Listen to books, play games with sound, create your own recordings. There are now various audio pens that can do this – from TipToi to TING and BOOKii to Anybook. It is impossible to imagine many children’s rooms without these pens. The Tellimero is a particularly open-ended product.
Tellimero is published by Pädagogik-Verlag Betzold, a traditional provider of educational and learning materials. The idea behind the pen is to create a flexible tool that is not tied to specific books or products.
Instead, the pen works with stickers: the pack contains a whole stack of different sticker sheets with colorful dots, animals, instruments and symbols. Some motif stickers already contain noises, such as animal sounds, melodies or other sounds. The 200 or so single-colored dots can be played with as desired.
The stickers are not intended for decorating, but instead make the pen “talk”. If you touch a sticker in recording mode, sound can be recorded – up to five minutes per sticker. This sound is played back in playback mode. This allows you to record books, add sound to objects or record tasks acoustically.
The pen itself is clearly laid out and has three buttons: on/off, record and playback. If you use several Tellimero pens, existing recordings can be copied to other pens via a PC. Finished audio files can also be loaded onto the Tellimero.
The Tellimero is doubly exciting for children: they can listen and be creative at the same time. If adults prepare materials –
At the same time, children can get creative themselves: record their own stories, set riddles to music or use the pen for learning. The operation of the three buttons is so intuitive and simple that the pen really can be used without any problems from the age of 4.
The great creative freedom also brings challenges. Children can’t just be given a pen and a book and be kept busy – preparatory work is required. Stickers have to be distributed, recordings made and content prepared.
If you want to use Tellimero for language learning, for example, you can’t use ready-made products, but have to record books or materials yourself.
As the stickers can be replayed, there is also a risk that children will overwrite stickers that have already been discussed. To avoid this, the so-called “teacher mode” should be used when recording.
As with all audio pens, parents are the “human recharging service”. An empty battery at the crucial moment is one of the most common points of frustration.
According to the publisher, the Tellimero is primarily intended as an educational tool. It is often used in nurseries and schools, for example for language development, station learning or orientation aids. Teachers can, for example, add suitable audio content to a phonics table, a globe or station training. The pen has received several awards for this, including the Comenius EduMedia seal and the Worlddidac Award.
Tellimero is also suitable for private use, whether for creative “fun uses” or for learning and everyday tasks. However, parents should be aware that there are no ready-made materials and the content must be designed entirely by themselves.
Tellimero is a good alternative for families who not only want to listen, but also get creative themselves. Young and old can work together to develop funny, helpful or educational content for the stickers – and they can do it again and again.
