Zoodles is an Adobe-air based app that is designed to put pre-selected materials at your child’s fingertips; while keeping everything else out. The idea is to provide a safe, virtual playground that can be adjusted to your child’s age and skills. Once it’s installed on your Mac or Windows computer, your child sees games from popular children’s sites like PBS Kids and Starfall.com, stripped of any advertising content. The service is free for the basic service; the Premium Membership is $6/month. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Seek Your Own Proof is a web-delivered detective adventure that follows the story of three investigative siblings – Aidan, Milanie, and Heiko Munro on a series of missions. Each Flash-based mission is sold for $4 (the first one is free, after you register); or you can buy ten for $20. Created by Canadian-based Rocketfuel Productions, in partnership with Discovery Kids. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Fresh from Disney, a children’s virtual world based on the movie Cars, making it possible to drive into Radiator Springs, chat with other car avatars, enter races, or just explore. If you have a Mac or Windows computer, you can have a car up and running by the time you finish this article by visiting www.worldofcars.com. There are three areas to explore, each with a different theme, stores and four player racetrack. Features include two types of chat, the ability to make friends and have private chat sessions, and subscription access to special areas of the world. In addition, Mattel is selling a set of die cast vehicles that come with special race codes. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
After you setup your child’s account, you can create a schedule, and then see a log of what your child has done, while using the Mixels service. It is possible to link up members to chat online with friends, play games, and read about current events. The service is free for a 14 day trial, after that the cost is $5.99 per month, or $55 per year. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Kung Fu Panda World (KFPW) is a richly animated Flash-10 based online destination for children aged 8-up that is free to register and play, or available as a subscription for $6/month sans commercials. In many ways, the site resembles a “design your own avatar, explore a movie-themed world” type of experience.
After you register, you can design your own avatar and start exploring the first levels of the game. A sponsored play game model lets you play for free, as long as you watch a commercial for a “kid friendly” sponsor like McDonalds. If you subscribe, you can skip the commercial and reach the highest levels of the game. There is no in-game commercial content. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Not shown in the video, besides the selection of tasty food in the cafeteria, was a walking tour through some of the cubicles, where I met some Steve Grove’s news team (with a mascot beagle). At one point I asked that question about “famous people who have visited YouTube” and I was told the story of a not-to-be-named Presidential Candidate who famously asked “where do you guys make all the videos?”
Update 2010: Now a thriving social community, (much like Club Penguin) Moshi Monsters (www.moshimonsters.com) is a family of six zany monsters that live in their own virtual home. The site is free to get into, but uses a velvet rope model; showing children content that requires a subscription to access. The cost is $6/month and up. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Fantage, or “fantastic age” is a responsive, safe and no-fail MMO that resembles Club Penguin back in the good old days, minus the penguins. The Fantage theme is a bit like Disneyland with nine-themed areas, including a castle, a forest, a lighthouse, uptown, downtown and others. In each you can chat (freely but filtered) with others, invite others to become friends, decorate your room, or play 11 Flash-based games. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating, and see why this received our Editor’s Choice Award.
Zon is a free (registration required) virtual world — or MMOG — designed to teach English speakers Chinese language and culture through games and chat. There are five levels of play. First, you design your avatar, and then become a tourist at the Beijing Airport. You must pass through customs and get to your hotel, while completing challenges designed to accomplish various tasks.
You start by exploring to learn about myths and legends, investigating famous temples or shopping in public markets. Players can advance to rent apartments, buy a car, or own their own business. The site was funded by the Office of the Chinese Language Council International (Hanban) and Michigan State University. Disclaimer: I (Warren Buckleitner) went to this graduate school; one of the principle designers was on my doctoral committee. Learn more at www.enterzon.com. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Great science and ecology content is combined with low levels of interactivity and a didactic presentation in Wonder Rotunda (www.wonderrotunda.com), a subscription-based ($45/year) web delivered service first released in the summer of 2009. In order to make the site work, you need a Flash-enabled browser and a credit card. No other software or downloads are required. We evaluated the service using a complimentary password provided by the publisher.
