The app encourages cooperation, success and completion!
Neighborhood Watch Kids and Duh Color Stuff™ is an app designed for the elementary school aged child in a “choose your own adventure” format about five children Arnold, Maya, Johnny, Suzie, Billy and their pet dog Paw as they save the world. The app starts off letting you choose either “I can read” or “read it to me” and then encourages you to pick an avatar from one of the children to follow along in the story. The story starts off in Pinedale, Wisconsin in a town called Watch. The story includes 10 different games, 16 different decision points in the story, and 21 different story endings for a total of 280 pages! The target audience for the app is age 7 to 11, although I would say that it is best suited for a child who has finished first grade. The story features both male and female characters as well as diverse characters which helps again bring home the message about working together no matter what.
I liked that the avatar you choose kept your place in the story due to the fact that all the decisions contained within the book, reading out of the text and mini games can take upward of an hour, which is quite a long time to play with a reading app. My son and I tested this over the course of two sessions before completing it. I also liked that the app encouraged cooperation with others to encourage success and completion. It also targeted critical thinking as it encouraged kids to look at something and then follow through on solving the problem. I also liked that it presented kids with three different choices and forced kids to make a decision before moving on. I liked that the app encouraged them to think about the decision and what the consequences might be of a decision to the story. The underlying theme of friendship, working with others no matter what their race or ethnicity was a good one and I loved how everyone worked together to solve the mystery.
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