JigsawGeo Africa Review

JigsawGeo Africa is a very nice universal application which teaches the geography of Africa with a good use of puzzles. This app is part of a large series of apps geared towards geographical literacy, worth checking out.

This app consists of four ways of filling up with the included map of Africa, nicely varied for different skill levels. This game opens to the easiest mode, “Traveler,” in which the players match a country’s colorful shape to its corresponding outline within the a map of Africa. This mode offers a nice hint of slowly zooming-in to the area where this country is found, allowing players with little knowledge of Africa to succeed at this game.

I really enjoy this mode as I have never been a good student of geography, and the zooming-in helps me complete this map, allowing me to learn a lot about where these countries fit within this contenent without feeling frustrated. I really do appreciate the zooming used here, especially when the country in question is quite small, something lacking in other geography apps that I have used. I also like that when a country is tapped to drag, it enlarges to show scale in comparison to other countries - a very nice touch.

The “Surveyor” and “Navigator” modes work much the same way, but without the benefit of the slow, automatic zooming-in as a clue, yet players are still able to zoom in on this map themselves to see detail and match the country in play with its matching outline. In “Surveyor” mode, the names of the countries are used, whereas in the “Navigator” mode, the countries' capitals are focused on instead.

The most difficult section within this app is “Discover,” as here, the countries' flags are used instead, removing the ability to complete this map much like a jigsaw puzzle, matching countries to their outlines.

Nice, bright colors are used within this app, adding beauty to the map of Africa as it is filled in, and this app is a nice choice for students as a clear, yet detailed map of Africa is uses, simple to look at and unadorned - but effective in teaching geography. Time is kept for each game finished, and these scores can be left locally on one’s device or added to a world-wide database of players. This is a nice feature, but I would also like to see an option for these games to be played without scorekeeping as well.

Teachers and parents of later grade school kids will be interested in this app as well as this series in general - nice resources aiding in the learning of geography around the world. If interested, please read the review of JigsawGeo USA also reviewed on GiggleApps.