Seeing the off-site links on the Yahoo Kids site, that I mentioned in the last blog post, reminded me that I should probably be a bit more mindful of child safety on the internet.
During my next search for kids games online, I found a site called I Keep Safe. Although it is a very useful site for parents and educators to teach internet safety with videos, lessons, and great all-around information, I am sorry to say the games on the site were a little lame. The one flash game of a cat requires a child to jump over iconic villains of internet safety like spam and viruses.
Through this “I Keep Safe” site we did find another site at Net Smartz Kids. Now here was a game about internet safety that actually taught something while DD played. The object was able to move her pieces on a game board until she reached the end. Along the way were messages that would pop-up like “spam is unwanted junk mail sent to lots of people,” and “viruses can infect your computer and make it stop working.” As a game it was okay, but it could be a useful tool to encourage a dialogue with one’s child about best internet practices. I thought the game board was especially cute: it looked like the inside of a personal computer. There were other games with cute names like “Printer Panic” and “Clicky’s Quest.”
While on the subject of safety, one kid’s gaming website we found that we do not recommend is ToonTown.com. Although it had the Disney name all over the site, we were required to give an email address and a birthdate to register to play. After that we were asked to download software. That was the final straw for me and I quit the site at that point. It was just too much bother, and something just did not feel like genuine Disney about that site.
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