This is a guest post written by Lindsey Wright.

College students all over America are taking advantage of the online revolution in college. They no longer have to sit in class to learn, but can learn via online classes at home with their computers. However, many parents are not aware that their preschool and elementary school-aged children have many online learning opportunities as well.

In the past, rote memorization has been key to success in school. If a child struggled with memorizing math facts, historical dates or spelling words, they were doomed to failure in school. Yet, nowadays, multitudes of sites exist solely to turn learning into a game that a child cannot wait to play.

For instance, English grammar can be a confusing subject for a student to conquer, but the makers of Mingoville hope to help make it easy for children to learn. Mingoville is mainly designed for ESL students, to enhance their fluency and help familiarize them with the language, but could benefit early elementary students as well. All of the prompts on this site are audio, as well as visual, so that students don’t need to have an adult sitting at the computer next to them. This allows them to become comfortable with English on their own.

Math is another subject that many students dread Ironically, many parents often also experience the same exact feelings when it comes to math, causing them to fear hearing the words “I need help with my homework.” However, by using the many tutorials that are available online, parents and children can begin to understand those tricky concepts, such as fractions and percents. Tutorials are fabulous because students who need repetition to learn are able to repeat a lesson as many times as needed. Better yet, they no longer have to feel embarrassed in class for raising their hands once again to have a concept re-explained.

Additionally, using various historical and scientific websites can make formerly tedious subjects come to life. No longer does a student have to rely on memorizing lists of names and dates, or properties of scientific laws. By watching online videos and historical reenactments it can be much easier to put to memory what the student has read about in a textbook.

The beauty of using online learning is that parents no longer have to accept that being in a mediocre school district means that their children won’t get a decent education and struggle to get into college. By simply playing a few interesting, fun, educational games, their children can master the subject matter presented and go on to explore even more fascinating topics. Children who have formerly struggled with school will gain confidence and self-esteem, as they become proficient learners. These children will also gain insights about how they learn best, a skill that is quite valuable in college. It seems that simply logging on to a computer can change a child’s school career forever.

The author of this article, Lindsey Wright is fascinated with the potential of emerging educational technologies, particularly the online school, to transform the landscape of learning. She writes about web-based learning, electronic and mobile learning, and the possible future of education.

It has newer been more fun for kids to learn to tell time. Some months ago I spoke with a teacher. She told me how disappointed she was. Almost all her students in 3rd grade did not know how to tell time on an analogue clock.

I went home and spoke with our developers. And today we are happy to release a fun and engaging App that can tell children to tell time.

The first edition is in English and Chinese, but more languages are coming. We hope that the English version can be used in ELT, ESL training as well as it contains a movie and some interactive exercises that makes it fun for kids to play with. Listening to the more than thousand audio files recorded by English speaking voice actors also helps their future pronunciation skills. Download the app from App Store. Link kan be found on Fun Clock website

— FEATURES —
• Animation characters talking about the clock – How does the big hand work and how does the small hand work?

• Animation movie showing the relationship between the analogue clock and the digital clock

• Four levels to unlock – Hours, half hours, quarters and minutes

• Certificate – kid earn certificate if all levels are completed. For the kid that can be mailed or shared to others

• Real voice actors with more than a 1000 audio files

• Great graphic

• Many hours fun and educational time

• Mute function for background sounds

— GAMES INCLUDED —

• Build your own clock

• Talking clock

• Move the hands to tell time

• Choose the right clock to make the bus depart

• Tilt the ipad or iphone to move the numbers to the right position on the clock

Hope your kids will enjoy our Fun Clock app

See

developed with:

Due to large demand we have for some time been working on a solution for kids learning English even younger than primary education. We are happy to share with you some of the initial offerings this solution will have.

Mingoville Pre-School is suitable for students, age 4-6 years old. The content of the English program has been carefully designed and developed together with educators and English teachers. The interactive activities in the program encourage children to learn vocabulary under the “Play-and-Learn” mode.

The program includes 7 thematic Missions training different vocabulary.

• Focus on vocabulary and word recognition
• Kids train pronunciation by listening to words and record their own words.
• Future pronunciation is also enforced when they listen to the several thousand audio files, spoken by British and US voice actors.
• Many different game plays that teach kids about; Family, colors, letters, food, animals, body parts, furniture and more.
• Lovable animated baby flamingo helps kids along as they play the games.
• Animated rewards! Kids get a reward after every other game they complete.
• Designed for preschoolers
• Easy navigation and few menus.
• Unlimited play! Each game flows right into the next.

Mingoville Preschool will be available in September 2011 on the following platforms: Windows, IOS and Android

Dear Mingoville fans. We are exiting to release many new Mingoville learning games to the Android platform. The newest games are developed on the Adobe Air platform. Let me tell you it has really been exiting to see how well the newest Air release are working on multiple platforms and multiple screen sizes. I think we will see many new exiting games in the near future using Flash to Air. Please try one of our first educational games ready in the Android Market. The games is called “Words United” and it is a sentence construction exercise. This game has more than 800 audio files. You need to drag the words and make sentences. Use you Mingoville login to unlock more missions. Good luck

Find the game here: Words United

Now Danish Mingoville players can enjoy the national World Cup outfit for their Mingoville avatar. Hopefully more to come

It’s so beautiful on the country side and it’s so healthy for the kids to get a lot of fresh air. It’s time to get out of the city and into the Nature. This week, we release two new activities in Mingoville Virtual World. The first activity is a new Nature map where the kids learn English while playing with Esmeralda and exploring the Nature. The other English activity is a new educational game that takes the kids fishing for English words. It’s all about fun English learning.

Explore Nature and Learn the English Words
On Mingoville’s new map Nature, the kids can now enjoy the fresh air out in the nature together with Esmeralda. Esmeralda is Bob and Candy’s aunt in Mingoville. Esmeralda will take the kids on a tour around Nature. The activity is developed to let the kids practice the vocabulary learned in Mission 4 in Mingoville School; Nature and Season.

Esmeralda will ask the students to go and find different words that relate to Nature and Seasons – that could be fire camp, flowers, clouds, skies, trees, etc. If the students are good, they will get a reward for their effort. It’s kind of a treasure hunt as they have to find their reward in the end by guessing the hint from Esmeralda.

The English exercise is based on both listening to the word as well as recognizing the words in order to be able to find them. We recommend that the students work with the English exercises of Mission 4 in Mingoville School prior to exploring Nature in Mingoville Virtual World.

Go Fishing and Do Some Spelling

In Nature, the kids can also learn English going on a fishing trip. When fishing on the Mingo Lake, the students have to catch the fish in the water with their fishing rod. For every fish they catch, they earn points. However, some fish have a letter in the stomach. If the kids can spell the word illustrated in the upper left corner by catching the fish with the right letter, they get bonus points. If they catch other things like boots, they lose points.

The game is on time and the student has to reach the target – it means, they have to reach the goal set within the time frame which is typically between 60-120 seconds.

The Fishing game has several levels. In the first level, the kid can get around with “just” catching fish to reach the target. However in level two or level three, they cannot reach the target without catching in the bonus – they need to spell the word to go to the next level. The higher the level, the tougher it gets.

All words to be spelled are from Mission 4 in Mingoville School; Nature and Seasons. If the kids cannot spell the words, we recommend they complete activity 1-8 in Mission 4.

We hope you have a lot of fun – if there is something you don’t understand or have suggestion on things we need to do, feel free to comment