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School Zone's 'Little Scholar' Tablet Now Available

GRAND HAVEN (WWJ) -- A West Michigan educational products provider has rolled out a $199 tablet computer designed for preschool and early elementary students.

School Zone Publishing's Little Scholar tablet is available for purchase at www.buylittlescholar.com.

Officials with the company say the tablet comes out of the box ready to help young kids learn, preloaded with more than 150 educational apps, videos, songs and e-books. They say they've been working on the content over the past two years, and that it covers core curriculum subjects for preschoolers, kindergarteners and first graders -- math, reading, spelling, logic, creativity and geography.

Said School Zone president Jonathan Hoffman, a father of three: "As a parent purchasing electronic learning aids for my children, navigating the app store, managing all the apps and cartridges, and getting constant credit card charges was a hassle and a headache. School Zone's Little Scholar comes fully loaded and ready for use right out of the box, eliminating the frustration, guesswork, and maintenance for today's busy parents, while also saving them time and money. It is 100 percent hassle free."

School Zone's Little Scholar also plays four educational live action/animated videos of "Charlie & Company." Charlie & Company episodes run between 19 and 24 minutes and feature Charlie, a golden retriever, and his teacher, Miss Ellie. Each episode teaches important skills and includes original music by Brian Vander Ark of The Verve Pipe.

In addition, Little Scholar features an A+ app that allows parents to track their child's progress and see how much time their child has spent on each topic or curriculum area. Little Scholar has a password-protected Parent Section, which includes access to the device's control settings and a custom app store for additional downloads. Parents can also use a management tool to choose the apps, music, and e-books that are active on Little Scholar, so they can tailor the content to fit the learning needs of their children.

The tablet features an eight-inch screen and the Google Android 4.2.2 operating system, a 1.2 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, a PowerVR SGX540 graphics processor, 8 gigabytes of storage (with Micro SD cards compatible up to 32 GB), Bluetooth 4.0, a front-and-rear facing camera, and seven hours of battery life.

School Zone was founded almost 40 years ago by longtime educators James Hoffman and his wife Joan Hoffman as a supply store for teachers. Since then, it has sold more than 350 million educational products. Its software interface recently won Apple's Human Interface Design Excellence Award.

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