We are delighted to announce PRELOADED’s exciting collaboration with Merriam-Webster – creators of America’s most trusted dictionary—and the launch of Puku, a fun and motivating vocabulary-building app for children.
Puku is a virtual pet that grows and evolves as players master new words. Every player has a personalised learning experience in the app, guided by adaptive learning technology. All vocabulary is automatically populated with trusted, authoritative Merriam-Webster definitions.
PRELOADED collaborated closely with Merriam-Webster’s publishing and educational products teams to co-develop the idea for the app and virtual pet—Puku—which responds directly to each child’s performance to ensure that all learning is engaging and motivating.
Commenting on the project, Lisa Schneider, Chief Digital Officer & Publisher for Merriam-Webster said, “We’re thrilled with the launch of Puku. The app is delightful to play, and empowers users to easily create and share custom word lists, with age-appropriate definitions, to align with classwork.”
Damien Yambo, Director of Educational Products for Merriam-Webster added, “The Puku app provides an engaging and rewarding learning experience that is tailored to kids’ needs and interests. It can help children practice the vocabulary they’re learning in class, but kids can also play Puku to better understand the books they’re reading for fun.”
Jessica Taylor, Managing Director of PRELOADED, said, ‘It has been very exciting to work with Merriam-Webster and support their ambitions to improve children’s literacy. We are very proud to have partnered with their team, who inspire us and share our passion for purposeful play. The result has been the creation of a highly personalised and engaging learning experience for each and every child.”
Puku is available for iOS users now. The Android version of Puku will be available later in 2019.
