La Forêt by Gallimard Jeunesse features clear, hand drawn, labeled illustrations, professional French narration, and a well designed table of contents. Features include 3D illustrations that respond to screen tilting, the ability to “paint” seasons with your finger, hidden animals and insects and realistic ambient sounds. Note, that there is no English language option. You can use this title to expose your child to a real immersive French experience. Illustrations are by René Mettler. Developed by Studio v2 for Gallimard Jeunesse. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Featuring a 3D spinning globe interface, this children’s atlas makes it possible to zoom in and pull out of a globe view, and to explore surface-level facts and photos on several hundred topics, including basic facts about each country. These facts can be compared with a touch (for example, for Mali) to learn the current time, weather, distance from you (the app knows where you are), and then compare land area, highest point, currency, transport per 1,000 people, and average CO2 emissions. Some of the items include 3D models, but this type of content seems scarce. The illustrations are by artist David Dean and the text narration is by the BBC’s Nick Crane. The 3D rotations of historical objects come from the Royal Geographical Society. The live country facts are supplied by Wolfram/Alpha and this includes real time weather, providing you’re online. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
This is a power of 10 app, that lets you explore the really big and the extremely small. You start with a view of a back yard, with a dirty dog named Tick Bait. You can zoom in or out by powers of 10. If you zoom out, you see views of the earth’s atmosphere, then the Earth itself. From there it is out to the solar system’s sun and planets, the Milky Way galaxy and beyond to the universe. At any point, you can also start zooming in, back to the back yard, and then down into the ticks on the dog’s skin, and down into the microscopic world to explore bacteria, viruses, DNA, atoms and protons. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This is the second in the The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library series. Cat in the Hat is the host (and the narrator) who takes us on a fictional expedition to find dinosaur fossils. This includes a trip to the modern day Super Dino Museum, where animated dinosaur visuals are hidden on each page. Each page has developmentally appropriate content for both younger children as well as capable readers, making this a good all-purpose app. For example, hidden information cards from Thing One and Thing Two provide more facts such as “Ankylosaurus: This 30-foot-long dinosaur had an armor-covered body and a club tail it could swing from side to side. A well-placed blow with its tail could break the leg of a T-Rex!” Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
This dinosaur encyclopedia contains a library of 60 animated, roaring dinosaurs, as well as biographical facts on a set of famous dinosaur hunters. You can either explore the screens, one at a time, or listen to each page read aloud by British actor Steven Fry. Every dinosaur and object can be spun around in 3D motion, allowing you study the visual details such as skin texture and color. You can also view fight sequences from any angle. The dinosaurs feature “real” sounds and animation. Content includes 310 3D models, 60 realistic dinosaurs and 40 recreations of dinosaurs fighting. There’s a total of 200 pages of text, and five hours of narration. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Once you get past the idea of touching the swarms of realistic roaches, ants, or bees, children quickly fall for this collection of 18 counting and classification activities. There are two modes. You can move through a series of structured challenges progressively (progress for one player is bookmarked), or you can freely explore. Management features include the ability to toggle on/off scores, achievements, visual instructions, extended introduction or the background music. The leveling causes the app to get easier if a child struggles. A “bonus mode” presents the hardest challenge. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
What does the inside of a seashell look like? What about an insect, a motorcycle or an iPad? Here’s an app that lets you find out. The app contrasts two images — before x-ray and after x-ray, and every possible gradation between. To move between the views, you swipe with a single finger, from top to bottom. Content includes 26 everyday objects, arranged from A to Z. A double-tap offers a stereoscopic option, or you can pinch to zoom and reveal detail. This app is based on the photography of Hugh Turvey, the Artist in Residence at the British Institute of Radiology. The accompanying text is by author Paul Rosenthal. There are different versions, one for iPad, the other for iPhone or iPod Touch. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Plants HD lets you drag and drop the seven stages of a plant into the correct order: seeds-dispersal-germination-plants and trees-flowers-pollination-fruits. Features of the app include the ability to tap on a stage to learn facts about the process (all text is narrated, a nice feature) and a quiz that lets you earn points. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Helping a child understand long term temporal relationships — things like how a plant grows or how a glacier retreats — has always been a challenge for a parent, librarian or teacher. Now there’s an app for that, and it works. Featuring a very basic design, Painting With Time (called “Paint With Time” in the app store) exemplifies how you can leverage the power of a multi-touch screen to make an abstract concept — in this case time — have meaning. A gallery containing 14 pictures includes such things as A Messy Room (showing how a child’s playroom gets messy over just a few days), Growing a Beard (over 30 days), “Spring Comes to Boston” and “A Glacier Retreats.” Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Stretching the term “non-fiction,” The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library is an ebook adaptation of the Dr. Seuss series, done in classic Oceanhouse Media style, where you can touch any item or word to see it labeled. You can also tap the stars on some of the pages to reveal constellations and see them identified. Other titles in the series will explore subjects including dinosaurs, pets, marine life and trees, each featuring classic characters from the original The Cat in the Hat series. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Put a science center in your iPad, with this collection of three activities, featuring Sid the Science Kid characters. Following a noisy introduction — just like the show — you tap one of the three Sid characters to start a no-fail activity. In the Collection Inspection, you use a magnifying glass to notice subtle differences in 14 sets of items. Chart It presents seven collections, which vary by shape, color and pattern. You can move them onto dynamic charts. Wrong answers fall back to the bottom of the screen, giving the charts authenticity, and realtime feedback. Time Machine lets you play with time relationships as you freely explore 14 sets of objects such as an apple being eaten, a candle burning or a plant growing. Created by Jim Henson Studios and Carsten’s Studios for PBS Kids. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Bobo Explores Light is an example of how an app can let children aged 7-up play with — and better understand – an abstract concept; in this case light. Organized as an ebook, the 21 page (or screen) app covers a range of light-related topics, starting with the sun, and ending with fireworks. Each screen contains three pull tabs that lead to videos, facts, and definitions. The app was created by Juraj Hlavac at Game Collage, LLC., with text and research by Craig Fusco and illustrations are by Dean MacAdam. Game Collage also produced The Three Little Pigs and the Secrets of a Popup Book. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
First released in 2007 under the name “EyeClops TV Microscope” by Jakks Pacific, this year’s edition has been simplified once again. To use, you put in five AA batteries, plug the yellow composite video cable into your TV and start exploring specimens at 200x power. Objects are illuminated by three white LEDs. The kit includes one SpyClops Bionic Eye, one Converter Unit and four top secret documents. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Based on the Palm/Smithsonian book, written by Dawn Bentley and illustrated by wildlife and natural history artist Karen Carr, It’s Tyrannosaurus Rex! is a prehistoric adventure for readers in preschool through grade 2. The story takes readers on a journey through the Cretaceous period where they are introduced to the idea of how Tyrannosaurus Rex and other ancient creatures roamed the earth. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review.
Designed to introduce deductive reasoning using animal attributes, this App give clues such as “lives near water” or “has smooth skin” to help children narrow in on an answer. In the app, the animals are hiding in the jungle and your child has to help Babu the Meerkat find his friends by matching the clues with the animals they have met on their way. Attributes include physical appearance, size, living environment, and eating and sleeping habits. This is the first iPad app in Tribal Nova’s iLearnWith Educational Program, which is a cross curricular game-based learning program that helps prepare children for school. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Ms. Frizzle comes to the multi-touch screen, in the app version of the Scholastic book “The Magic School Bus: On The Ocean Floor” by Joanna Cole and illustrated by Bruce Degen. Arranged in ebook fashion, the app takes children on a tour of the basic parts of the ocean. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
This printed dinosaur book-turned-iPad app is rich with content (over 600 dinosaurs are listed) but it has some rough design spots. The app, by “Dino” Don Lessem, certainly does a good job living up to it’s “most complete” claim. You can either simply swipe through the 112 pages, one page at a time, or jump to a specific page using a set of side-scrolling thumbnails. Each page contains a huge, beautiful close-up of a dinosaur, picture information, and a dramatically narrated paragraph describing the dinosaur on the screen. At any point, you can jump to a contents window, navigate using a family tree, browse dinosaur profiles, or look at 14 short videos that illustrate how the dinosaurs move. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Touch a planet, moon or comet to explore, in this carefully crafted interactive science poster that covers every corner of our Solar System. After the dramatic symphonic introduction (which can be skipped), you can start exploring. You notice a location-based slider on the screen bottom, that starts with the center of the solar system (the Sun) and moves out to the distant comets. This space-line serves as a constant table of contents, helping you to jump around quickly through huge distances. To learn more about a planet or moon, touch it or turn it to pull up more photos taken from NASA or the Hubble. Content includes about 200 “pages” of interactive information, presented book style. Note that a high level of reading is required, and English appears to be the only language option. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
This app is more of an ornate annotated photo library, with no narration, search options nor language options. Featured in many of the photos is legendary dinosaur collector Barnum Brown, responsible for finding many of the artifacts on display today. There are many WWI-era photos of Brown and his team at work, digging dusty bones out of the sand.
