Angelina is an eight-year-old girl. She has learning difficulties. She also has a step-dad called Marius.

Marius: “When I met Angelina and her mother, she was supporting Angelina alone, and she had a hard time coping with her education, with taking care of her day to day, and working a full-time job. When I got involved with Angelina and her mother, I fell in love with them both. I decided, as a step-dad, I have to involve myself 100 percent with Angelina.”

Angelina is distracted easily, won’t tolerate learning books. At age six, she could only say a few words. Marius, who lives in a town called Moss in Norway, taught her a few more words, stuck with it, made slow progress. So he decided to try something new. He wrote an iPad game for Angelina. Marius has no experience writing games and only a rudimentary grasp of programming. He used a tool called GameSalad and asked for some help from friends with relevant skills.

Marius: “Angelina’s Verden [Angelina’s World] is entirely focused on Angelina as a person. There are a lot of apps, but I don't find those satisfying for Angelina and her challenges. So I took her as a starting point and made a game with her in mind, all the way. I wasn't focusing on any other aspects, commercial appeal or anything like that.”

It’s a simple game of matching numbers and words with pictures. Any small child would enjoy the game. For Angelina, learning to speak and recognize images went from being a chore, to a treat.

Marius: “It's night and day. A book doesn't interest her at all. But with the iPad game, she can interact with it. She gets applause when she does something well. There's an instant reward for everything she does.

“Her attention span is very short. Her patience is very short. I tried to avoid having a lot of animation and other unnecessary details. I focused on keeping it simple, clean, and understandable.”

To see Marius and Angelina skip the text and go to 0:40

Some of Marius’ friends helped him with the images and music and now, with a planned English translation. The game will remain free.

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Spreading the game, we spread awareness of the benefits of using tablets for learning across the world.

Marius is using the game’s success with his step-daughter to encourage donations to schools, so that they can invest in iPads, which he believes are far better at teaching kids than traditional tools.

Marius: “Kids will try hard to beat a game. If you give a child a hard game like Meat Boy, they’ll figure it out. Too many educational games are too simple, they are made with adults in mind. Games can help children to enjoy learning, to see it as a fun challenge.”

Meanwhile, Angelina’s speaking and learning ability are progressing at the most rapid rate in her life. Marius wants to see society as a whole take her lead.

Marius: “In Norway, all our politicians have iPads because they are useful. So why not all our school children? A bag full of heavy old books? That’s just something from the old days. Step by step, spreading the game, we spread the awareness of the benefits of using tablets for learning and development for children across the world.”

You: Check out Marius and Angelina’s Indiegogo page or PayPal button and consider donating to his project to get more iPads to learning-challenged kids.

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