Oxford University Press launches augmented and virtual reality EYFS app for pre-school children and parents

The Little Oxford app, which also links to the Oxford International Early Years Curriculum, is designed to help parents and carers support their children with early years education at home.

The ‘pioneering new Augmented Reality’ (AR) app aims to offer a learning through-play experience to ease the transition to primary school.

The education publisher said that the app harnesses the latest AR and virtual reality (VR) technology from EdTech developer Inception XR, to ‘create a fun and engaging, collaborative learning experience for young learners and their parents or carers.’

Little Oxford was developed with early years specialist Sue Cowley. The app aims to support three- to five-year-olds in becoming confident learners, while developing their digital literacy, an increasingly important skill for children, in a safe and educational virtual environment.

To coincide with the launch OUP has released new research, which finds that almost two-thirds of parents (61 per cent) believe smartphone and tablets support their child’s development.

While four in five parents (82 per cent) reported concerns around online safety, the overwhelming majority of parents surveyed believed that smartphone and tablet exposure is vital to child’s early education in today’s increasingly digital world. Two-thirds believe that children whose parents spend time using apps with them know how to keep themselves safer online later on in life.