Timbuktu Magazine....A Wonderful iPad Magazine For Our Young People!

A few weeks ago I came across a new iPad magazine for elementary students called Timbuktu. I was drawn in right from the beginning with the wonderful illustrations, bright colors, and engaging content.

And the words....The iPad Magazine For Children. 

Then I connected with Francesca Cavallo and I learned even more....to with with all of you too!

Here is what Francesca shared with me....

An overview on the Timbuktu project

Timbuktu Magazine is an iPad magazine for elementary school children. We started Timbuktu because we felt the need of a digital product for children that would treat them as peers, and that would promote imagination as a tool to know and change the world. The magazine and all our other apps are based on the Reggio Emilia Approach to education, a pedagogical method forged in Italy that focuses on creativity as a way to foster experiential learning.

The stories inside Timbuktu Magazine are Common Core State Standards aligned, but they  are designed to kindle children's curiosity and care, rather than to encourage a "meet the expectations" kind of feeling. We firmly believe children have the right to approach learning in a free, creative way, and to understand that education is something that will empower them to help others, not just to please their family or their teachers.

In order to help kids approach learning from this perspective, we designed a group of fun characters, but each of these characters has a flaw: for example, Betty is a girl Wiener dog with a passion for drawing, but very bad at grammar. She writes a diary on Timbuktu, and kids help her to get better correcting her mistakes. Bello is a detective umbrella passionate about math, but very forgetful. Kids help him solve the mysteries happening in the city of Timbuktu solving what's basically a two-step word math problem.

Timbuktu Magazine is a monthly magazine with 9 interactive stories per month. It's not our only title: we develop many other apps that help kids play in a relaxed creative mode. No timed missions, no performance anxiety, no stressing sounds and no flashy effects.

We just launched the first Zen app for kids for example: it's called Sand Drawing and it lets them simply draw on the water's edge, with a surf clearing the drawing when they're ready to start over.

Another app that's proving very successful is Oscar Pizza Chef, teaching kids how to make a real Italian pizza.

All our apps are designed in Milan and developed in San Francisco, where our HQ is.

We also have a special feature in each magazine, developed in partnership with the European Space Agency: it's called Discover Outer Space, and it's an interactive article for kids about the latest space discoveries.

Our apps that are available.....

Timbuktu Magazine: http://bit.ly/17siuzC

Oscar Pizza Chef: http://bit.ly/19bzeMj

Sand Drawing: http://bit.ly/1aAEl6U

I cannot wait to use Timbuktu iPad magazine with my students and teachers this year.  My son Hagan has really enjoyed it on his iPad....

and as you can see.....it is easy to love!  

 You can also find them on Twitter at @TimbuktuMag and

the Timbuktu Magazine Facebook page.