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A New Website that Will Help You Amuse Young Children
Lately I’ve been spending a fair amount of time looking after my daughters’ pre-school children so you can understand why a press release about a new website filled with children’s amusements caught my attention.
“Kidopo offers an innovative coloring application for coloring pages, which simulates a real coloring experience. Other sections of the sites are kids printables, games and craft videos.”
I must admit my expectations were low as many of these sites are very amateurish. However I was presently surprised; Kidodo is very professionally implemented. The coloring application in particular is very well done and emulates closely the pencil and paper experience.
A mouse is of course, more difficult to draw with than a pencil so Kidopo have created a spray paint effect when coloring rather than using solids as this is more forgiving of errors. It works well and most young children will find coloring on Kidopo pleasurable rather than frustrating.
But there’s much more on the site than just coloring. There’s an excellent collection of printables including stickers, connect-the-dots, birthday cards and much more. The computer games selection is well populated with hundreds of Flash games in a dozen different categories. There’s also a smaller selection of craft how-to videos.
All up this is a great site for younger children and I can recommend it highly. However a professionally implemented site like this costs serious money so I have no doubt that in the future it will be well populated with ads for children’s products. That’s commercial reality.
Website link: http://www.kidopo.com/
Gizmo
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Kids site? Check the BBC's fantastic http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/ or the flash http://www.poissonrouge.com/schoolofamerican/
Two high quality sites that will keep kids synapses firing!
...and NO adverts.
A kids site with adault RSVP Dating service advs!!!!!! etc... Really....
Please see the post below which explains how sometimes irrelevant ads may appear on a site. Hopefully the cause behind those appearing here can be remedied.
and also CM's post about ad blocker.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/new-website-will-help-amuse-youn...
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Please keep your posts relatively brief. This is a place for comments not extremely long posts or debates. If you wish to enter into a debate, please feel free to do so on our forums.
Thank you.
Erm, pretty good site at first glance - but some of those ads are NOT child suitable - as "Come chat with HOT singles in your area"!
Erm, no thanks - if they removed adverts as such, then yes - good site for kids :-)
Even I don't use a web browser without an ad blocker. So why would I want to torture my children?
Firefox plus Adblock and NoScript and it's a lot more convenient, faster and more secure.
Hi Paul,
The ads are selected by google, usually according to the site subject. It happens here and there that irrelevant ads appear. I'll take of that, thanks for letting me know.
Hah! and to think that ILUVSF was afraid that this would be bad for social development ;-) Sorry, couldn't resist!
I surely agree. This is the biggest problem. If you going to have a site for children, at least man the site enough to control what is posted on the site. Just common sense
I love looking at your picks.I have downloaded so many of you choices over the years.
I've not been disappointed with any yet!!
Surely when they are in their school days, having some idea of computers, would be good as most schools have lessons on computers, and also get children to do homework on them as well!
I had a program on my pc, where it taught children to use lines and curves to make letters and numbers. Which benifits those starting school
Oh so that's why you were so busy lately :P.
I've also caught a mistake, right at the beginning of the article, you start the sentence with "Lately" and repeat it in the same sentence.
Thank you for the tip, I don't have any kids, but maybe I will myself enjoy the experience...
Have a nice day
Thanks for picking up the typo. It's so hard writing with a two year old on your lap :)
What a lovely site. Drag-and-drop is difficult to teach new techies. This one makes it fun. My kiddos will love it when I'm back to teaching in a few weeks.
CONTIATION OF MY POST-
What I'm trying to say is this:allowing children to interact with computers, instead of their peers, is not good, but potentially dangerous, and deadly. We should allow these young children to interact with their peers, ;learn interpersonal skills,learning skills that would set them up for a lifetime of happiness. Let these young children grow up; let them, use the most powerful, fastest computer in the world-their brains
I am sure that no-one here is advocating leaving a child in front of a computer as a baby sitting tool. Of course children need to inteact with other children, and adults. But that does not mean that they cannot have some playtime on a PC. My 3 year old loves using the computer, it is a marvellous learning tool, which augments what we have already taught him in 'real' life, as well as giving him skills that will be vital in later years.
I let my children interact with both, their peers and computers.
They need to know how to use pencils and how to hold a mouse. I only showed them once, clicked here and there, and they remembered all steps better than I did. Their brains worked smarter and faster with the aid of computers than without. You won't be surprised...
WHOA! ANYTHING , any article that has WEBSITES, and CHILDREN, says to me,"PLEASE-HOLD ON HERE!"
Ever since, years ago, I seening ANYTHING started about young childern , and computers, that said "DANGER" to me.
When I was about one year old, in 1948, I had a near-fatal kidney disease. The survival rate was something like 10 per cent.
I had to be isolated from everybody else, and childen,on my ward, because my immune system was at risk.
For the longest time, I struggled with education, interpersonal relationships, etc.I'm still suffering today, nearly 50 years later.
I did horribly in all levels of school; I was bullied constantly;I failed with relationships, and still am, with women.
My parents weren't able to tell me aboul all this untill the early 1980s.
It was then, I was told, because I couldn't interact with my peers, when I was hospitalized, I never really learned those skills-interaction with my peers, at all levels; why I was bullied constantly, when I was young; why I did so poorly in all levels of education.
When this sick situation of young children interacting with computers first started, I knew something was, and still is very wrong.
By letting young children interact with computers, several very harmful things are happening: instead of letting these very young children interact with their peers, their interacting with computers. This is robbing them of the interaction with their peers, that would normally effect what they do in school;-resulting in poor learning habits, doing poorly in school-already setting the young children for a lifetime of frustration, and physco-analysis.-This robs them of important interpersonal interaction skills, witch will set them up for bulling., at a very low grade level, and a very young age.
