kindergartners can also practice writing by tracing letters on their device, and sing along to Batibot songs via the app’s videoke feature.
Meanwhile, the “Kuwentong Batibot” feature provides children with access to stories in Filipino, with the aim of establishing a firm foundation for early and emergent literacy.
The Batibot app is one of the key features of the Smart TechnoCart, a mobile digital laboratory launched last June to enhance learning among kindergartners through mobile devices and applications.
Feny de los Angeles, COLF director and former research and curriculum director of the Philippine Children’s Television Foundation which produced Batibot, said the show had been a “playmate” and learning partner of generations of Filipino children for nearly two decades.
“All those years, Batibot had been a trusted partner of parents who are their children’s first teachers – from infancy through the early childhood years. Now that the kindergarten program is a national program of the public school system, we would like to continue this tradition of supporting children as they begin their journey in schools and, we hope, as lifelong learners,” de los Angeles said.
“This time, we also see the urgency of supporting very young children as they enjoy their digital play experiences in a language that we hope they would learn to love and be comfortable with – Filipino,” she added.
source: www.abs-cbnnews.com
