It’s so difficult to find any Gaeilge apps on the market, so to find two new apps released within days of each other is remarkable. TG4 have been busy developing apps for younger children with the release this time last year of the first Cúla Caint app and the release this week of Cúla Caint 2. Now comes the release of another app for younger children called “OLLY an Veain Bheag Bhán”. This app is based on a popular animation series on TG4 for younger children featuring the adventures of a friendly, helpful little van with lots of his friends and his driver Stan.

This app is colourful and well-animated. It is divided into two sections: “Rás na mBeartán” and “Cuir Caoi Air”. In “Rás na mBeartán” children have to drag Olly around the screen to collect parcels in his van. In “Cuir Caoi Air”, Olly’s vehicle friends are missing pieces and children have to drag the missing pieces into the correct places to put the vehicle back together again. This is really a matching game.

I’m not too sure how much use teachers in classrooms will get out of this app as there’s not that much language “as Gaeilge” to learn from it. It could be used simply as a game at the end of a Gaeilge lesson but it will really only be suitable for very young pupils.

The app is suitable for iPod/iPhone and iPad and is free to download from iTunes. As yet, there is no Android version available.