Apps for Peace

by Warren Buckleitner in the April Issue of Children’s Technology Review

We humans have been given remarkable gifts. We’re the only species who can think about thinking and make machines that can make machines. But every 50 years or so, we come dangerously close to destroying one another.

“I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education. My request is: Help your children become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths or educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.” – An excerpt of a letter written by a Holocaust survivor to educators, published in “Teacher and Child” by Dr. Haim Ginott Found April 1 2017 at http://www.holocaustandhumanity.org/about-us/educational-philosophy/

Can apps help? Perhaps…. if a young Donald Trump spent more time with One Globe Kids (reviewed in CTR, April 2017) and was able to learn how hundreds of millions of young Muslim children live on a day-to-day basis, he would’ve never attempted his ban. Here are some noteworthy apps that raise awareness of other cultures.

Note: these seven apps are just the tip of the iceberg. Quality varies widely, and we think there is a need for some innovation and quality in this space. To see what’s out there, here’s a CTREX link to over 200 often dated products http://bit.ly/ctrexsocialstudies

One Globe Kids ($9.99 on iPad) for ages 4–10
This timely, important app contains sixteen child-narrated slide shows that drip with authenticity. The design isn’t fancy. There’s very little interactivity and you can’t use the app unless you are online. Also, you need to download each module individually before you can use it. Each unit features a young child from somewhere in the world. There are both developing regions, like Valdo in Haiti; or developed places like Lars in the Netherlands. To get started, just touch a photo of a child. After a one time download (or $1.99 purchase decision) you see a second menu that offers six options. These include a narrated slide show, counting lessens in the local language, or a geographic facts. The photos and narration is not polished, which adds to the authentic feel of this app. In the full version that we reviewed, there were an additional six “educational toolkits” with a teacher’s guide, activity ideas, and discussion questions. If you’re looking for flashy design, you won’t find it in this app. But you will find beautiful children.
Full Review: http://reviews.childrenstech.com/ctr/fullreview.php?id=19598

World Rescue ($free on iPad, iPhone, Android) for ages 6-up
An important topic and a great price ($free) helps you overlook some of the clumsy design in this game-driven rescue mission that is infused with facts about some of the world’s big problems like human displacement, disease, deforestation, drought and pollution. Your job is to help five children move through a board-game style menu to rescue others by moving through mazes or matching items to problems. Progress is bookmarked automatically for one player, using a nicely designed board game-style progress system as a menu. Development costs were supported by UNESCO MGIEP, and the themes come from Kenya, Norway, Brazil, India, and China. There’s some reading involved via comic-book style text, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But some of the games are less than responsive or tricky to figure out on the first play. This can be easily overlooked because once you learn the first level, you pretty much know what to do. Video preview: https://youtu.be/GhNCgphb2P8. Full Review: http://reviews.childrenstech.com/ctr/fullreview.php?id=19595

Homes by Tinybop ($3.99 on iPad) for ages 4-up
How do you get to know another culture? By snooping around in their homes. This app lets you explore a brownstone in Brooklyn, a ger in Mongolia, an adobe home in Guatemala, and a tower house in Yemen. There are 20 rooms in all, each with about three items that can be explored in depth. The idea is to illustrate such things as architecture, building materials, plumbing, electricity, household goods, and livestock. The navigation system is clunky and it is easy to forget where you are. There’s no game or overall reason to play with this app. One could easily imagine a scavenger hunt play pattern using this content. Despite these issues, this app is admirable for it’s authentic representation of sites and sounds not normally found in any textbook or app. Video review: http://youtu.be/RQVxmgVmgos
Full Review: http://reviews.childrenstech.com/ctr/fullreview.php?id=18248

Guess My Race ($.99 on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) for ages 10-up
This simple apple lets you look at photographs of real people and try to guess how they answered the question “What race are you?” After you make your guess, you learn how the person really defines him or herself, along with a quote from that person regarding their identity or their experiences with race. Next you are shown a historical or cultural fact related to identity issues, designed to be “thought provoking”. Each quiz displays ten pictures, and is replayable with new pictures, quotes and facts each time. Guess My Race is a part of Harvard University’s diversity curriculum for all incoming Freshman. Full Review: http://reviews.childrenstech.com/ctr/fullreview.php?id=14064

Global Conflicts: Palestine ($20 on Windows, Mac OSX) ages 12-up
Why would someone want to become a suicide bomber? How does it feel to wait in line at a border crossing? What’s it like to be a young Israeli soldier on a raid? Designed with the look and feel of a rather crude video game, this dated (2007) program should be updated for tablets. It puts you in the middle of the Israeli-Palestine conflict on a scavenger-hunt mission to collect facts. After you sign in, you choose between being one of two US journalists: a Jewish female from New York or a Palestinian male from Washington DC. You can write for one of three papers, each with a different perspective. There are six assignments, that you can do in sequence, or individually — a nice flexible feature for classroom use.
After you meet your editor, you are given an assignment — such as to better understand the concept of martyrdom. To collect a quote, you approach a subject in the street and choose from a set of preselected questions. To get the good quotes, you must stay politically balanced in your questioning, and earn the good will of your subjects, indicated on a “trustometer.” After you collect five quotes, you phone your story to your paper. The better your quotes, the better your placement in tomorrow’s paper.
Need to know: By video game standards, the navigation leaves a bit to be desired. Moving around uses a “click and follow” technique, and you must look at a map frequently to find your next interview. There’s a lot of reading of multiple-choice questions, and the game would be more fun with some random elements to discover, to keep you exploring. Still, the premise works, and the game provides an excellent vehicle for immersing a learner in the issues. Visit http://www.globalconflicts.eu/ for more information.
Created using the Unity Engine by OTEE in Denmark by Serious Games Interactive with the help of several partners, including Danida, Media+, The Foreign Ministry of Denmark, The Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, the IT University of Copenhagen and OTEE. Full Review: http://reviews.childrenstech.com/ctr/fullreview.php?id=12144

Stop Disasters! by www.unisdr.org, ($free Internet Site), for ages 12-up
You have $50,000 and 20 minutes to work before a tsunami will strike. How many lives can you save? This free, web-based learning disaster prevention simulation is published by the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction group, a division of the United Nations. The goal is to educate children and adults on how to minimize the threats of natural disasters, before they happen, in order to save lives and reduce damage. According to the site, natural hazards, such as floods, earthquakes and volcanoes, do not need to become disasters. For example, if volcanoes erupt in a location where nobody lives, the volcano eruption is just a natural hazard, but not a disaster. But, if people living around the volcanoes are affected, it can become a disaster.
In the tsunami scenario, you learn that by planting trees and building concrete structures on higher ground, you can help people survive the initial disaster of the raising water. But you also learn that you need to prepare for what happens after the tsunami hits (eg., when disease happens due to a lack of housing, food and medicine). Currently, scenarios exist for floods, wildfires and earthquakes. High scores are stored on the website. Have a look at http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/. Developed by Playerthree for the UN. Full Review: http://reviews.childrenstech.com/ctr/fullreview.php?id=11439

Seeds of Peace by www.seedsofpeace.org, for ages 12-up.
This social movement was an old Windows game. The program helps children explore questions like “What do you think might happen if a group of Israeli teens and a group of Palestinian teens all went to camp together in Maine?” Designed for school use, the CD used video and onscreen activities to introduce the kids, their lives, their thoughts and emotions. Videos of the teens in their homelands, at their schools and homes, and at camp help students better understand the two cultures and their struggles. Full Review: http://reviews.childrenstech.com/ctr/fullreview.php?id=6237

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