Animal Jam

App Review – Animal Jam
Threat Level – Low and Moderate

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Animal Jam is a gaming app made by Wildworks incorporated along with endorsements from National Geograpic. Wildworks has also been involved in the creation of two other gaming apps called Tunnel Town and AJ jump. Both being animal themed games. Animal Jam is described at a game for ages 9 plus. The app is free but does offer in app purchases from .99 to 4.99. Like many gaming apps they want to offer the main product for free but still make some money from the in app purchases. Animal Jam is categorized under the gaming apps but does have some social ties once inside game. 

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Once you download Animal Jam, you are asked to start new or login to your animal jam account. Animal jam has and is also available on the Via a web browser. Once you select to start new, you are dumped into character selection where you will have to choose one of the 3 animals. Bunny, Monkey or wolf. At this point you are able to do basic customization to your newly selected character. The first step is picking a name. You must select from the names in the provided window which is good because it does not allow users to customize in appropriate names. Now you are ready to enter your character into the Animal Jam game. One interesting, educational part of game is how it gives the player real life animal facts as the game screens are loading. 

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Once in game, your character can run around and visit different locations. In this lobby style world is where you can see other players that are running around like you are. These are other players that have created characters like yourself. I noticed at this point, there are some chat options. When I hit the chat button, it gave me generic pre determined chat boxes such as ‘Hi there’ or ‘Goodbye’. It would not let me type any custom messages as a guest. If you want to type custom messages, you must create an account. 

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If you decide to create an account, this will pull in the more social side of game and allow you to create friends list and communicate more openly with other players. There does appear to be some chat filters that won’t let users type certain things. On a side note, while reviewing app, I never got or seen any in appropriate messages. I kind of got hooked on some of the game elements and played this app for a couple days. If the chat features worry you, just never have them create an account to go fully open and then the chat is just predetermined chat bubbles. They will need a parents email address for registering anyway, so you will know if they create an account. Also while reading reviews of this app, I noticed a couple people staying they didn’t like having their accounts suspended for 24 hours for using curse words. This shows Animal Jam has moderators for their game and obviously enforce inappropriate behavior. 
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Animal Jam is bright colored, fun game that encourages leveling up your different animals with challenging games. The added sponsorship from National Geographic helps keep the game safe. Scoring this threat level on this game would be two different scores. If you play game without creating your own account then I would give this app a low threat level. Once you create account to open more of social aspect, it would bump it to moderate. Mainly due to the open chat. Just monitor your children while they play this one occasionally or play with them to keep an eye on who they are playing with. The educational tips from the National Geographic animal side is a nice bonus. Anytime we can educate children inside s video game, the better.  

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Keywords- animal, fox, blue fox, animal crossing, animal games, fox, smiling fox, happy fox, AJ

Scratch

App Review – Scratch

Threat Level – Very Low

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Scratch is an app and website that encourages kids to become involved in the art of coding. Coding as in programming computer applications both PC and mobile driven. I wish this had been available 25 years ago when I was growing up. You can imagine this as being digital Legos where you can let your child use their imagination to develop programs. Seems like an excellent idea. Let’s learn some code!

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Scratch is actual the name of the programming language associated with this computer programming and also has an online community where children can program and share interactive media such as animation, games and stories with people from all over the world. Scratch is available on IOS and Android and costs 99 cents. As children create with Scratch, they learn to think creatively and build applications with their digital toolbox. Scratch is designed and maintained by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab.
Scratch is aimed for ages 8-16 years olds and is marketed for them, but also encourages parents to become involved with their children. It is an educational app that is geared to get children motivated about computer programming and developing different types of apps. Scratch also has a very interactive website that shows other programs developed by people using Scratch. 

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There is a social connection inside the app when it comes to sharing information or ideas on apps users are trying to develop. When participating in the Scratch online community, members can explore and experiment in an open learning community with other Scratch members from all ages and interests. Members can share their work, get feedback, and learn from each other. While I created my user profile and searched through different social communications from website, I didn’t see any inappropriate comments or issues that I felt would be potentially dangerous for our children. All the comments, questions and interactions seemed to be strictly about the scratch development. 

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The MIT Scratch Team works with the community to maintain a friendly and respectful environment for people of all ages, races, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, and gender identities. You can help your child learn how to participate by reviewing the community rules as well. Members are asked to comment constructively and to help keep the website friendly by reporting any content that does not follow the community guidelines. You can tell they take great pride in keeping their material clean. The Scratch Team works to manage activity on the site and respond to reports, with the help of tools such as profanity filters as well. This is a very nice addition for app safety for children. 

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I was very impressed with the effort they have put into their community to keep it clean. Scratch also offers an offline community if you don’t wish to get involved in the social side of communication within the app. It is obvious Scratch developers are trying really hard to keep their project as an educational tool and is very impressive. I wish all apps took precautions that I see with Scratch and its development team on their approach to online safety. 

-App description – cat, kitty, cat app, cat pic, brown cat, orange cat