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At first glance, Pop It seems no different from the many other interactive children’s books “popping up” on the market for the iPad. But give the screen a shake and you’ll begin to see the bigger picture. The book features a child going through normal daily activities with his parents. By shaking the iPad, these parents can be changed from a homosexual couple, to a lesbian couple, to a heterosexual couple.

“It’s a metaphor for shaking from one perspective to another,” said artist and author Raghava KK in an interview with Mashable. “The relationship between parent and child does not change if they have two moms, two dads. I’m challenging the concept of family.”

Raghava hopes to use the concept to teach children to be open-minded about a variety of issues, including racial and ethnic biases. Eventually, he would like the project to be open-source and to allow users to create interpretations that address different biases that they deal with in their everyday lives. Continue reading this story on the Spark blog…

Check out these interesting articles on kids and technology!

—Parents will enjoy these iPhone and iPad apps (Parents.com)

—Mom’s Facebook Community Helps Diagnose Her Ailing Son (Mommyish.com)

—New regulations for food, beverage advertising toward children (Healthkey.com)

—Using touch screens and apps to treat autism (mercurynews.com)

—The Internet Is Making Your Kids Think Differently, Not Less (Mommyish.com)

—Teaching Angry Birds In School (neatorama.com)

—Infographic Shows Top and Bottom States for Science Education (livescience.com)

For the latest on kids and technology, visit the Spark blog!

When asked to create something, most nine year olds will grab crayons and construction paper. Ding Wen Lim of Singapore is much more likely to sit down at his computer.

The fourth grader started using the computer at age two and has since learned six programming languages. At age nine, he has already completed 20 programming projects. His latest, Doodle Kids, is a free drawing program for use on Apple’s iPhone.

Lim says, “I wrote the program for my younger sisters, who like to draw but I am happy that other people like it.” It seems this propensity for programming runs in the family, as Lim’s father, Lim Thye Chean, also writes iPhone applications.

He says, “He told me it was his wish to learn programming so I decided to teach him the basics. Every evening we check the statistics emailed to us (by iTunes) to see who has more downloads.” Read more on the Spark blog…