After you create a male or female character to represent yourself in the game show portion of the experience, you see a map representing 11 topics including: orchestra, rain forest, great barrier reef, American government, digestive system, Apollo 11, planet earth, kangaroos, healthy eating, the Serengeti and business adventure. By clicking on an area of the map, you launch a 20 minute or so animated adventure, in which pop-up facts appear. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Intel’s Infoscape is a prototype that was being shown at CES 2010. Here’s what I learned. There are two screens, each powered by a single i7 chip, which was the point of the display. This is not a production model. The display was created for Intel by http://foghorncreative.com and was positioned at the corner of Intel’s giant CES 2010 booth. Infoscape is made up of two 7′x7′ touch screen glass walls that are set at a 1920x1920 resolution. The content is controlled by “a man behind the curtain” (in this case Mike Martin) with a laptop. It is fun to think about what you could do with this type of technology in your living room, school lobby, classroom or library.
Visiting Kids @ Play for an afternoon panel; three individuals who will probably do the most to shape the future of how children will use technology in the next few years, at least from the government’s view. From left to right, Karen Cator, Director of Educational Technology for the U.S. Dept. of Education; Chris Kelly, Former Facebook General Counsel and Candidate for Attorney General, State of California; and Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the FCC.
Following the tried-and-true “buy a toy, get a password” business model, Smiley Central Studio consists of a set of $10 smiley toys, each with a password to a creativity studio, found at www.smileycentralstudio.com.
There are five types of toys, including a key chain, plush toy, a collection of figurines and charms. First you log onto www.smileycentralstudio.com where you must register and type in your 13 digit code. This process is hardly child-friendly, but fortunately is only required once. There are no credit cards or subscriptions to worry about. Next, you see your toy surrounded by sets of stamps, clothing items and paint buckets. You can then modify your Smiley by decorating the smile face. Finished work can be saved online for later viewing. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
This is a new feature that lets you password-protect your browser, so that the only Google search option is strict filtering, designed to remove explicit language and images. To change your settings go to the classic Google start page, click on “Settings” at the top of the screen and then “Search Settings.” Look for the SafeSearch settings, and find the “Lock SafeSearch.” Once it is checked, you’ll need to type your password to set the lock. From this point on, any Google search done with that browser will be strictly filtered, to remove explicit text and explicit pictures. In addition, four large colored balls are shown on the top of the search results screen if the SafeSearch lock is on; a design that is easy to spot from across the room. No colored balls means no lock. Learn more by watching 
. Subscribers, please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Here’s this month’s iceberg video playlist on YouTube, all about icebergs. It contains the ten videos from the January issue.
Screen: One of the multiple-choice problems
What do you get when you cross former Microsoft executives with some dedicated math educators? A state-of-the-art online math curriculum ($13/month at www.dreambox.com). We tried the free two-week trial option and found the first 20 or so of the 350 activities to be well-designed and engaging. The lessons are designed to function as a stand alone math curriculum, say for a home school situation, or they could supplement an existing school curriculum. Because the lessons are designed and delivered in Flash, you can run them from from any Macintosh or Windows browser. No disks, downloads or installations required.
First, a parent or teacher needs to make an account. Next, children log in with their screen name and password. There’s the one-time process of choosing an avatar (there is one in a wheelchair), followed by a tutorial on how to use the mouse. From there, it’s on to a cartoon-like world, made of four themes: Pirates, Dinosaurs, Pets, or Pixies. Progress is monitored by a management system that tracks a child’s progress and controls the difficulty, hints, pace, and sequence of the lessons. Adults can log in at any time to check a child’s progress; an email reporting option is also available.
Completing games earns coins, which can be used at a carnival arcade, with games like skeet ball where you can add up your points. Note that the price listed is for one month, for one child. For six months, $50, for one year, $100. Schools, call about site licenses. Please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
A screen capture of the main menu taken July 2009
Note: in 2009, Kerpoof was acquired by Disney, and the company was asked to make the creativity portal for Disney.com. See also: Disney Create.
Well-designed, free (with subscription teasers) and powerful, this online creativity kit has grown up since we first reviewed it nearly two years ago, when it was mostly an electronic flannel board. Recently acquired by Disney, the free, Flash-based site offers children five rich creativity activities, making it possible to make sketches, greeting cards, drawings, movies and multi-page stories with tools partially funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. The core of the site remains the electronic flannel board that makes it easy to drag and drop smart stickers onto over 80 backdrops. Each scene contains theme-related items that automatically resize, based on the scene’s perspective. For example, in the firehouse, you can position firefighters and equipment as needed. A firefighter positioned in the back of the picture looks smaller; when moved to the front, it grows. In addition, moving a light source — such as the sun — around the screen changes the lighting accordingly.
