Fidget Spinner App Gets 7 Million Downloads -- THE Journal

Breaking News

Fidget Spinner App Gets 7 Million Downloads

By Sri Ravipati
06/02/17

An iOS and Android app that digitizes fidget spinners, a children’s toy, has been downloaded more than 7 million times.

Fidget spinners have grown in popularity in the last couple of months, and businesses worldwide are jumping to meet the demand. Some schools in the United States are banning these handheld gadgets that were supposedly made with the intention of helping students with special needs, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and anxiety, feel at ease and relieve stress. Many administrators and teachers find these gadgets to be too distracting for use in the classroom, while others have said they are being used dangerously, The Washington Post reported. Schools in at least 11 states have banned fidget spinners.

Meanwhile, other schools have hopped onto the trend bandwagon and are using fidget spinners creatively during class time. One elementary school in California, for example, is using fidget spinners in math classes to “randomly select math problems to solve, write how-to manuals, and work on verbal communication skills,” according to a local news report.

In any case, these toys are as popular in app-form as they are in real life. There are already a few hundred fidget spinner apps combined across the Apple App Store and Google Play. One app is by far leading the pack — Fidget Spinner from Ketchapp, a French video game company owned by Ubisoft, has reached 7 million downloads in about two weeks, Mashable first reported. For comparison, Pokemon Go, another mobile app that not too long ago swept schools nationwide, had 10 million downloads in a week.

Last week, Ketchapp’s Fidget Spinner game was in the No. 1 spot in the iTunes App Store as the most downloaded free iOS app. The app displays a fidget spinner on the screen and users need to swipe to spin — swiping faster to increase speed. Users can earn coins for their spins and use these to unlock other fidget spinners in the app.

To learn more about the app, watch the video below. The game is available for free for iOS and Android.

About the Author

Sri Ravipati is Web producer for THE Journal and Campus Technology. She can be reached at [email protected].

E-Mail this page

Printable Format

Featured

Establishing a Proactive Defense Against Evolving Cyber Threats

Here are six good starting points for K-12 districts that want to improve their cybersecurity mitigation strategies and take a more proactive approach to mitigating risk.
Survey: AI Optimism Is Rising, but Cheating and Privacy Concerns Persist

Artificial intelligence is evolving rapidly — both in how it's used and how it's perceived in K-12 education. As a result, schools and districts are under increasing pressure to adapt and respond to the changes AI is driving.
You've Paid for Tutoring. Here's How to Make Sure It Works.

As districts and states nationwide invest in tutoring, it remains one of the best tools in our educational toolkit, yielding positive impacts on student learning at scale. But to maximize return on investment, both financially and academically, we must focus on improving implementation.
Boise School District Boosts Information Literacy with Gale In Context Databases

Students in Idaho's Boise School District are learning how to analyze and think critically about the information they read through the use of Gale In Context.