Net Family News: Online-Safe Resources for Kids and Families

Online-Safe Resources for Home & School

Please note: The reports in this section are not product reviews or tests; they're meant to spotlight options for you to consider, as well as milestones in children's online-safety technology development. Comments from readers on their own experiences with these products and services are most welcome - and, with your permission, we publish them. Do email us your own product reviews anytime!

LycosZone: a search engine's playground (Oct. 1, '99)

Lycos the Search Engine has just gotten a lot more kid-friendly. It looks a bit like Go.com (Disney/Infoseek's search engine, with its filtering option right on the home page), but with a difference: Lycos has a lot more non-Disney kid content. To us, that diversity and choice makes it more interesting. They've partnered with some terrific providers, such as…

CyberSurfari - a virtual treasure hunt that takes kids, families, classes all over the Web in search of clues that lead to prizes (cash, mousepads, t-shirts, plaques, trophies). It's an educational program produced by the nonprofit Children's Web Surfing Alliance and designed to "help users increase their comfort level with the Internet as a functional tool for their daily lives." The fall '99 treasure hunt starts October 21.
The Yuckiest Site on the Internet - learning and entertainment for kids 8-15 aimed at helping them "explore the world around and inside them" by "tapping into kids' natural interest in all that is gross."
webmonkey for kids - teaching kids how to make their own Web sites, as well as Web projects like birthday cards, a self-portrait, an online report (see our review).
funschool.com's educational games geared to grade levels and BONUS.com's zillions of games just for fun.

A little more about Lycos's filtering option: It's called SearchGuard, and of course it works only when you do searches with Lycos. To the user, it basically works like Go's GOguardian. Parents can go to "Parental Controls," just under the search box at the top of Lycos's main page, to activate SearchGuard. The only problem with this kind of safety tool is, kids can deactivate as easily as parents can; they can also go to a different search site that doesn't offer this feature. But it's a worthy effort by both Lycos and Go.