Amazon Kindle FreeTime upgrade adds educational goals

Amazon announced a new upgrade is coming to the Kindle FreeTime software ahead of Christmas. The Kindle FreeTime software is something that Amazon offers that allows parents to control how much time their child can spend on their Kindle tablet doing specific things. The FreeTime software can limit the overall time spent on the tablet, the time spent with games, and the time spent with video among other things.

The new update will be automatically added to Kindle Fire tablets running the app in the "coming weeks" according to Amazon. The update brings new educational goals to ensure that kids learn before they play their favorite game or watch their favorite videos. Using the updated software parents can set goals requiring their kids to read 30 minutes each day.

Parents with little children that aren't to reading age yet can set other goals like requiring the child to use educational apps for a specific amount of time each day. Parents can set these goals to require them to be met before giving access to video or game apps.

New options are also coming to Time Limits allowing the parent to set a bedtime so FreeTime will only function during the time parents choose. The new software will also allow different limits on the amount of time that can be used depending on if it's a weekday or a weekend. Amazon says that in the coming months other new features will be added such as the ability to borrow a Kindle book from participating public libraries and make it available in FreeTime.

SOURCE: TechCrunch