MollysWorld comprises a website and iPad app for children, grounded in their innate fascinations and desire to learn and create. The initial emphases are on nature and visual art and design: as David Hockney has observed, 'the urge to draw must be deep within us, because children love to do it'.
We have enlisted the help of leading scientists to help with projects about threatened ecosystems, beginning with Wildflower Meadows and moving on to Antarctica, Coral Reefs, and the Oceans. The MollyApp (described below) will offer children access to a uniquely powerful set of digital art and design tools.
Growing week by week, MollysWorld will introduce children to the endless diversity of nature and human cultures. The main interface gives access to two others: MollysHome (bottom left), and MollysUniverse (top right). Much of the content is presented as dialogues between Molly the know-all cat, and Patch the eager-to-learn puppy, with occasional interjections from Bouncer, a rabbit of modest intellect but infinite zest for life. Drawn by children at Albany Primary School in Cardiff (with whom we continue to work) the characters and their experiences show what it will be possible to create using the MollyApp. At times Molly can sound like a teacher, but she does her best not to!
Molly's World will have a local (Vale of Glamorgan) 'soft' launch on 20 May 2023, intended to recruit parents and children to test the website and app, and 'hard' one in the run-up to Christmas, involving a link between Albany Primary School in Cardiff and a school in Spain. We are working with Disguise, the London-based leaders in the technology for creating interactive and spectacular events.
'This impressive application shows the way forward, not only for visual education, but for all learning.'
Professor Richard Hickman,
Faculty of Education,
Cambridge University.