The LeapFrog Tag Reading System

LeapFrog Enterprises has been making technology-driven learning devices for kids of all ages for over a decade, and for a while we thought we had a pretty clear idea what their capabilities were. Their Learn 'n Groove Musical Table was Z's first toy with a lot of bells and whistles, and we whiled away many an infant-watching hour giggling at her gyrations when the music played. We acquired and learned to deeply dislike Little Leap, a patient and mind-numbing plush instructor who foiled our attempts to carry him off in a bag of disused toys through untimely declarations of "Hi! I'm Little Leap! Let's play!", his plaintive cries triggered by another underused toy's pressure against his alphabetized chest.

We took a pass on their "first computer," handheld devices, and LeapPad, but latched on to their Fridge Phonics and Word Whammer toys and would recommend them to anyone with a tolerance for singsong and a volume switch toddlers can easily adjust themselves. In other words, we have found our lives filled with LeapFrog toys despite some careful exclusions and some principled distaste. Theirs is a company you can't quite get away from, and (lucky for us) this is at least in part because many of their toys are very good.

It is unusual for a company with this momentum, focus, and current herd of cash cows to surprise us with something that looks like it might really be breaking new ground, but that's what LeapPad did for us when they introduced the FLY Fusion Pen last year, and they've extended the technology now with their new Tag Learning System, which will replace their LeapPad Learning System entirely sooner rather than later. Both are essentially pen-based computers which read markings on a page and use them in various ways, and while the FLY showed serious promise but may be a harder sell for its target demographic, the Tag pretty much hits the nail on the head.

The Tag reading pen features a tap-style metal tip that triggers a sensor that can identify dot-based markings on the pages of specially printed books released by LeapFrog. There are over a dozen titles in the series now, with many more planned, and they have priced these just reasonably enough, at $14 apiece for hardback, feature-rich story and activity books, to keep parents coming back for new titles. Parents can download audio for any story from the Tag library onto the pen via a USB cable, and the Tag can store any five books at a time.

We were pretty surprised from the start at the depth of this technology, and each day Z obsessively used this device (the company sent us Olivia, and we later purchased the Little Mermaid book that was the subject of so much debate) we discovered new things it could do. So far, we've discovered that the Tag pen can:

• Read whole pages or passages in its books by tapping an icon on each page, thus reading an entire story to a child page by page.
• Read individual words tapped by the pen - every word in every book - or a line of text by scrolling the pen across it.
  
• Play exclamations or sounds by every character portrayed on every page, as well as hidden "Easter eggs."
• Invite children to play games involving story comprehension, picture identification, or reading by tapping on activity icons on many pages, and identify correct answers via tap not only on the page you're on, but elsewhere in the book (i.e. "Find six pictures of Flounder in this book").
• Tell whole stories without the books, including stories you have not purchased books for.
  
• Log all activity/quiz results for upload to your computer and statistical analysis.

We were very pleasantly surprised that the Tag site doesn't mess around with codes or proofs-of-purchase to add stories from the online library to the pen. You can listen to the stories without buying the book, and although the limited value of these narratives is clear to us, many companies are highly protective even of product samples of very limited value, and LeapFrog has taken a different path. This dovetails nicely with other intuitive, easy-to-use features of their site, and our overall experience with using the software you have to download to interact with their site was very positive. Software tools like this are the breaking point for many well-intentioned kids' technology tools, and LeapPad definitely worked on this until they got it right.

Reading books and telling stories are among my greatest pleasures with Z; we read several books each night before bed, and I love introducing her to great children's authors and sharing in the joy of storytelling with her. My one anxiety about this product was, would it be so engaging to Z that she wouldn't want to read books anymore?

The answer was no - thankfully, there are some aspects of reading that the Tag cannot replace. But for car rides, waiting rooms (you can plug headphones into the Tag pen), and at-home quiet time, Z would just as soon play with her Tag system as watch a video, which is saying a lot; and unlike videos, we see no reason to limit her exposure to the Tag, which, for us, is saying a lot too.

I have only two items on my wish list for this device, and I am particularly interested in mentioning them because, since the Tag plugs into your computer and communicates with the LeapFrog website (to download/swap book files and to maintain your child's private learning stats, if desired), I have a sneaking suspicion they'll be able to download firmware upgrades to the pen through the same channel:

• Let us turn off or override the battery warning message. This is maddening. When the batteries get somewhat run down but still have a lot of juice left in them, the Tag begins telling your kid to tell you to put new batteries in it. This spurred repeated discussions of why the Tag pen was not telling our daughter the full truth about its battery life, and why we did not want to change unspent rechargeable batteries right when the damn thing told us to. Parents should be able to disable this feature or override it when it first occurs.
  
• Allow parents to customize which icons function in a book. It would be great to have the option of shutting off the full-page reading, which I almost consider a detrimental feature, because I know that Z could easily learn to follow the line of text with the pen (which it can easily read that way), but she relies on the single tap because it is easier. I'd also like to have the option of shutting off the picture-response for a new book, as there sometimes seem to be too many of them, which can distract her from reading a story. Okay, that one just makes me sound like a control freak. The full-page reading option, though, I'm sticking with - I'd really like to be able to shut this off to encourage more active "reading," even if it is just mimicking the act of scanning the text on a page, because this is an important first step to reading and can get kids looking at words more closely and seeing the relationship between the sounds and the words.

The LeapFrog Tag system costs $50 for a green or pink pen and starter book, Ozzie and Mack, which explores many of the pen's advanced features. Additional books are $14 apiece. You can buy the Tag pen and books on Amazon.com or directly from the LeapFrog site, both of which currently offer free shipping on the device.