At various points in the experience, children are shown interesting items that are off limits unless they subscribe (e.g., “many of the items for sale in the Kerpoof store are for members only”). These premiums include the ability to form groups (e.g., for a teacher’s classroom), buddy painting (a very interesting collaborative drawing tool, for two children), and so on.
It is still easy to save and print work. Costs for membership range from $4.39/month to $44.79/year, although there is enough content (as of March 2009) available for free to make this site well worth the bookmark. Please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Can you create a cell phone your grandparents could easily use, and would purchase? That’s the c
hallenge behind this free, Flash based simulation from Edheads, a group that has become known for bringing abstract ideas to life (see also Virtual Knee Surgery) by putting the learner in the role of decision maker and inventor.
First, you review the market surveys, a good exercise in reading graphics and interpreting information. Next, you go to the lab, and try out different screen sizes, batteries, key layouts and so on. You learn that extra features cost money, which increases the price and can reduce sales. Finally, you take your design to the test group, who give you feedback. While the number of responses is limited, you learn through trial and error how to get the most sales. This simulation was created by Clearly Trained, with support from Ohio State University, with support by the Motorola Foundation. It was released on June 15, 2009. Rating: 
Based on a real surgical procedure, this step-by-step simulation teaches you how to implant a small electrode in the center of a patient’s brain. The process, called Deep Brain Stimulation, is used to remedy the effects of nerve disorders such as those
caused by Parkinson’s Disease.
Your patient is a 59 year old women named Ellen, and you are provided with a case history before the procedure, which takes about 20 minutes from start to finish. You control each step — from putting the six small screws (called fiducials) into the skull by clicking on each marked spot, to inserting the electrical probe at exactly the right depth, by dragging your cursor over a lever. Later, you put in the battery packs and adjust the charge.
At various points, you’re given a multiple choice quiz asking you to justify your actions. If you make a mistake? No worries and no malpractice. The computer gently moves you to the next step.
This title was created by Clearly Trained and published by Edheads with funding from the Ohio State University Medical Center Department of Neurosurgery. Please log into our database using your password to read the full review along with our rating.
Create on Disney.com (http://disney.go.com/create) is a suite of four open-ended activities that pushes the envelope for
Digital Painter
web-delivered creativity tools. Because it uses raster graphics (vs. bitmapped graphics), you can zoom way in with no reduction in resolution. You can also resize or rotate objects for just about any effect. At the core of Create is Digital Painter, with features that Photoshop users used to dream about: unlimited undo or redo, layers that can be moved after they’re placed, and no limits to the number of objects that can be stamped on the screen. Basic drawing tools let you highlight, sketch or blob on watercolors, with an innovative color palette that can be programmed with your favorite colors.
Besides the Digital Painter, three other activities include: Animods, for creating animated creatures; Comic Creator, with white blank panels waiting to be filled in with graphics and text, and Disney clip art; and Photo Mashups, an open-ended celebration of Disney celebrity, where you can drag-and-drop the Jonas Bros. and compose a room poster. Projects can be tagged and stored on the Disney site, after it’s been approved by a panel of screeners based in Disney’s Kerpoof Studios, in Bolder, CO.
So what’s the catch? Besides the ads — images of Toaster Strudel will flash as you draw — you learn that you can’t save your work unless you become a Disney Guest. This means giving up a bit of your identity, specifically, your birthday and email. You also can’t upload your own images, or export your work as a graphics file; an important feature that currently has a “coming soon” sign on it. You can print at any time however. Once you join, your work is saved in your portfolio — your own little corner of the virtual magical kingdom. Rating:
What’s colorless, odorless and has been silently seeping into your child’s backpack, classroom, playroom and library? Your child’s digital future. After 25 years of rosy predictions from experts, there are signs that the long-awaited tipping point for technology & learning has arrived. If you’re one of the many impatient people—like me— who have been waiting for that LED at the end of tunnel, I think that this time it is really happening. Here’s why.
• Batteries. For the first time, batteries are able to power a netbook through a six-hour school day on a single charge. They’re smaller, lighter and powerful; the heart and lungs of iPods, Nintendo DSis, toys and netbooks. See the Cinemin, on page 20 (November issue) for example.
