Flying Rhinoceros and Wacom Make Education Fun for Gadget Savvy Kids This Holiday Season

VANCOUVER, Wash. and PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 15, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Wacom® Technology Corporation, the creator of Bamboo™, and Flying Rhinoceros®, the creator of Fraboom, today announced a partnership that will enhance the Fraboom Online Children's Museum with a hands-on experience, using the Bamboo Pen and Touch tablet. Instead of using a mouse to participate in Fraboom's live online classes, cartoons, and games, Bamboo puts an interactive pen into your child's hand; simulating real pen-on-paper drawing. The Bamboo pen and touch experience gives children the opportunity to use the skills they learn in Fraboom to enhance their art skills and other everyday activities. Demonstrations and information of Fraboom and the Bamboo tablet are available at http://wacom.com/fraboom.

Fraboom, the world's first live, interactive online children's museum, combines the power of an educational television network, a problem solving online game universe, a rich media e-book library and a truly unique way to inspire kids by connecting them with engaging LIVE teachers. Children may attend real-time classes, play games, watch cartoons, and participate in activities meant to entertain while stimulating the mind. Everything in the Fraboom Online Museum is designed to educate. Children may not realize they are learning but if they are playing in Fraboom, they are experiencing fun educational content.

"Having the Bamboo pen was great because it was actually like writing. It was like using a real pen or marker or crayon. It was fun to watch my kids begin to move their hands using the motions to put simple shapes together and create an intricate picture. The live online teacher taught them how to draw step by step. Fraboom plus Bamboo is a new kind of kids educational entertainment system," said Andrew Orlando, a Portland-area father of four.

Fraboom's content blends education and entertainment and gives parents the confidence that their kids' time online is fun and informative. Fraboom's live educators are trained to encourage learning and the live classes provide children with an interactive environment that inspires out of the box, creative thinking.

"At Flying Rhinoceros, we believe in innovation. Fraboom's cutting edge approach, connecting kids with live, inspirational teachers, is what makes our app truly unique and will change the face of children's media," said Flying Rhinoceros president Ranjy Thomas. "We are thrilled Fraboom is a featured web app in the Google Chrome Web Store and we are excited to offer parents the combination of Bamboo and Fraboom to enhance their child's Fraboom experience."

Upcoming Fraboom exhibits include How to Draw Cartoons, Dinosaurs, Oceans, Bugs, the Human Body and U.S. Presidents.

"Bamboo's pen and multi-touch input gives children a natural and intuitive way to interact with Fraboom for an educational experience that is engaging and fun," said Dennis Hoff, senior product manager at Wacom Technology Services, Corp. "For kids living the digital lifestyle, Bamboo and Fraboom opens up an entire new world of exploration and discovery."

More information about these products is available at http://wacom.com/fraboom.

About Flying Rhinoceros

Flying Rhinoceros is a children's entertainment company that specializes in creating engaging educational content. Over the last fifteen years, Flying Rhinoceros has worked to create material that helps to strengthen bonds between parents and kids. Flying Rhinoceros features a world-class team graphic artists, animators, web designers, filmmakers, educational consultants and writers. Flying Rhinoceros employees share the common desire to see families inspired together and hope to foster these connections by offering creative experiences through books, cartoons, classroom materials, websites, live presentations and interactive programming.

About Wacom and Bamboo

Founded in 1983, Wacom's vision to bring people and technology closer together through natural interface technologies has made it the world's leading manufacturer of pen tablets, interactive pen displays and digital interface solutions. Bamboo tablets are USB peripherals that deliver natural and intuitive input to desktop or laptop computer users. With the ultimate goal of creating harmony between humans and technology, Bamboo combines multi-touch (finger-based input) with pen input to deliver an entirely new standard in human-computer interaction. The advanced technology of Wacom's intuitive input devices has been used to create some of the most exciting digital art, films, special effects, fashions and designs around the world and provide business and home users with the ability to explore digital content creation in a comfortable, natural way.

SOURCE Wacom Technology Corporation