Starting Shakespeare (Deeper Richer) © Mark Gilliland.

Journeys of Invention. (Touch Press/Science Museum). 2014. iOS, requires 7.0 or later. Version 1.0.1. Some content free, full content $9.99 as an in-app purchase.

Gr 6 Up -Viewers will experience the engagement and excitement of a virtual hands-on museum in this new iPad app. More than 80 inventions are presented on a web-like diagram that serves as an index. The inventions are grouped and billed as “journeys” under such themes such as “Mass Production,” “Industrial Inventions,” “Play,” and “New Science,” allowing users to follow a string of related technologies; they can also opt to browse randomly. Color coordinated paths and clean design featuring sharp images that pop out against the black background provide clear and fairly intuitive navigation; added support comes in the form of two drop-down indexes: one of journeys, and another, an alphabetical index of inventions. Wide historical coverage ranges from a Byzantine sundial calendar to a 3D-printed gun from 2013.

The visual elements are the highlight. Each entry has at least one photograph that can be rotated 360 degrees, archival images that can be enlarged to full screen, and/or film clips. More than a dozen inventions feature dynamic interactive elements. With the Apollo 10 Command Module, for example, viewers can take a virtual tour of the capsule, listen to the astronaut’s actual communications, view brief film clips of the crew on board and images of the Moon and the Earth taken from space.

Other interactive highlights allow users to focus Hooke’s 17th-century microscope, type a message into the Enigma encoder (developed at the end of World War I), and watch what happens when inappropriate objects are heated in a microwave (a CD, an egg, and bar of soap)–with strict warnings not to try it at home.

Two or three paragraphs of text provide background, dates, and details of each invention. Younger readers may find the vocabulary slightly challenging and the prose is occasionally awkward, but a consistent conversational tone, with measured use of intriguing facts, is generally effective.

Each entry ends with a list of the “maker,” date of creation, materials, and/or dimensions. Brief biographies, with images and dates, are provided for some inventors. While a free version with 15 of the items is available, the full package includes much more information as well as a fuller picture of the intriguing links between technologies throughout history.–Steven Engelfried, Wilsonville Public Library, OR.

Starting Shakespeare. (Deeper Richer/ Bell Shakespeare). 2013. iOS, requires 6.1 or later. Version 1.0. $4.99.

Gr 5 Up –Shakespeare’s plays tend to leave high school students running for the hills, turned off by the language and ultimately missing out on some of the world’s greatest literary masterpieces. Is there a solution to this problem? Australia’s national theater company, Bell Shakespeare, thinks so. They’ve teamed up with the developer Deeper Richer to create an iPad app designed to help teachers introduce Shakespeare to students before they even get to high school. This cleanly designed and easy-to-use app provides brief historical overviews of Shakespeare’s world and work, as well as a variety of avenues for getting to know his plays, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, through narrated synopses with video dramatizations, short text and video profiles of the characters, enactments of “Key Scenes,” and fun, interactive “Learning Journeys.”

The scenes, performed by an energetic, engaging, and youthful cast (professional Bell Shakespeare actors), are accessible to younger learners. Sets, costumes, and props are minimal, yet have plenty of whimsy to keep things lively. The video quality is exceptionally high, perfect for projecting in classrooms.

Students can use the “Learning Journeys” to explore Shakespeare’s language in playful, creative, and cooperative ways. Activities include inventing and drawing new ingredients for the witches’ brew in Macbeth, then uploading the drawings with the camera; enhancing the witches’ spell by dragging and dropping Shakespearian adjectives into Shakespeare’s lines; writing new spells with the iPad’s virtual keyboard and recording read-throughs with the microphone; and, recording others acting out the newly created spells. Adding to the overall richness of Starting Shakespeare is a free teacher’s guide, available through iBooks, with lesson plans, additional learning activities, and curriculum tie-ins. Most definitely worth a try.–Kathleen S. Wilson, New York University, NY.