Injini
on ITUNES
Category : Education
Released : August 17, 2011
Requires : iOS 4.3 or later
Seller : NCSOFT
Introducing Injini Child Development
Game Suite
Injini Child Development Game Suite’s unique collection of games provides exceptional and engaging learning experiences to young children with developmental delays. With 9 feature games, 8 additional mini-games, 9 or more levels for most games, and rich content within each level, Injini offers an exciting panorama for play and a fun way to learn. Whether it’s helping a frog catch bugs, washing dirty pigs or completing patterns and puzzles, each game focuses on fun as the basis for engagement and the development of fundamental skills.
Skills practiced
fine motor – cause and effect understanding – spatial awareness – memory – differentiation – response inhibition – visual processing – sequencing and more
The full suite of Injini games is now available on the Apple AppStore. Contact us to request information on educator volume discounts.
Rationale for Injini Child Development Game Suite design
Design
With the advent of technology, young children live in a world with abundant simulation from visual and graphic information. The Center for Best Practices in Early Childhood Education concluded after a three-year study that children with special needs benefit from using computers to build social skills, communication skills and self-confidence.1Research from Head Start programs emphasizes the significance of technology in offering more opportunities for children to explore, helping them transition between concrete and abstract thinking, and promoting cooperation among children.2 Technology and game-based play are well known to keep children engaged in learning. Research shows that people read images3 and that when schools use multimodal possibilities for children to learn, there is room for children to demonstrate their strengths in reading and writing4. Hence, developing a suite of games for the latest electronic devices was our idea for both motivating and creating a successful medium for children with special needs to learn and play. We understand that a child’s overall development encompasses many aspects, including motor skills (fine and gross), social/emotional skills, communication skills and cognition skills. Due to the nature of handheld touchpad-based devices, Injini focuses primarily on fine motor skills, social/emotional skills, communication skills and cognition skills. The Injini games have been hand picked and crafted based on the design and benchmarks comparison of successful preschool programs and early intervention curriculums practiced in the United States.5 The initial suite of Injini games includes Puzzles, Pattern, Matching, Find It, Squares, Frog, Farm, Balloons, and Tracing. Research shows that children’s play can be linked to developing skills such as memory, self-regulation, oral language abilities, social skills, and success in school (e.g., Squares, Find It, Farm).6 Injini games follow this developmental path with games designed for as early as 1-2 years, beginning with the opportunity to make their own choices and learn about cause-and-effect. 7 By ages 2 and 3, children begin to scribble as precursors to writing skills; the fine motor movement involved in Injini games (e.g. Frog, Tracing) provides such an arena to practice this skill. 7 Injini Pattern games reinforce a mathematics and number awareness skill that children develop in preschool and kindergarten. During that age, children also learn to discriminate visual differences, a skill practiced in Injini Matching games as well as Balloon games.7 Additional games that target a broader range of skills will be included in the future. Studies show that in the Western middle class, parents often use play with young children as a context for teaching.8 The intervention objective for the child through the Injini application is to learn specific developmental and functional skills with the involvement of an adult (when possible) by using modeling, prompting, elicited imitation or extrinsic reinforcement. Such interactions encourage children to become active learners9, providing opportunities for them to explore and discover new concepts for themselves. The goal of the Injini games is to support children’s natural curiosity with a child-friendly platform that develops age-appropriate skills and creates opportunities to share their play with family and friends.
Bibliographys
1. Hutinger, Patricia L., & Johanson, Joyce. (2000). Implementing and maintaining an effective early childhood comprehensive technology system. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 20(3), 159-173. Cited in Lynch and Warner (2004). Computer Use in Preschools: Directors’ Reports of the State of the Practice. Early Childhood Research & Practice, 6(2). Retrieved from http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v6n2/lynch.html