Nubba

What is Nubba app?

The Nubba app, from Spanish developer Baby Radio S.L., is an audio subscription service aimed at recounting Spanish-language stories for children and families alike. Nubba is a beautifully presented app, mostly aimed at young children as a safe and child-friendly solution to over-reliance and over-use of screen time. It is exclusively in Spanish and boasts a significant library of stories, fairy tales, and radio broadcasts, among other things.

Each user signs in to access a specific profile, where the content is organised is intuitively navigated by type. Children have access to an impressive selection of over one hundred 24/7 radio broadcasts, stories, fairy tales, and more produced to the highest quality. This enables an immersive and engaging Spanish experience.

What we love about Nubba app.

The Nubba library is an ideal way to introduce new or rekindle your love of well-known Spanish and world tales to your child. The app has been specifically built for Spanish-speakers to bring short stories to the palm of your hand. These stories and radio broadcasts will allow their imaginations to run free, encourage them to snuggle close for story time, to sing and dance hours away, and/or discover a world of new characters.

All of the content is broken down into sections according to purpose. You can choose from a selection of 24/7 radio broadcasts, podcasts, stories to inspire your imagination, for fun, for relaxing, and for learning. Nubba really has almost anything your child could wish to listen to - permitting them to lose themselves in an adventure or drift away in fantasy. The quality of the recording is excellent and extremely clear. This contributes to a quality, immersive experience which is highly effective and endearing.

A pleasing feature of the app is the ability to create playlists of your favourite and commonly listened-to content, offering a much more customised user-experience and making the content even more easily accessible that what it already is. This is further extended with the option to download content allowing for offline use, meaning that when you are out-of-service, low on data, or on airplane mode, you and your children can continue to enjoy your favourite stories and character unimpeded.

The Nubba app can also be stretched beyond the intended use of the app and play an inciteful role in Spanish-language learning. The content is reproduced in authentic, real-world Spanish – I am especially thinking of the stories and fairy tales. This content is an invaluable resource for any learner wishing to truly stretch their knowledge and understanding of Spanish, while equally gaining an authentic cultural experience.

All-in-all, Nubba boasts an engaging and compelling app build with quality, effective audio to engage and entertain families and children alike.

What skills does it teach?

Nubba claims to offer an alternative to the scourge of screen addiction among young children. Although still using technology, children can learn, relax and expand their imaginations through fun and engaging audio storytelling. Nubba provides a safe, secure, and regulated environment where external stresses are limited and children can explore and enjoy familiar and new stories in an anxiety-free way.

This is not specifically a language-learning app; however, it offers an effective and efficient way to enhance your child’s Spanish literacy. The sheer breadth of audio content and quality of storytelling is excellently geared to develop your child’s cognition skills as it helps to support, stretch, and challenge their memory, concentration and listening abilities. As your child becomes increasingly familiar with the Nubba platform you will see their confidence and independence grow. As the stories inevitably improve their aural and oral communication skills, your child will increasingly navigate content on their own and gain greater autonomy of their own learning and improvement.

What age is it appropriate for?

Simplistically put, Nubba is a story-telling app; however, to leave it there would do the developers a huge disservice. The app seems most suitable for babies up until late primary-school aged children, but it is by no means exclusively for this range. Anyone who enjoys rekindling their love of old stories and fairy tales will find something for them here.

Beyond the core intention of this app, Spanish-language students who wish to really stretch and authenticate their knowledge and skills would find this app an almost invaluable resource. Within Nubba you will have access to world and Spanish-specific stories, meaning that this content will be useful to learners of all ages.

Is Nubba app easy to use?

Yes, Nubba is extremely easy to use and intuitive to navigate. First registration involves entering your name, email and an optional phone number and creating a suitable password for access. After this, you are free to explore the wide selection of audio content that will keep you and your child captivated for hours upon hours. The initial user interface is clear and uncluttered, and makes it convenient to navigate through, giving you access to all content.

How will students benefit?

Nubba provides a safe and stress-free environment where children can enjoy their favourite stories and discover new ones from their tablet or phone. Regular listens will see their literacy and auditory skills progress, unlocking an extended lexicon and improving their phraseology and phonics awareness.

For non-native and more-experienced language learner, Nubba is a readily and easily accessible story bank of authentic and real-world audio which will effectively stretch and supplement their own learning.

How will parents benefit?

Nubba app is a ready-to-use story bank to encourage and promote your child’s imagination in a safe way. Parents can be reassured that all content has been carefully vetted and is appropriate for young children’s needs. Parents can control contact time by initiating and ending content sessions, as well as creating playlists to customise the content that is accessed by their children.

The library of content is sorted according to content type and parents will find this a clear and efficient way to access the content that best suits their child’s needs.

How will teachers benefit?

Nubba represents a central platform for authentic content – this means it has the potential to be an invaluable resource for language teachers. Admittedly, the app is limited in its curricular relevance; yet, with care and planning any educator would be able to integrate these stories into lesson plans, providing the scope for an authentic scheme of work bringing Hispanic culture into the classroom.

From a ready-to-go stance, this app would represent a nice independent resource bank for more advanced learners, giving them access to real-world and genuine resources to stretch the listening skills.

For Spanish teachers of native speakers, this app represents an excellent accompaniment to the curriculum; however, the main and intended context of the app appears to be the family setting.

How much does Nubba app cost?

Nubba is free to download. Initial registration will require the user to select one of three payment plans – monthly (5€95), 6-monthly (24€95), or annually (39€95). However, this sign-up appears to trigger a 15-day trial period whereby all content is readily accessible, with the user being able to cancel their subscription at any time.

Is Nubba app safe to use?

There is no inappropriate content within Nubba, the initial sign-in feature is used to access a specific user profile. Parents/Carers can use this to restrict child access by signing out or ‘cancelling’ their ‘session’. Any links within the app are for the purposes of accessing internal, in-app content or information about the app itself. Nubba does not contain any social media links. There are little to no in-app advertisements, with the only audio-based promotion being to specify the source or purpose of the audio content.

What can Nubba app improve on?

As rare as it is to say in an app review, I do not think that there is much for Nubba to improve upon, when factoring in the actual scope of the app. Nubba’s content library is extensive, varied, and quality in its production.

To enhance user navigation, I would like to see some more details provided on content. Despite, the purpose of the content and the name of each piece of audio being relatively clear, additional information – such as suitable age range, a short informative bio – would allow users to gauge the content that is most suitable and relevant to them with greater ease.

Although it is beyond the primary scope of the app, adding transcripts to some pieces of content would greatly facilitate the language-learning scope for non-native learners of Spanish. As a non-native speaker and educator, to have access to some transcripts – especially on the fairy tales and stories – would better enable me to create and manipulate resources to better gain a real-world language experience and unlock authentic sources to develop language skills and understanding.

Overall rating of the website and app

Nubba is a neatly designed and engaging app that uses quality and authentic Spanish stories to bring an endearing alternative to our screen-centric culture among children. The stories, fairy tales, radio, and more will help support your child's emotional, social, and cognitive development. Give Nubba a listen and, hopefully, your children, too, will enjoy being swept away on their imagination.