The Magic Of Apps

For my review, I decided I would look deeper into The Magic of Reality app. It immediately struck me as very interesting, simply based on its content. I read a good chunk of it and got a good feel for what it had to offer. A lot of apps these days are trying to do too much and making the user experience more complicated than it needs to be. Magic of Reality uses elements of real text books along with new features that are available digitally to entertain the reader. The book begins with discussing our ancestors, way way way back, how even though it's extremely gradual, living things are constantly evolving. I just thought the writing and the way it was presented was very interesting. I have been talking about how I think apps and e-books are the future of education. This book convinced me of that. Although it had similarities to a boring text book, it was not nearly the same and kept me interested.
A few improvements the app could make would be to allow more accessibility for the reader to jump around to different sections of the book. There needs to be at least a table of contents or menu that you can access while reading but there isn't. For the most part, I really enjoyed how Magic of Reality is a continuation of text with images and other media. It has interactive features, such as sound bites, and games that allow you to face a task that relates to something from the book. Like blowing into the microphone to push the iguanas safely to shore. There is also a page that lets you see how temperature effects pressure. There are some bug fixes and minor adjustments they could make to have the app be more technically capable and as visually pleasing as new apps are. However, Magic of Reality is an amazing look into the possibilities of e-textbooks. If this were my science textbook in middle school, I would have loved that class. It is an awesome opportunity we have to explore so many different digital stories and applications. I am going to spend a lot of time looking at examples and find one similar to what I would like to create myself.