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Review: Color Quest AR * Fantastic! The Ultimate Creativity App Combining Digital Drawing, Coloring And Augmented Reality Features

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Review: Color Quest AR * Fantastic! The Ultimate Creativity App Combining Digital Drawing, Coloring And Augmented Reality Features

Color, learn, and discover fun characters that come to life in your exciting augmented reality quest for health! Stayhealthy’s new educational app includes fruits, vegetables, and a magical look into the human body with engaging new characters every month! Color your favorite character, press the magic button, read a fun health fact, and see your new creation come to life and dance in front of you in augmented reality (AR). Keep on coloring to unlock all the characters to win badges, play bonus games, and become the ultimate Magic Health Master in this coloring adventure!

KIDS FIRST! Film Critic Kyla C. comments, “Color Quest AR is a fantastic, interactive new app that I highly recommend. It is the ultimate creativity app, with a combination of digital drawing, coloring and augmented reality features that blew my mind.” See her complete review below.

Color Quest AR By Kyla C, KIDS FIRST! Film Critic, Age 13

Color Quest AR is a fantastic, interactive new app that I highly recommend. It is the ultimate creativity app, with a combination of digital drawing, coloring and augmented reality features that blew my mind.

In Color Quest AR, you can choose one of three fun characters available for free, or purchase any of other themed characters for a fee. Then, you proceed to the coloring screen, where you choose between various colors and brush sizes and use your finger to color in your chosen character. Once satisfied with your character, head on over to the augmented reality feature, where you can look through the screen and watch your personalized character come to life in front of you, no matter where you are!

There are apps for digital coloring; there are apps for augmented reality. But this one-of-a-kind app allows you to pursue both interests in a single app. My jaw dropped when I first saw my personally-colored character appear in front of me. I am so impressed by how real it truly seems. Your character just pops up in front of you, wherever you are. Another detail of the app that stands out is the wide variety of color options. There are six main colors, with five shades within each color option. In addition, there are four brush sizes. This allows you to color smaller areas without going outside of the lines, and use the brush more efficiently in larger areas. Even the eraser feature has different thicknesses, making it easier to make deletions. Color Quest AR has so many additional features that I can’t even begin to name them all. An important one to call attention to is the educational aspect. While the character is being loaded into augmented reality, a health fact pops up. These involve animals, parts of the body and many fun facts. This

helps hold your attention during the time the loading circle spins. There is also a music video with the app’s characters, and background music options to immerse yourself in. If you look in the menu, you can even click to find a playlist that’ll spark your creativity and motivate you as well.

Color Quest AR excels at developing creativity, problem-solving skills and patience while also being educational and tons of fun. It is totally child-safe. One thing I will note is that there are optional in-app purchases. While the app can still be enjoyed and used without these paid features, be sure that your child doesn’t accidentally buy something without permission.

I give Color Quest AR 4.5 out of 5 stars and recommend it for ages 2 to 8. Color Quest AR is available now anywhere you get your apps.

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Social Workers Can Be Media Savvy

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Social Workers Can Be Media Savvy

mediasavvy

This is the 3rd in a series of reflections on my experience at the 2014 National Association of Social Workers conference in Washington, DC, in July 2014.

Social workers have been collaborating with, and lamenting about, the media for as long as I have been in the profession, and probably long before. In the late 1980s, then NASW president Suzanne Dworak-Peck (who I ran into in the exhibit hall at this conference), began an initiative called NCN–the NASW Communications Network. Through NCN, those of us interested in how social workers are portrayed in the media worked to contact and collaborate with TV and film writers and producers to portray social work and social workers accurately. And we contacted them when the portrayal was inaccurate, to let them know and to educate them.

The site SocialWorkersSpeak is sponsored by the NCN. The site monitors various forms of media for accurate portrayal of social workers, interviews social work experts, and reports on social work in the news.

A new generation of social workers is receiving training on becoming “media savvy.” At the 2014 NASW conference, I attended a session titled, “Promoting Media Savvy Social Work Practice.” In this 1.5 hour symposium, Katherine Briar-Lawson, Alyssa Lotmore, and Kathryn Zox shared “teaching tools for media savvy radio production” and explored “how social work utilizes media and radio to advance the profession.”

The presenters described a “Media Savvy Social Work” course at University of Albany/SUNY. Zox is a professional radio host–“your Social Worker with a Microphone™.” You can hear her on the Kathryn Zox Show on VoiceAmerica. The University of Albany/SUNY School of Social Welfare also hosts the radio talk show, The Social Workers, on Thursdays from 9-10 a.m. Lotmore is a co-host of the show. Briar-Lawson is dean of the school.

In the course, social work students learn how to interview on the radio by using BlogTalkRadio.com as a practice platform. Through this practice, the students get experience both in interviewing and in being interviewed live on air. (The practice interviews are kept on a private setting, so they are not aired publicly.) They play back the practice sessions and critique themselves and their classmates.

The presenters and attendees discussed some interesting points about interviewing and being interviewed on live radio for social workers. One was that of “once it’s out there, you can’t take it back.” As social workers being interviewed or interviewing others on live radio or other media, we need to be mindful of what we say. Another issue was that of confidentiality. As social workers, we interview people about their personal lives every day, and that information is kept confidential within the context of a social worker/client relationship. But if we become radio hosts and use our same interviewing skills, the conversation is very public. So, we need to ask ourselves how far we will go in interviewing a person about his or her mental illness or other personal issues within the context of such a public platform.

The session was thought provoking and educational. As social workers, we have several roles with and within the media. Social workers can serve as experts to whom “the media” look for input on social issues. Social workers can educate “the media” on what we do and who we are. And social workers can also BE “the media.” Regardless of which roles we decide to take on, we can have a “big picture” influence and we CAN become media savvy.

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