Out-A-Bout

$1.99, iPhone

Teaches: nature, language, physical activity

CTR Rating: 64%

CTR Review

A good concept with poor design elements, this mad-lib style story leverages the power of your iPhone or iPod touch camera and microphone to let you create a custom 12 screen ebook featuring your child's name and photo, framed in a nature theme. You start by creating a profile. Parents and children then receive 12 prompts to perform certain outdoor, physical activities like running, jumping or finding a smooth stone. Using the iPhone/iPod, parents take still photographs of their children engaged in the activities, and the photographs are uploaded into a pre-developed story narrative for subsequent viewing, reading together, and conversation. The app is designed to be used by teachers or parents with the children, and not by the children themselves, serving as a prop to encourage physical activity. This is a noble idea, however there's nothing to keep you from using the regular camera feature to record a child using objects that they find interesting, or moving the way they want, and asking them to describe what's going on (in their words). Weaknesses include an inability to mute the looping background music and/or control the sound volume, which swells when you are about to take a photo. Also, you can't switch between the front and back facing cameras and once you've started a story, and you can't pause or go back to the menu, trapping you in the process of completing all 12 pages. Because you're trapped, you increase the chances of an early ending.