Captain McFinn's Swim & Play
© 2014 Captain McFinn LLC
Designed to promote social and emotional development in children, Captain McFinn & Friends contains a very rare feature - a live person, inside the app. These real people, known as Explorers, respond in real time to how a child engages with Captain McFinn’s cartoon undersea world. They are like camp counselors who encourage you to share feelings and talk to your avatar. Because everything is done in the context of the non-human avatar there is no risk of identity theft. To test the app, we posed as a child who was very upset about our sick dog. We drew a picture of the dog using the drawing tools, and our mentor quickly dropped in and asked about how the dog was doing. It was rather startling. The picture was then shared with others who were logged in. The mentors obviously follow a script, and rarely stray from themes about the importance of being pro-social -- to share, be polite and so on. Note that this app needs to be online to start, and can take a while to get to the first screen "downloading new content."
$2.99, iPad, iPhone; requires Internet connetion
Teaches: social and emotional development
CTR Rating: 88%