Tools & sites aimed at better kid time online

There seems to be this firewall between kids' products that kids like and kids' products that parents like. It's rare and amazing when that wall collapses, but I think what helps is when the product, while passing parental muster, is just plain useful to kids.

Kid-friendly online utilities

Children's Web browser Kidzui meets those criteria – after all, kids need to browse the Web, and a lot of parents want them to do so in a kid-friendly environment. Kidzui is a very large "online playground," with more than 2 million kid-appropriate sites to browse. I wrote about this and some other great parent-approved services last fall, but now Kidzui has added another kid-friendly utility – one of those social-media tools like Twitter, Facebook, or good o' email that users of all ages didn't know they needed till they tried it or till all the VIPs in their lives used it. For kids, the utility is a site for viewing and sharing videos, a very social experience. Kidzui's is called ZuiTube. ZuiTube claims to have the biggest collection of child-appropriate videos in existence; it doesn't say how many but that those videos are found in "6,000 channels," which should keep kids safely entertained for a while. ZuiTube and Kidzui were *very* briefly reviewed at CNET recently.

2 brand-new 'products': FaceChipz, WonderRotunda.com

One is social, the other educational. FaceChipz may get the nod from tweens partly because it's very attractively packaged and partly because it's a rarity: a social site (not a virtual world, which is more common) for people under 13. [If you're under Facebook or MySpace's minimum age (13), and your parents aren't, like many parents, looking the other way where your online social networking's concerned, you have few options; two somewhat similar options are YourSphere.com, which checks parents registering their kids against a sex-offender database, and MySecretCircle.com, which sells accompanying security hardware for $24.99.] For kids, the trick with these products is going to be luring their friends who are, right or wrong, already in Facebook or MySpace into this very closed, safe (in terms of adults gaining access, not necessarily peer harassment) social options with them.

FaceChipz, just launched in beta, describes itself as "Facebook with training wheels." As its president, George Zaloom, put it in an email, "For the kids, we tried to make the site fun and the chips collectable. For the parents we tried to make the site SAFE and the chips affordable." The chips themselves come in $4.99 packs of 5 sold at ToysRUs and in the FaceChipz site. Users register the chips online with the code on the back of the chip, then give them to their friends. Once the chip recipient registers its code, giver and receiver are linked and the code becomes invalid for anyone else (so it can't be used again by anyone creepy). The more chips kids buy, the more friends they can add or points they earn toward virtual goods in the site. After they register, their parents have to verify them so the site complies with the US's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. To verify, all that's required is a $1 fee paid once by credit card (no proof of guardianship is required).

There's a brand-new educational virtual world out there, WonderRotunda.com, that may turn out to please both parent and child. It's a good sign that Washington Post tech writer Mike Musgrove tested it on his eight-year-old, who told his dad, "I think this is educational" but then actually stuck around "to explore the virtual theme park, intrigued by the prospect of winning and spending the game's 'wonder dollars' to buy virtual food and loot with which to decorate his virtual treehouse," Musgrove writes. He, the 8-year-old, doesn’t care that CommonSenseMedia.org gave the site 5 stars, but another good sign was that eMarketer senior analyst and parent of a 6- and 8-year-old really liked it too. Maybe her kids did as well? Musgrove doesn't say.

The Post reporter does say that WonderRotunda was created by a concerned dad who wanted to create an alternative to Club Penguin and Webkinz for his daughter and her peers (ClubPenguin.com is more social, and so is Webkinz.com, with the added element of trading in "real world" stuffed animals).

It seems that's the other divide at the pre-tween level (around ages 5-9): Either they're interacting with the site (as in KidThing.com and WonderRotunda in ways designed to enrich or educate) or they're interacting with peers (socializing and playing games) in an environment run by companies that usually moderate and/or restrict communication for users' protection. The very popular Poptropica.com, by Pearson Education's Family Education Network, tries to straddle that divide by being both fun and educational (check out what Undercover Mom says about it: Part 1 and Part 2).
I'm rooting for these companies that work hard to meet the exacting standards of kids as well as parents! Let me know if your kids like them - and about other virtual worlds, videogames, and blogging services that work for under-13s at your house (via anne[at]netfamilynews.org).

Related links

Help with YouTube safety: As the world's 4th-most-visited site on the Web, YouTube is a fact of life in most households. Marian Merritt, parent and Symantec's Net-safety advocate, recently wrote up some meaty advice for families that also, importantly, raises some parental awareness.

Google is YouTube's parent, and here's is Google's own advice for "Making YouTube a safer place"

Recommended sites for tween girls from Connect with Your Teens blogger and parent Jennifer Wagner.

Undercover Mom in Poptropica, Part 2: The Apple Jacks of kids' virtual worlds

By Sharon Duke Estroff

Last week I detailed the good things I discovered in this popular kids' virtual world for 5-to-10-year-olds. This week...

