QuickAdvice: Animals 100 Delivers A Wonderful Blend Of Education And Entertainment
Animals 100 ($2.99) by YED28 is an iPad application that utilizes high definition photos, intriguing facts, realistic sounds and a creative gaming element to help children learn about over 100 featured animals.
Upon launching Animals 100, your adventure begins at the main menu where you'll find a language switcher (six languages are supported), a Facebook connect button, a video tutorial and six distinct modes with which to experience the app.
Of the all the modes, Photos & Info is truly the meat and potatoes of the app. This section consists of five high definition photos for each animal. Colorful buttons, aligned to the right provide information and navigation, including access to the main menu, info about the animal, a trigger for realistic sounds, and a scrolling menu to quickly jump to a different animal page.
Swiping up or down will take you to various action shots of the animal you are currently viewing, while a swipe to the right or left will take you to the next animal's page.
The Information button reveals an index card with the scientific name, family, order, class, physical description, distribution, habitat, social habits, diet, longevity and curiosity (my favorite) for each animal.
Animals 100 incorporates a very cool gaming element with Alphabet, Quiz and Puzzle. Quiz is my personal favorite since it’s a Game Center game that lets you practice what you learn with a series of 20 yes or no questions. You'll hear applause or boos with each right or wrong answer you choose.
I did find a few issues while using the app. When switching to a different language, the text on the main menu remained in English, while all the other text within the app was in the language I specified.
The app also crashed a few times, but following a full restart of my iPad I haven’t been able to replicate the crash. The inability to save my progress was a bit frustrating. For example, while viewing the zebra’s page, I clicked the home button to return to the main menu, then jumped back to Photo’s & Info to find myself back on the chimpanzee page. After switching back and forth a few times, I realized the app randomly takes you to a different animal each time you visit.
Animals 100 is listed in the entertainment category of the App Store, but is just as much an educational app. It’s about 50/50 entertainment to education and almost feels like two apps in one.
The HD photos are wallpaper-worthy. In fact, I’d love to see the developer add an option to save these photos for use as wallpaper.
The Photos & Info section alone is worth the download, but the addition of the gaming element helps make this app stand out.
The app is beautiful, informative, fun and a great educational tool, though it's not perfect. I'd like to see the developer add the ability to bookmark and save progress, as well as make a few performance tweaks.
