My Backpack - Digital Picture Book App

MyBackpack is an interesting early education app that can be downloaded from the iTunes app store. Targeted towards students from preschool to second grade. I like to think of this app as an all-encompassing tool which incorporates not only picture books, but also original songs, nursery rhymes and mathematics into its interface.

The features of the app include the following:

• 16 "Traditional Tales" books, which are nicely illustrated and interactive. These books are intended to be read-along stories, but allow the child to choose from a few options. The child can read the story on their own, be read to by the app, or watch the story like a movie. This is a wonderful feature for early readers as it would help them build confidence in reading books. There are also features that allow the reader to interact with the picture books by clicking on the pictures. Readers may also click on unfamiliar words and they can be read aloud to help with fluency and pronunciation.
• 8 nursery rhymes, which are meant to be read-alongs. Each page has interactive features which are meant to engage pre-readers and keep early readers excited about the rhymes.
• 35 original songs are included, which involve topics about reading, math, and science. They are pretty catchy, so I can imagine users getting excited about the songs!
   
• 4 mental mathematics games, which are interactive and have several levels for users to progress through. Although this does not have to do with reading, including these games may encourage users to explore the app further and use it for several purposes. 

Although I really enjoy this app and thing that it has a lot of high-quality features that would be beneficial to early readers, teachers, and even parents, I do think that it is important for the app to expand the number of books that they provide access to. I would consider the books high quality in terms of the illustrations, interactivity, and the multiple ways in which they are presented to children. I do think, however, expanding the variety and diversity of the books would make this app even better for children to use.

I like that there are other subjects integrated into the app and I think that the songs and nursery rhymes are extremely valuable to early readers, but I fear that the games may overshadow the literature included in the app.

Overall, I think that this would be a great app to incorporate into my classroom—if I was teaching young students. If I used it, though, I feel as though I would have to restrict or limit access to the games on the app in order for students to get something out of it.