Read to your child with the new StoryTime app on your iPhone #tech #parents #kids

How do you feel about an iPhone&iPad app that allows you to read to your child virtually? I don't think it is all that bad,especially if used like the makers intended for when the parent is out of town or has to work late. I think this could be useful for military families to help them bond with their children while sharing bedtime stories.Of course nothing can replace the physical bonding time you share with your child while you read to them in person, but this is one of the next best things in addition to using a webcam. As you can see in the video, the app allows the parent to read to the child by phone while the child views the book/story on the iPad and interacts with the images.

If you’re a conscious-stricken parent who occasionally misses your kid’s bedtime story because of long hours at the office, there is, finally, an app for that.

Digital design studio  ustwo , in collaboration with Atomic Antelope , last week launched Nursery Rhymes , an app that lets parents read a bedtime story to their iPad-wielding children through an iPhone, whether they’re working late at the office or on the other side of the world on a business trip.

“Thousands” of people have already downloaded the app since it was launched last week, says ustwo confound Matt Mills, who is known among
the tech community in Shoreditch, London simply as “mills.”

The Nursery Rhymes app alone features beautifully-rendered images of
children’s rhymes based on hand-crafted paper images. But the real
attraction is its “StoryTime” technology, which lets parents read along
to each story on another iOS device (typically an iPhone).

The app’s demonstration video below gives a good overview of how the
app works, but it’s also sparked some debate about the idea of “virtual
parenting.” (Try not to feel even a little bad for the girl in the
video.)

“That is just depressing,” says one YouTube commenter called
towertwelve, while another, joespadaford, says it’s “sad that this is
how kids are getting tucked in at night these days.”

Of course, mills and his crew are not out to permanently replace the
physical presence of a parent at bedtime. “It is simply the next best
thing to a story if a parent is away on business,” he says. “The video
for me is not depressing, it’s almost as if the child is in heaven, the
safest place a person can ever be. We needed to evoke the deepest
feelings. We did that.”

Read More: Forbes.com