NaviCup

What is Navicup app?

Navicup provides its users with the tools they need to create, enhance, and enjoy map-based practical activities. The maps can cover a zone of your choosing, from areas large enough for motor vehicle-based challenges to treasure hunts on a school's grounds. 

Organisers create a map-based activity through a web app. They can define waypoints, destinations, and questions and set tasks.

We're interested in Navicup as an educational app for kids, so this review will focus on how teachers in a typical school might use it with their students.

What we love about Navicup app.

The tools available in Navicup allow teachers to be creative in a new way. They're used to creating indoor lessons, but outdoor sessions can be daunting. Navicup gives teachers a starting point and tools to give their students a stimulating, fun, and innovative learning experience in a different environment.

When you have created an activity, it will be usable anytime you need it. Teachers can have an one ready for a day when the weather suits it. They can also use it when schools pause standard lessons for enrichment or students' outdoor activities on a visit.

 Just as crucial for busy teachers is that the activity will be reusable. Running the same sessions with different kids on the same day or reproducing a successful experience the following year rewards the effort teachers put into learning to use Navicup and creating their first activity.

We appreciate that the app also works offline. Schools mostly use devices that do not have a cellular connection relying instead on Wi-FI. This could have been a problem for an app where kids take the devices further from the school building, but Navicup's app only requires a connection at the start and end of the activity.

Obviously, live tracking will not work without a connection, but the app will still provide enough functionality for moving around an area. At the end of the activity, the relevant data synchronises over Wi-Fi so that competitors can compare their statistics and determine a winner or level of success.

What skills does it teach?

Navicup has many uses for education. Teachers can use it to create outdoor educational activities either for an excursion or in the school's local area. Older hospitality and tourism students can use the app as part of their practical work for designing experiences.

Navicup can help kids develop soft skills such as teamwork, planning, and problem-solving depending on how teachers create the activities. It can also support schools in providing healthy physical activities for kids who do not enjoy traditional sports.

What age is it appropriate for?

The Navicup native apps do not display advertisements and are PEGI3 rated. The web-based tools show third-party ads in the free versions which in many regions sets the minimum age to 13.

The Navicup events' complexity and age-suitability depend entirely on how teachers design the activity.

Teachers will have more flexibility in the types of activities they create and the areas they can host them with older children. However, groups supervised by an adult but led by kids are an option to allow even young kids to use the app in a wider area. In all cases, Navicup's purpose is not to ensure kids' safety, and that remains the responsibility of their teachers and guardians.

Is Navicup app easy to use?

There are two parts to the Navicup experience:

Map and activity creation

You create your first map as part of the sign-up process. This is all web-based and uses familiar tools such as drop-down lists, radio buttons, and text fields. If it is your first map, you'll complete the sign-up via your email address and begin creating the maps.

A helpful video on the map creation screen takes you through the process in about four minutes. It leads you through each step and explains what each option does.

After you enter the starting details for a new activity in Navicup, you'll spend most of your time defining the markers on the map. This feels quite creative as you pick a marker location, choose how it looks, and add a necessary action for players. Navicup automatically assesses some answer types. Others, such as photographs, require the organiser to verify them.

The developer validates each map after you publish it. Once validated, the app will go public, and any Navicup app owner can use it.

The play experience

Those who go on to play the maps use the Navicup app. This app takes care of location recording and the inputting of answers. At each location, players see the task they need to complete, such as answering a question or photographing the surroundings. The app can also show them extra details about the location using text, speech, and images to provide additional learning or draw the player's attention to relevant aspects of their surroundings.

The app is easy to use with an intuitive user interface. Finding the intended map is easy as the creator names them appropriately and sets a related image to accompany them. 

The app downloads each event once selected, so the device needs to have a data connection to start with but not during the event itself unless you want live location tracking enabled. The Navicup app tracks and guides the players, leaving them free to learn and enjoy the activity.

How will students benefit?

Physical activity is good for us, but not every student enjoys the activities provided in a typical physical education lesson. Navicup could provide a way for these kids to engage in exercise and get outside.

A well-designed map with accompanying information can help kids engage with many topics relating to local history or the natural world. Navicup can also give kids a focus when they visit places of interest to encourage them to explore rather than aimlessly wander.

Older students who are learning about the  tourism and leisure industry can use the app to help provide practical experience in developing, researching, and implementing guided tours or outdoor activities.

How will teachers benefit?

Some of the most challenging and time-consuming planning sessions teachers have to undertake is for sessions outside of the usual lesson structure. Thinking of a task, how to implement it, and gathering the tools all take time. 

Navicup's feature set provides inspiration and the means. Teachers can organise races for sports days, treasure hunts for fun and learning, nature rambles for science lessons and much more.

If your school prides itself on its outdoor activities and has the means to run regular events, you can contact the developers to have a custom app produced for your events with your school's details and badge built into it.

How much does Navicup app cost?

The free tier of Navicup lets you use many of its features. It is helpful to see how the app works, but it can also produce an exciting and educational lesson. The main limitations of the free tier are a maximum of 30 users and the display of advertisements on some sections of the web app. Free users are also expected to link to Navicup on their website and social media.

Schools can remove the advertisements and limitations for a small cost per student. In addition to the school tier, there is Pro+ which is similarly unrestricted but has a different price structure based on the number of total users.

The app's supporting website makes the pricing options very clear, so do check it out.

Is Navicup app safe to use?

Teachers must understand what Navicup is not. Although it can provide live feedback on positional information, it is up to supervisors to ensure that kids remain in a safe area. Students should be encouraged to stay aware of their surroundings when using the devices. Any activities you create must be suitable for the age and maturity of the children who will undertake them.

Navicup's free tier provides enough functionality to provide a playable experience but uses third-party advertisements.

Naturally, as an app that needs to know its player's locations, each device will need to grant Navicup access to GPS location services. The app aids location-based activities, so this location data collection is justified.

What can Navicup app improve on?

Many of Navicup's potential users will see the app's tools and know exactly how it can enhance the sessions they provide. Many teachers would appreciate a little more help as they will use Navicup outside their classroom comfort zone.

A few example activities on the website and templates to go with them will help these teachers get started and understand the possibilities of this app. There are some getting-started ideas on the app's excellent supporting website, but we'd like to see some of these fleshed out a little more.

In terms of additional features, we've seen treasure hunt apps which use printable QR codes to mark the waypoints. This would be a great feature in Navicup as it would add another automated answer type and works well with kids, as many are more comfortable using the camera than entering text in an app.

Navicup has a privacy policy that you must agree to when creating a map. The link on the app store pages opens the app but does not display a policy, nor is there a clear link on the website, so we'd like to see this given more prominence and accessibility.

Overall rating of the app.

Navicup is an excellent app for teachers who want to introduce more practical activities and help incorporate outdoor exercise into kids' education. It is an easy app to start using, with its free tier providing many of the features you'll want to use and showing you what is possible in the app.

You can make a map and event within a few minutes after arriving on the Navicup website, so we highly recommend you try it. As you create, you'll gain inspiration and ideas for what you could do in your school's locality. We've awarded the app five stars for the support it gives to outdoors education and the quality of its production.