Some evenings you just can't make it home until it's too late to read your kids a bedtime story — we can understand that. What we're struggling to wrap our minds around is an app which enables occasional long-distance parenting by encouraging you to hand your child an iPad so that you can read together while miles apart.
As Reuters reports, the app in question is called Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime and it allows parents to keep up a bedtime story ritual without always being in the same place as their children. In order to use it, you'll need two iOS devices — preferably an iPhone for you and an iPad for your child — and a data connection on both sides. Yes, the hardware is the expensive aspect of this setup.
Both you and your child will open up the app on your respective devices and — thanks to Apple's Game Center — proceed to read a selection of stories in sync.
You and your young one will be able to flip through stories such as Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty and Three Blind Mice together and hear each others' voices as you read. Thanks to the beautifully designed app — it's made by the same folks who created the stunning Alice for iPad e-book app — the whole thing should be a reasonably fun experience.
The only trouble is that while the app is a godsend to attentive parents who just need a way to maintain a tradition on the rare occasion that they're away from home, we just wonder how often you could take the long-distance approach to storytime before your kids begin perceiving you as little more than a voice in an iPad app.
The Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime app is priced at $3.99 and available in the iTunes App Store now. It is worth noting that it is only compatible with the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPad — meaning that owners of the first generation iPhone and the iPhone 3G are out of luck.
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Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. She's a bit obsessed with Twitter, loves to be liked on Facebook, and hopes that iPad-enabled long-distance parenting doesn't become a trend.