Noisy Bug Sing Along

When you open the app you are presented with two options of the story: ‘Read to Me’, where a recorded voice reads out the text shown on the screen and ‘Read to Myself’, which excludes the aid of a recorded voice.

Read to Me:

 The first screen gives the user an idea about what is to come, i.e. singing along with insects. Then one flicks the page to the left with their finger to skip to the next screen. There are two options at both bottom corners of the screen: A bug face that brings up a list of menu options when pressed on and a ‘repeat’ button that when pressed replays the recorded voice. What’s useful is that the words which are being read highlight in red respectively; children can see how the words being read out are spelled; this applies to all subsequent pages. To help make the navigation easier, it may be useful to have some type of indication that prompts the learner to move to the next screen or how to go back. As it is, the learner would need to guess how to progress forward or backward.

On the next 12 pages there are 12 different bugs shown. Each bug is illustrated in cartoon form which makes them look fun and appealing to young children. What’s more, each page contains illustrations composed of various colours to keep the learner enthused. Each insect is named and you are given a very brief description of either what type of sound they make or where they make a sound from. Then the learner hears the recorded human voice making a sound similar to what the bug sounds like in real life, which is repeated a few times. These sounds are shown in text form and, what’s more, if the learner clicks on the bug in question or jiggles the screen they will see it make a movement and at the same time the human voice will imitate the sound made by the bug. This gives the learner a little insight into how bugs behave.

At the end of these 12 pages, the user hears the sounds they have just heard all at once. The user is then treated to hearing a recording of the actual noises made by these 12 insects, all at the same time. The idea of this is to replicate as close as possible the sounds you would hear if stepping out into the garden.

The second part of the story concentrates on how these bugs make the sounds they do, why they make them and the learner is also taught what a sound wave is. The subsequent 12 pages include a sound wave icon and, when clicked on, the learner hears an actual recording of the sound emitted from the bug and at the same time the loudness of the sound is highlighted along the sound wave to show what constitutes as loud and low. Here the learner is getting an education on sound waves in a fun and interactive way.

At the end of this section there is then a great feature called the ‘Bug Matching Game’. On one side of the screen you see the all the images of the sound waves for the bugs you have just learnt about. On the other side of the screen you see the images of the different bugs. You then have to drag each sound wave onto the image of its corresponding bug. This really gives you extra impetus to learn about each bug and helps with the longevity of user engagement.

Read to myself:

The learner sees the same text and pictures as ‘Read to me’ except there is no recorded voice and the learner hears a recording of the actual insect sounds only. This is useful in that if the learner is not interested in singing along then they can simply read to themselves at their own pace.

Finally, we are given a little bit of background information into what inspired the author to write the book and are introduced to the developer of the app. Then we end with some information about the publishing team as well as other apps published by Dawn Publications.

In conclusion, the app achieves its goal of making it fun to learn about bugs and the sounds they make. The colours and bug animations make the app very interesting and exciting to use, and the audio incorporated within is both clear and easy for young children to imitate in terms of singing along. After using the app, it is conceivable that children will want to explore their gardens to look for the insects described here.  At $4.99 this is an app we would definitely buy to keep the children entertained!