Note that the app is part of a 2011 exhibit called the World’s Largest Dinosaurs designed to highlight Sauropods, which grew up to 150 feet long. The exhibit will include a life-sized model of a 60-foot Mamenchisaurus that you can walk inside. Other apps from the museum include Cosmic Discoveries (a 1,000 image mosaic) and American Museum of Natural History Explorer, designed as an “indoor GPS” which pinpoints a user’s location within the Museum and offers turn-by-turn directions. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This subscription-based curriculum for preschool through kindergarten lets children explore a wide variety of content in a structured way. After you log in, and pay the $8/month subscription, you can create individual accounts for up to three children, who can be at different levels. Each child can then log in, and create their own avatar. From this point, they can explore a classroom, where items lead to stories, structured multiple-choice style drills, nursery rhymes and games. As children play, they collect tickets, which can be used to unlock new clothing or toys for their classroom. Prices are $7.95/month and $79.00/year and each account allows up to three children per household. Call about school pricing. The service was created by Age of Learning, Inc. which is located in Glendale, CA. The creators originally started Neopets.com. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Seek Your Own Proof is a web-delivered detective adventure that follows the story of three investigative siblings – Aidan, Milanie, and Heiko Munro on a series of missions. Each Flash-based mission is sold for $4 (the first one is free, after you register); or you can buy ten for $20. Created by Canadian-based Rocketfuel Productions, in partnership with Discovery Kids. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
The second in the Endless Ocean series, this one player diving simulation and exploration game lets you learn about 300 species of marine life, from jellyfish to whales. If you played the first game, you’ll find this version to have a nearly identical look, feel and control mechanism. New features include the story element and the addition of content. Developed by ARIKA for Nintendo. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Great science and ecology content is combined with low levels of interactivity and a didactic presentation in Wonder Rotunda (www.wonderrotunda.com), a subscription-based ($45/year) web delivered service first released in the summer of 2009. In order to make the site work, you need a Flash-enabled browser and a credit card. No other software or downloads are required. We evaluated the service using a complimentary password provided by the publisher.
After you create a male or female character to represent yourself in the game show portion of the experience, you see a map representing 11 topics including: orchestra, rain forest, great barrier reef, American government, digestive system, Apollo 11, planet earth, kangaroos, healthy eating, the Serengeti and business adventure. By clicking on an area of the map, you launch a 20 minute or so animated adventure, in which pop-up facts appear. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This $30 Nintendo DS game creates a nice extension of the traditional printed picture book (same title, published by Scholastic). Both tell the true story of Winter, a young dolphin who was injured in a net and lost her tail while recovering at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. Children unlock parts of the program one chapter at a time, until all 11 chapters are unlocked. Progress is saved automatically in one of three game-save slots. Created by 1st Playable and turtlepond Interactive by Crave Entertainment. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This mostly one player Wii game puts you in the role of a zookeeper, in which you take care of as many as 90 species of animals. The more you care for your virtual animals, the more you learn their habits and gain their trust, earning you hearts. Content includes 20 exhibits to unlock. A free-form mode allows you to interact with the animals you like best and you can also compete in goal-oriented and co-op challenges. There are also minigames to earn awards and gain access to unlockable content. Developed by Blue Fang, creators of the Zoo Tycoon series. See also SimAnimals. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Explore animal facts and sounds with this specialized talking stylus designed to decode tags found on plastic animals or printed on a poster, using dotted media tags. Touch the tip of the stylus to the tag and you hear facts and quizzes. The $30 kit includes a starter set of plastic Smart Animal toys (additional animals are sold separately) plus color poster-sized playing board, with 240 scannable animal images and games. Please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This third title in the Didi & Ditto series features the same film-quality animation that has become a trademark of the Canadian developer Kutoka Interactive, mixed with 16 games.
In the story, Didi & Ditto (young brother and sister beavers) are preparing for a visit from Mother Nature, but a sneaky wolf has been hiding the musical instruments and the food. After they sign in (to save games), children can choose to play in the adventure mode, or jump directly to one of the games, where they can sort letters, construct short words or match numerals with quantities.
The hybrid game comes on one disk that can be installed on either Macintosh or Windows computers. Please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Can you create a cell phone your grandparents could easily use, and would purchase? That’s the c
hallenge behind this free, Flash based simulation from Edheads, a group that has become known for bringing abstract ideas to life (see also Virtual Knee Surgery) by putting the learner in the role of decision maker and inventor.
First, you review the market surveys, a good exercise in reading graphics and interpreting information. Next, you go to the lab, and try out different screen sizes, batteries, key layouts and so on. You learn that extra features cost money, which increases the price and can reduce sales. Finally, you take your design to the test group, who give you feedback. While the number of responses is limited, you learn through trial and error how to get the most sales. This simulation was created by Clearly Trained, with support from Ohio State University, with support by the Motorola Foundation. It was released on June 15, 2009. Rating: 
Based on a real surgical procedure, this step-by-step simulation teaches you how to implant a small electrode in the center of a patient’s brain. The process, called Deep Brain Stimulation, is used to remedy the effects of nerve disorders such as those
caused by Parkinson’s Disease.
Your patient is a 59 year old women named Ellen, and you are provided with a case history before the procedure, which takes about 20 minutes from start to finish. You control each step — from putting the six small screws (called fiducials) into the skull by clicking on each marked spot, to inserting the electrical probe at exactly the right depth, by dragging your cursor over a lever. Later, you put in the battery packs and adjust the charge.
At various points, you’re given a multiple choice quiz asking you to justify your actions. If you make a mistake? No worries and no malpractice. The computer gently moves you to the next step.
This title was created by Clearly Trained and published by Edheads with funding from the Ohio State University Medical Center Department of Neurosurgery. Please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.