Edutainment can be enjoyable at home but not necessarily educationally valuable in a classroom. The Living Book Just Grandma and Me, often found in classrooms, is a perfect example. It is used by teachers on the basis that it is a tool for developing reading skills. As with most interactive stories, the character reads the book aloud while the words are highlighted, which may help early readers as much as an adult reading them a book while pointing to the words. The entertainment value of the program is tremendous.
Children spend most of their time exploring the entertaining possibilities rather than reading.
The immense entertainment value overshadows the possible educational value. Another example of edutainment's curse is a program like Math Blaster . It is a very fun way to do math drills. Instead of merely being mathematical technicians who can manipulate symbols and numbers, students need to learn how math can be used as a tool to solve complex problems that connect mathematics to the world outside the classroom. My experience of learning Spanish in school provides a useful parallel.