Horse 360° App for Smartphones - Review by Donna Edwards
Horse 360° is a fun and unique app that teaches horse anatomy and medical terminology. This app will help a horse owner have better communication with their vet, farrier, equine massage therapist, equine chiropractor and other equine health professionals.
The basic app, which costs $1.99, gives you 3 categories: General, Skeleton 1 and Skeleton 2. Once you conquer these categories you can “unlock” and purchase other categories. The categories – Muscle Pack (2 levels), Hoof Pack (4 levels) Organs & Conformation Pack (4 levels), Deep Muscles, Joint & Ligaments (4 levels), and Head & Teeth Pack (3 levels) – can be purchased for $1.99 each, or you can buy them all in the Total Horse 360° Bundle for an additional $7.99. The cost of the entire bundle of 20 levels is under $10.
On the home page, there are three choices:
- Learning
- Recall
- Vet Talk.
The Learning selection takes you to a series of quizzes, starting with the General category. In the quizzes you are asked questions about the parts of the horse. Each question has 4 choices. When you select the correct answer, a bell rings; you get 10 points and move on to the next question. If you are incorrect, you’ll hear a nasty buzz and you have to answer an additional question to get through the round. You can take the quizzes in a timed format or at your own pace. Once you have successfully completed the first quiz, you can move on to the next level. As you complete the levels you can continue to advance through all 20 (providing you purchase the upgrade to get the other 17 levels).
On the Learning section home page you can choose “Normal” or “Timed”. Normal gives you unlimited time to answer each question; conversely, the Timed format allows only 10 seconds to answer each question. A countdown timer in the upper left corner counts down from 10 to zero. The more quickly you answer the question correctly, the more bonus points you are awarded. If you take longer than 10 seconds or select an incorrect answer (the latter resulting in the buzz), the app moves on to the next question. When you have completed the quiz you are shown your score, with bonus points, and your level of accuracy.
You can also quiz yourself to see how much you’ve learned. The second selection on the home page is the Recall section. This takes you through a review of the Learning section, except it will provide you with a description and you have to touch the diagram on the screen to indicate where that body part is located. It was much easier to answer questions when you had 4 to pick from – you could utilize the process of elimination. In this section you either know the answer or you don’t. Fat fingers will give you a lot of buzzes – this would be a good place to use a stylus. There is a Recall section for each of the 20 categories. (Note: A Pause button located at the bottom of the screen allows you to interrupt quizzes if you need to do something else.)
You can also quiz yourself to see how much you’ve learned. The second selection on the home page is the Recall section. This takes you through a review of the Learning section, except it will provide you with a description and you have to touch the diagram on the screen to indicate where that body part is located. It was much easier to answer questions when you had 4 to pick from – you could utilize the process of elimination. In this section you either know the answer or you don’t. Fat fingers will give you a lot of buzzes – this would be a good place to use a stylus. There is a Recall section for each of the 20 categories. (Note: A Pause button located at the bottom of the screen allows you to interrupt quizzes if you need to do something else.)
The third selection on the home page is Vet Talk. This selection brings up the profile of a horse with a view titled “Skin Side”. Touch the View button in the upper left corner and you will switch to the “Skeleton Side”. A swipe of the screen will take you from Skin Side to Skin Front (swipe from L to R) or from Skin Side to Skin Back (swipe from R to L). Tapping on an area will zoom in on the view. To identify a body part, just tap on one of the subtly-highlighted areas and the name will be displayed at the top of the screen. You aren’t able to scroll left or right, up or down in these screens – you’ll need to tap the Back button and then tap on a different area of the horse.
The Horse 360° app was developed by Animal360° and is available for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android phones. The link to the Horse 360° website is http://horse360.com.au/.
The Horse 360° app was developed by Animal360° and is available for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android phones. The link to the Horse 360° website is http://horse360.com.au/.
Summary: This is a well thought out, nicely designed and easy to use app that would be helpful for all horse owners and enthusiasts. Not only is it fun and very educational, but it will definitely help when you call your veterinarian and describe where your horse is injured. “He has a deep laceration on his croup” is much more helpful for your vet than, “He cut himself on top of his butt”. Also, it will be very helpful for horse owners when working with their equine chiropractors and massage therapists as they will understand what these health providers are talking about when they explain what they are doing. Plus, there is the great benefit of having something entertaining to do while you’re killing time in a waiting area. I especially enjoyed the timed format, which challenged me to think quickly.
NOTE: I installed the app on my iPad and the larger screen was incredible. So much easier to see the diagrams and no more fat fingers and buzzes. In order to get the bundle on my iPad, I had to go through the iTunes purchase process (the limited app transferred over from my iPhone with no problems). I checked my billing and was charged a second time for the bundle, but will check with Apple to verify that is correct.
This would be a GREAT app for 4-H, Pony Club and FFA members who want to learn the anatomy of the horse. The timed format could be used for competitions to see who could correctly answer the most questions in the least amount of time.
My rating: **** + (4+ stars)
The only reason I didn’t give the app 5 stars is because it did cost upwards of $10 for the entire bundle and looks like I had to purchase a separate bundle for my iPad. Do I recommend it? Yes. Would I buy it again? Absolutely!
NOTE: I installed the app on my iPad and the larger screen was incredible. So much easier to see the diagrams and no more fat fingers and buzzes. In order to get the bundle on my iPad, I had to go through the iTunes purchase process (the limited app transferred over from my iPhone with no problems). I checked my billing and was charged a second time for the bundle, but will check with Apple to verify that is correct.
This would be a GREAT app for 4-H, Pony Club and FFA members who want to learn the anatomy of the horse. The timed format could be used for competitions to see who could correctly answer the most questions in the least amount of time.
My rating: **** + (4+ stars)
The only reason I didn’t give the app 5 stars is because it did cost upwards of $10 for the entire bundle and looks like I had to purchase a separate bundle for my iPad. Do I recommend it? Yes. Would I buy it again? Absolutely!