• LEDs. (Light Emitting Diods) are molded into your child’s shoes, and lighting the earrings on the new Dora Links doll.
• Wi-Fi. Thanks to eRate, most schools were wired years ago. Unfortunately the Internet never made it to the child’s desktop. There are signs this is starting to change. For the first time in her K-12 education, my daughter, a high school senior, is now encouraged to bring her laptop to school. And half of her teachers are using Moodle for assignments.
• The App store and Google Ads. Small publishers can make money from their interactive ideas, and reach their intended audience, sidestepping the retail bottleneck.
• Cloud computing. Google’s gmail, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr have earned the trust of the masses, including many of our children who are flocking to games like FarmVille (page 21).
• Flash 10. It used to be that online animation chugged. Not anymore. I just previewed a virtual world for children that is fast, responsive and — for the first time— is in 3D.
• Kinesthetic (motion based) interfaces. The Wii was magic. This year, there’s more. Besides the Wii-Motionplus, there’s Microsoft’s Project Natal, which uses cameras to detect motion. Interface guru Jakob Nielson points out two motion-based Windows 7 features: “Snap” (the ability to resize open Windows) and “Shake” (grab a window, hold your mouse button and give it a shake to hide the windows behind it). Nielson writes, “Both may herald a renaissance for the gestural interaction styles.”
• Multitouch. Apple’s multitouch/accelerometer combination is “the perfect storm” for children’s interactivity. Compare it to the DSi monotouch screen and you have “dumb touch” and “smart touch” from this point forward. Have a look:
Multitouch at NECC 2009
• There’s a Wii in the Whitehouse. Barack Obama is the first president to type a book on a computer, use a Blackberry and post speeches on YouTube. Both of his daughters play video games. This could open the door for more research and policy related to interactive media.
Now that the digital future has arrived, what does it mean? For one, there will be a lot more to review. It’s safe to say that 2010 will bring a surge in new children’s apps, sites, games and toys, and we’re ready to critique them. Enjoy the issue.
W. Buckleitner, Editor
Forty years ago, on July 20, 1969, I was a 10-year-old attending a summer camp in Michigan. I can clearly recall the day we were herded into the camp’s mess hall to watch the moon landing by way of a small black and white TV.
We sat on our hands as Walter Cronkite described the events in his familiar, newsy voice. From where I was, it was difficult to see the TV screen, but it didn’t really matter because everything was so blurry anyway. The signal, after all, was coming all the way from the moon. I walked out of the mess hall filled with wonder and frustration. The idea that people were walking on the moon was amazing, but why did everything have to be in slow motion? And why do grownups have to talk so much? I had experienced a state-of-the-art 1969 multimedia experience; akin to drinking the information through a straw.
Contrast that 2009’s view of the moon landing. Check out the sites listed on page 4 and at LittleClickers. One of these, We Choose the Moon (on page 18 and shown on this month’s cover) is the exact opposite of my camp experience. The Apollo 11 event is layed-out, buffet style, complete with a timeline with each key moment. You can control your exploration, or let the events unfold naturally in real time. If you want to stand on the launchpad, you can, and browse real photos or videos taken by the astronauts themselves. You can listen in on the actual radio transmissions, or you can read them as a Twitter stream. Choice and active learning has replaced the didactic lecture, a sure-fire recipe for better learning.
There’s a lot of other products to get excited about in this issue. At the top of our tester’s list is Wii Sports Resort. Discovery Kids: Smart Animals Scanopedia embeds hundreds of animal facts on a poster sized page. In case you’re stuck in a home with a pack of bored kids, two wonderful movie-based games can help save the day: G-Force Video Game, and Ice Age 3 Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Both run on multiple platforms.
Enjoy the issue!
Warren Buckleitner
PS. Our town’s Mediatech Foundation is turning five! And our experimental community technology center, located in our town library, has never been busier. Last month set new attendance and circulation records, with 605 people signing in and 444 video games circulated. To celebrate, we’re having a party the weekend of August 7 that will include a real time attempt at Charles Lindbergh’s famous flight using Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight. Two 15 year old game testers will try to stay awake for the entire flight— 33.5 hours, in real-time weather. If you’re in the Flemington, NJ area, stop in and watch “history” being remade.