Jo in Paris

$4.99, iPad

Teaches: geography, Paris, history

CTR Rating: 76%

CTR Review

Can't afford a trip to Paris? One of a planned series of interactive travel books, this is a collection of 44 headliner museum items and locations from around the city of Paris. You start in Jo's homeroom, where you select either museums or the streets of Paris. Each is depicted as a side-scrolling scene with highlighted areas, marked with a question mark. Your touch, say, of the Eiffel Tower leads to a descriptive paragraph (which can be read aloud in synthesized speech). This also unlocks a multiple-choice quiz question about the item discovered. The overall design is dry, going no deeper than slides and text, and the transition between screens load slowly. The looping music can't be muted. Once you're in one of the areas to explore, the app is responsive and easy to explore. The watercolor Illustrations are by Eglantine Bonettc. The site for the series is at www.joandme.com. The bottom line? This design isn't flashy by any stretch and there's not much depth to this app. For an overview of the key artifacts and sites of Paris, however, the app does the job.