This will probably be the last in this series.
4. Title: Common Sense Media
Address: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/app-reviews
First impression: Clean design, well resourced and organised
Brief description: Covers multiple forms of media. Provides quick summaries covering age group, quality ratings, learning ratings, The summaries click through to full reviews.
Qualifications of contributors: Each review has an attribution which leads to information about the individual reviewer. Common Sense Media has the following to say about its process:-
Common Sense Media publishes independent ratings and reviews for nearly everything kids want to watch, read, play, and learn. We never receive payments or other consideration for our reviews. Our unbiased ratings are conducted by expert reviewers and are not influenced by the creators or by our funders.
Scope: Wide in terms of reviews and platforms covered.
Currency of information: Current as of February 2015. You do have to dig a bit for dates though as review dates are not obvious.
Categories: Categories do exist but the site offers many other ways to search their database of listings. You can filter results by
- Age
- Device
- Price
- Genre
- Subject matter
- Skill
- Rating
- Topic
- Parent recommendation
- Popularity with kids
- Awards
- Editor’s picks
Review format: Consistent. The image below shows two short listings each of which links to a full review.
The actual review begins with a summary and screenshots as shown below.
This is followed by a section called What parents need to know which give a point rating
Ease of play
Violence & scariness
Sexy stuff
Language
Consumerism
Drinking, drugs, & smoking
Privacy & safety
If the app has a learning rating, the next section is entitled What kids can learn.
Then further sections are displayed in a toggleable collapsed form.
- What’s it about?
- Is it any good?
- Families can talk about …
- App details
Summary: A megasite for information in this field, with information that can be filtered in a multitude of ways.