At Winnona Partners, we take pride in helping innovative companies bring their creative visions to life. One of our recent projects, the Waseca Readers App, is a prime example of how physical media can be beautifully adapted into a digital format.
By transforming Waseca Biomes’ beloved educational book series into a sleek, intuitive iPad app, we helped this small Montessori company expand their reach and create a modern learning tool for children.
Who is Waseca Biomes?
Waseca Biomes, based in Athens, Georgia, is a small, women-owned company that has been creating and publishing Montessori-inspired educational materials for over 20 years. Their mission is rooted in the Montessori philosophy, which emphasizes systematic learning and incremental skill-building.
Waseca Biomes’ materials focus on building language skills alongside environmental and cultural studies. Their deep understanding of this material has made them a staple in classrooms around the globe.
Their Parts of a Biome Readers series teaches emerging readers about the natural world through phonetically controlled stories and stunning illustrations. Each reader builds literacy skills while introducing children to the wonders of nature. The goal is to inspire curiosity in children, and these books do just that!
While their products have traditionally been physical materials, Waseca Biomes recognized the growing demand for digital resources in education. They approached Winnona Partners with a challenge: how could they turn their physical book series into an engaging digital experience?
The Challenge: Turning Physical Media into Digital
Adapting physical media into a digital format is a challenge many educational companies face, especially those with a long history of creating tactile materials.
In Waseca Biomes’ case, their reader series consisted of text and picture cards that were designed to be handled and read interactively. The goal was to preserve the charm and educational value of their physical products while creating a modern, user-friendly experience for the iPad.
To streamline the process, Waseca Biomes worked with a third-party content management service to digitize their stories and illustrations. This step saved time and reduced costs, allowing us to focus on developing a polished, intuitive app in just a couple of months.
For startups or small businesses looking to make a similar transition, leveraging third-party tools can be a cost-effective way to repurpose existing content for digital platforms.
The Solution: Designing a Clean and Intuitive App
Our team worked closely with Waseca Biomes to ensure the app captured the essence of their brand and materials. In order to prioritize the content and illustrations, the app’s interface is intentionally simple and clean.
The Waseca Readers App organizes each story into a streamlined digital reader format. Therefore, it’s easy and fun for children and parents to navigate.
The app offers four collections of stories—Energy, Soil Air Water, Plants, and Animals—each containing nine stories available as in-app purchases.
The stories are color-coded to indicate reading difficulty, which follows the same progression as Waseca Biomes’ physical books. As a result, children can build their literacy skills incrementally, just as they would with the original materials.
For example:
- Red stories focus on three-letter phonetic words.
- Orange stories introduce blends like “sl” and “tr.”
- Blue stories explore long vowel sounds.
- Gold stories cover advanced phonetic rules.
By combining Montessori principles with modern technology, the app provides a learning experience that feels both familiar and innovative.
Why This Project Matters
The Waseca Readers App is a testament to Waseca Biomes’ ability to adapt to the digital landscape while staying true to their mission.
As educators and parents increasingly seek out digital resources, this app ensures Waseca Biomes can meet the needs of today’s learners without compromising the quality of their materials.
For Winnona Partners, this project highlights our ability to collaborate with small businesses and create exceptional digital products that align with their vision.
Whether it’s adapting physical media into a mobile app or developing custom software solutions, we specialize in helping companies embrace technology in a way that works for them.
Lessons for Other Businesses
If you’re wondering how to turn physical media into digital products, here are three key takeaways from this project:
- Start with what you have. Waseca Biomes used a third-party service to digitize their content, which saved time and resources. This approach can be a game-changer for small businesses looking to transition to digital. You just have to check the third-party usage rights for ownership and embedding content.
- Preserve the core experience. When adapting physical materials, focus on maintaining the essence of what makes them valuable. In this case, the Waseca Readers app retained the incremental skill-building and beautiful illustrations that defined the original books.
- Partner with experts. Collaborating with a trusted development partner can make the transition to digital smoother and more effective. Our experience with educational apps allowed us to create a product that met both Waseca Biomes’ standards and their customers’ expectations.
Conclusion
The Waseca Readers App is a shining example of how physical media can be transformed into an exceptional digital product.
By embracing technology, Waseca Biomes expanded the reach of their Montessori-inspired materials while staying true to their educational philosophy.
If you’re a business looking to adapt your physical products for the digital age, we’d love to help. Schedule a free consultation with us today to explore how we can bring your vision to life!