What I wasn't crazy about

Video Game Overtones. Gallant educational effort aside, my suspicions were correct. Kids aren’t flocking to Poptropica.com by the tens of millions out of a quest for learning, they’re flocking there for the highly addictive video games. No sooner had I entered an Aztec ruin on Shark Island than I found myself hopping, flipping, and climbing Nintendo-style to a secret passage (a task that took me a good 30 minutes to nail down as I kept missing my landing targets and being tossed back to Go). Indeed, everywhere I turned on Poptropica held similar gaming challenges. It’s safe to say that for every second a kid spends reading educational tidbits on Poptropica, he spends hundreds more in videogame la-la land.

To Cheat or Not to Cheat. Let there be no mistake about it. Poptropica games are HARD. For a prehistoric parent like me, they border on downright impossible. At a loss for how I’d ever manage to sedate that Great White and save Shark Island, I turned to two of my joystick-savvy sons (ages 9 and 14) for assistance. But alas, they too failed miserably. That’s when I began combing the kiddie masses (at school, birthday parties, Chuck E. Cheese and the like) for advice on how to succeed in Poptropica. The consensus was clear and simple: I needed to Google "Poptropica Cheats." My search yielded no less than 36,000 results including this unsettling video on YouTube of two children explaining how to cheat on the site - a great opportunity, I'd say, for family discussion about "cheating" in game and virtual worlds vs. in the real world: Ask your kids the similarities and differences are.

Advertising All Around. I’m not naïve. I understand that for a free virtual world like Poptropica to be profitable it needs to feature paid advertisements. The Apple Jacks banners flanking the site didn’t bother me a bit. Nor did the Cinnamon Toast Crunch game that has kids collecting pieces of cereal. But is it really necessary to launch a full-screen pop-up ad every time a kid (or a mom) moves the mouse a millimeter too far to the right or left? Worse yet, the pop-up ads prevented me from returning to the Poptropica page where I’d been previously playing, forcing me to start the game all over again with a brand new avatar – five times. (Hmm, might such repeat registration have something to do with those reported 20 million Poptropica accounts? Hey, I’m just saying.)

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, I found Poptropica to be a lot like the Apple Jacks cereal it plugs so aggressively - loops of empty calories dusted with vitamins and minerals. Nevertheless, in a virtual-world cafeteria line full of straight-out junk food, it makes for a pretty good choice.

Screenshots

Apple Jacks everywhere

Immersive advertising: Embedded Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Many, many Poptropica cheats

For an index of the complete Undercover Mom series to date, please click here.

Undercover Mom in Poptropica, Part 1: Virtual World with educational elements

By Sharon Duke Estroff

I chose Poptropica.com as the site of my latest undercover mom investigation because of its first-place ranking in the 5-to-10-year-old bracket. With 20 million unique accounts and counting, it is indeed a heavy hitter in the burgeoning children’s virtual world market.

But I was also intrigued by the Poptropica's educational spin. The site's parent company is Family Education Network (FEN), developers of one of my favorite teaching resources, Funbrain.com. As worthy a site as Funbrain may be, however, it’s not the kind a kid would visit voluntarily without the urging of a parent, educator, or academic tutor. Could a children’s Web site as hopping as Poptropica possibly be on the same educational plain as Funbrain? I was determined to find out what kind of fare this populous virtual world was really serving up.

What I Liked About Poptropica

Underlying Storylines. In contrast to some children's virtual worlds that are essentially animated chatrooms, Poptropica consists of a collection of uniquely themed islands with equally unique underlying storylines. Shark Tooth Island, for example, has a distinctly reggae-like feel and is being tormented by a vicious shark. Time Tangled Island is set 50 years in the future (complete with a wrinkled, decrepit version of your avatar) and revolves around a malfunctioning time machine that has distorted history.

Overlying Purpose. Whatever the island's particular problem may be, it's up to you, the kid, to find the solution. Such active quests engage children from the get-go while minimizing boredom-induced troublemaking behaviors such as cyberbullying. I was also pleased to find a virtual world where kids' ultimate purpose was something besides getting and spending money.

Helpful, Directive Avatars. Logging onto a virtual world for the first time can be a confounding and oddly isolating experience. Poptropica takes good care of its "newbies" by sending out resident avatars to greet kids and give them the skinny on the particular mission at hand. These avatars also provide players with clues and props to assist in their mystery-busting endeavors.

Drop-Down Q&As. Unlike many virtual worlds that offer the option of free (albeit monitored) chat, Poptropica conversation is limited to a series of pre-selected drop-down questions and answers. While such constraints might feel like a straitjacket in more schmoozing-focused virtual worlds, it works nicely in Poptropica. Kids’ interactions remain positive and upbeat while the pre-set choices teach children how to engage in socially appropriate conversation in virtual worlds at large.

Educational Undertones. I was happy to discover that Poptropica does indeed boast an admirable educational dimension. Kids travel back in time and meet historical figures like Leonardo daVinci and Thomas Edison. They traipse through Aztec Ruins and learn about the dorsal fins of Great White sharks. Children who want to learn more about a particular subject can click a button that links them directly to more info at FEN's FactMonster.com.

Next week: What I'm not so crazy about in Poptropica.

Screenshots

Online chat, Poptropica-style

Me 'n' Leonardo Davinci

Solving mysteries for the betterment of mankind (kinda)

For an index of the complete Undercover Mom series to date, please click here.