Marketing Logic

Oops!
A few weeks ago a friend of mine told me about an “incident” that happened with his kids and a well-known search engine. The “incident” was brought about by his kids innocently typing words into the search engine, they were young enough that he didn’t think that they would use a search engine, but they did.

I found this out a few years ago; my daughter found the website dolphin.com and was asking questions about it. I asked her how she found it and she said that she typed it into the search engine. She was four.

Enter the parental responsibility mode. I am constantly on a quest to find safe ways for my children to enjoy the internet, but not find all of the crud that is out there. I’ve found resources that have let me feel more confident about their browsing, but nothing is a substitute for parental involvement.

Ask for Kids
Ask for Kids
This kid-friendly search engine rates very highly in my book. The interface is bright and simple. They even tell you where Jeeves may be vacationing. There are direct links to some fun games and lots of homework help. The results could use some beefing up, but I attribute that to the filtering process.

Kidzui
www.kidzui.com
This pleasant little program takes over the browser (and the computer if you like) and filters all content based on parents and teachers who determine age appropriate sites. For multiple children you can set up multiple accounts, using a picture. (The pictures are not displayed online, only on your computer). Each child will have specific content they can see, based on their age and the appropriateness of the content.

The sites are the typical PBSKids.org, Nick Jr., Disney Kids, etc. but all of the sites are displayed in a crazy interface that allows additional exploration. The interface contains multimedia clips and pictures from cartoons, TV shows (yes, The Wiggles), combined with a lot of science and nature. There are also pictures and movoe clips from actual classroom learning. The site allows children to simply follow whatever they find interesting and supports very in-depth use. I don’t think our kids got boared on that site yet, as there is so mucvh to do, either directly on Kidzui, or though the portal sites.

At the end of each week, I receive a full report of all of the websites that each child has visited, all of the images and movies that they watched and all of the search queries that they made. It gives me a little more comfort to know what they are doing, but like I said – it’s no substitute for just sitting with them or checking in once in a while.

Kidzui is still in Beta, so a lot of parental controls are not available, such as time and website restrictions (I hate Bratz). But I like what they are doing and my kids love the options that are there. there is also the function to lock down Kidzui and not allow access outside of the portal. This would stop a child from simply reducing Kidzui and opening another browser. using this feature, the only way you can shut down the program is to use the master password. This is especially handy if you have an independent child that does not like to be told “no”. However, it does make it difficult when you have an older child that needs to use the computer for homework. So, the Lock-down mode was removed, but the kids still use the program.

This got me started on a quest to find some helpful kids websites and search engines. I published that list over at Search Engine Guide as a resource. Read through the rest of the article and see if there are any that you know about that you can add to the list. Search Engines for Kids – full article.