Preschoolers can’t understand the difference between content and ads on a website and like to shop despite the fact that money is an abstract term.  Parents don’t mind straightforward advertising, but they can’t abide by sites that try to blur the line between the two.  Those are just two of the takeaways you’ll find in the […]

It’s raining new websites for kids, and ZooKazoo is one of the newest in the shower. ZooKazoo is both a social network and a casual gaming site. It’s housed inside a safe environment that you enter with a subscription bought by parents.

You remember it, don’t you? A paper plate with a fastener holding moving paper arms that rotated around the plate and pointed to your next familial task: mow the lawn, do the laundry, set the table. At our house, we got our allowances in return for doing what the wheel said. Some […]

A few weeks ago, I noted that KidThing, PBS Kids, and others were kicking off a new wave of new and promising websites for kids. Add a few more to the list: KidZui, a web browser and service, Handipoints, and ZooKazoo are three newcomers to the ever-expanding world of communities for young kids on the […]

No ifs, ands, or buts about it. The web is churning out some really interesting playplaces for young children. Places that find ways to keep them safe and keep them creative. It’s a renaissance of the early days of CD ROMs when good content for kids was abundant; the only difference is that the CD […]

There’s been quite a fuss made over the XO, developed by Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). The OLPC vision was to design a low-cost, but powerful, connected PC in order to provide kids all over the world with Internet-power. OLCP wants to sell the XO in bulk to third world countries. After two […]

It was inevitable that Barbie would meet social networking. BarbieGirls is a new virtual world, not unlike many other virtual worlds, except that this center of attention is on the things that Barbie cares about most passionately: room decoration, fashion, and chat. (Gag me with a spoon!)

There are a number of social networks that cater to the K-8 crowd, with a focus on kids ages 8-14. The idea behind these sites is to ask for some sort of parent authentication–a credit card number or a parent’s email–and also to involve the parent understanding what’s happening on the site.
We’ll look at: […]