Early this year, a young girl moved from Ireland, I believe, To Massachusetts, near Boston. She suffered endless bulling, for an extended period of time-she couldn't take it-she committed suicide, at the very young age of 14.
What I'm trying to say is this:allowing children to interact with computers, instead of their peers, is not good, but potentially dangerous, and deadly. We should allow these young children to interact with their peers, ;learn interpersonal skills,learning skills that would set them up for a lifetime of happiness. Let these young children grow up; let them, use the most powerful, fastest computer in the world-their brains.
One more thing here. More than a few years ago, scientist discovered that Alzheimer's patients, had brains where there synapses were dead, do to lact of brain inactivity-it was discovered that in studies with some of these patients that were right-handed, to have them start to do everything left-handed-;The results were stunning. These Alzheimer's patients brain synapses actually started to re-generate themselves!
We're starting to see Alzheimer's in younger and younger patients.
My great fear is this: if children start using computers at a very young age, then continue to do so; by not using their brains, the synapses in their brain will die due to this inactivity; and what we will see eventually is incidents in younger and younger people then children.
Unbelievable! My dear have you taken in account all the things that you said from another point of view.
Well, I would love to present the opposite point of view but I have a feeling it would be a waste of my time. But let me leave you with this thought. Whether you like it or not children are going to be using computers. Every year, educational, entertainment and communication material for children are being computerized in some form: EBooks, Games, music and chat rooms (replacing live chat). Going away are the days of hard copy.
It is up to the adult person who is responsible for that child’s life to meddle with that child’s life and make sure they grow into socially acceptable, educated, thinking, decent human beings. Remember the computer cannot physically take the hand of that child and take them to cultural festivals, public libraries, religious institutions, family reunions and events, community centers, play grounds, amusement parks, zoos, sing and dance clubs, sports activity, and many other places where the child is going to be part of a socializing process that teach them to interact with people and surely with young people as themselves.
"One more thing here. More than a few years ago, scientist discovered that Alzheimer's patients, had brains where there synapses were dead, do to lact of brain inactivity-it was discovered that in studies with some of these patients that were right-handed, to have them start to do everything left-handed-;The results were stunning. These Alzheimer's patients brain synapses actually started to re-generate themselves!
We're starting to see Alzheimer's in younger and younger patients.
My great fear is this: if children start using computers at a very young age, then continue to do so; by not using their brains, the synapses in their brain will die due to this inactivity; and what we will see eventually is incidents in younger and younger people then children."
I'm sorry, are you trying to say that using a computer causes Alzheimer's? What do you base this on? Is there any scientific proof of this? I would love to use a UK euphemism for testicles here, but will have to fall back on saying that is absolute rubbish.
I think the Luddites died out years ago.
Of course you can include ¨responsibility¨ in this and then extend it to anything like too many hamburgers, early exposure to alcohol, or whatever. Life is all about choice and balance and I think most parents are fully aware of how to provide the best of both for their children.
I'm not trying to add credibility to ILUVSV, but I do recall recently reading something about too early of exposure to computers/television being detrimental to young developing minds. To think it through, I can see where the traps might lie. Children/young minds need to use and develop all of the senses to have a rounded experience in learning something. The use of technology inevitably strips a couple of the senses out of the learning experience, making the young minds lazy in their approach to learning.
We are in such a rush these days for our children to grow up and wish to have them exposed to as many experiences as possible, thinking that because they're going to have to learn it sooner or later, that we better get them on computers ASAP. Unfortunately for this instance, we are both creatures of habit and don't want to do things to make our children unhappy. This combination inevitably leads to planting the child in front of the TV or computer and leaving them be, as long as they're quiet and not breaking anything. It also caters to lazy parents who don't want to have to worry about cleaning up a mess...how great is it that you wouldn't have to worry about crayon/pen marks on the walls, toys, etc.?
In the case of this computer application and the potential for overexposure to technology, children will miss out on the tactile sensory experience of working with a tool such as a crayon/pencil/paintbrush, the olfactory experience(smell of the paint/crayon, etc.), some fine motor skills development (not to say some won't be learned by using the mouse), and so on. This may also add to from an already downward spiral of legible penmanship skills. Moreover, I suspect that it could lead to their perception of being detached and having an altered sense of reality as with a few clicks of the mouse they can have what they want, rather than having to get up, move and get something for themselves. This will set them up for some hard lessons later in life, as does parents who cater to a child's every whim.
On the other side of this, I can see where this might be a good thing for small infrequent periods to encourage interaction with parents, learn/spend time together. If a child is sick/hurt/weak and has no interest in typical play activities, this could be used to fill in a little bit of time. I think that should also be done with some care too, as it never hurts to learn how to slow down and just sit still for a moment when there is nothing to do. I don't believe that it's necessary for every moment of every day to be filled with activity for kids as so many parents seem to try to do these days. They may be being exposed to a lot of different experiences, which by most rights is a good thing, but if they have no time to relax and dwell on things (sleep on it?) how can they be expect to learn. That's why babies/young kids need nap time. Insomuch as their bodies are growing and need to rest physically from a busy day, their minds also require time to reflect on the things they've done, interactions, social cues, etc. so that they can learn from it.
Thus, in the rush to push our kids to the forefront, I do think that anything more than small or intermittent amounts of technology exposure at too young of an age definitely is developmentally detrimental does them a disservice in the long run. I do agree with MidnightCowboy in that the use or application of anything we do with regard to the care and teaching of our children requires that we do so in a balanced and responsible way.
Thanks!
Excelent link!
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