Bugs: Interact with Augmented Reality Creepy Crawlies

iExplore

by Hannah Wilson

With its amazing high-tech AR, this book brings bugs to life! 
 
Want to watch a Goliath bird-eating tarantula crawl across your table, a Giant Wetapunga Cricket jump on your friend’s hand, or the world’s biggest butterfly flutter around your bedroom? All it takes is this book and a smartphone or tablet! With its unique high-tech features, Bugs allows kids to interact with nature’s most remarkable creepy-crawlies. Eleven fact-packed profiles supply all the need-to-know info about each insect—their size, habitat, anatomy, diet, and other extraordinary features. Then open the app to trigger the AR action, use the controls to make the bugs life-size or bigger, rotate them for a closer 3D look, make them walk or fly around the room—and have fun.

NEW : Click on the iExplore feature window to access complementary educational content, featuring facts, stats, quizzes, and more!

32 pages, Hardcover

Published March 6, 2018

Reviews

[Kristine Blackmon · Rating 4 out of 5]

iExplore-Bugs is a digital text that provides the lifespan, diet, size, habitat, and cool features of some far from average insects. From the Japanese Giant Hornet, to the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach, and the Emperor Scorpion, I learned quite a few things from some creepy crawlies I would not want to meet in a dark alley. The format of this digital text is categorized as an augmented reality app. This is due the nature of students and adults being able to pair any smartphone or tablet with the proper app downloaded and hold it over the book to bring the insects to life. The app will show the insects lifesize in the room anywhere the camera phone is facing, has the ability to rotate the insect, or even show it flying across the room. Kachorsky's Digital Children’s Literature: Current Understandings and Future Directions touched on this particular breed of digital text. Kachorsky states, "There exists a number of other digital formats, such as picturebook apps, motion books, augmented reality apps, and transmedial texts, that utilize some aspects of printed books but also introduce a range of features that are made possible by computer and digital technologies. Many present hybridized narratives or informational content that combine aspects of several media forms into one ensemble (Turrion, 2014). Furthermore, some of these formats invite readers to engage with multiple platforms or artifacts, crossing the boundaries between digital and analog In Press technologies, to expand their reading and learning experiences." What is more interactive and expansive than using a text to bring a Giant Wetapunga Cricket into your classroom virtually pairing app and book? If you enjoy Bugs, you will definitely enjoy Dinosaurs, Alive! by Robert Mash.