This is part of a series of posts looking at virtual worlds targeted toward kids.

It seems appropriate to be writing this review from a vacation beach house that has mezuzos on the door posts, since the virtual world of Shidonni is an Israeli start-up.

The first kid’s virtual world we’ve encountered that runs on Microsoft’s Flash competitor Silverlight (be prepared to download it before playing), it is most unique for the fact that kids get to draw their own virtual animals. We’re not just talking about picking and choosing avatar styles or clothing - Shidonni presents a blank slate for artistic children ages 6-12 to draw an animal and watch it come to life. They also draw the virtual backyard or home their animal lives in, and they draw food and their animal eats it!

In no time at all, my girl had populated the world with a dog and cat which soon had a kitten. Then after I read this post about the easy tutorials, she followed some of them and added a penguin, a turtle and a bird to her menagerie. Next, she started playing games with them and visiting other worlds.

A blogger shot this video of Guy Bendov, head of marketing and business development at Shidonni at Seedcamp Tel-Aviv explaining the virtual world. It’s nice to hear the view from the inside:

The Good

Shidonni has found a unique angle in a field that is rather glutted. I like the creativity it fosters by allowing kids to really build their world. My girl thought it sounded a bit boring when I first mentioned it to her after reading about it in Virtual World News; but, after seeing her first drawing come to life, she was hooked.

This world is a good one for younger children because it requires little to no reading skills, and has a number of simple games like chutes and ladders or puzzles made from your drawings. There is also plenty to do with the free account, but if you choose to upgrade to a membership (typical “freemium” style) you get more colors, brushes and stamps  with which to draw.

The Bad

While extensive language skills are not required to play Shidonni, it can be rather hard to draw on a computer if you’re not used to it. My girl preferred drawing with her finger on the trackpad of our laptop, rather than the mouse. If you happen to have a graphics pad, I bet it would be better.

If you are looking to make connections with others in-world, it is not exactly easy. While the fact that you must know someone’s user ID before you can connect with them as a friend is good for privacy and protection of children, it also makes it difficult to interact with others. And, if you’re thinking about inviting a friend to join so you can make that virtual connection with a real life buddy, your option for facilitating it is a set of invitations you have to print and hand or mail to them.

The Lessons Learned

Overall, Shidonni seems to be a very unique entry into the kid-targeted virtual world market. The very thing that makes it unique, however, also means a little preparation might be useful before heading in-world. Our recommentation would be to do a few practice draws on paper or on another drawing application before you begin drawing your virtual pet. My girl was rather disappointed with her first efforts, which could impede the desire to continue in those easily frustrated.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Shidonni Makes Kids’ Pets Come Alive (blonde2dot0.com)
• You: HOW TO: Bring Animal Drawings to Life (mashable.com)

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This is part of a series of posts looking at virtual worlds targeted toward kids.

This series of posts was born out my confession to buying a Webkinz stuffed animal for a friend’s daughter, and for the first time since then we visit another world based on furry purchases.  Build-A-Bearville first launched in December of 2007 and now has about 7.8 million registered avatars or users. When we first ventured into this new world, I must say I didn’t expect much; but, it seems to have struck a cord with my daughter. She has returned so often that she is now a certified Jr. Cy-Bear Guide - which means she’s an in-world ambassador who answers questions from other residents such as where the fun places are to visit.

The Good
This world definitely carries a positive vibe - my girl says that she likes to visit it when she’s had a hard day. The music that constantly plays in the background plays a big part in that - they’ve invested in some quality, original tunes that are very upbeat.
There is a much larger variety of locations to visit in Build-A-Bearville than we’ve seen in the other worlds we’ve reviewed. And with the abundance of locations comes a large number of games. Many of them are multiplayer, and they range from an easy game of tug-of-war to a more challenging car race.
Build-A-Bearville also has great parental controls. When my girl tried to change her chat option from Safe Chat, which limits her to pre-programed responses, to open text chat one day after school, I received an e-mail notification where I was at work asking me to approve first. Today, that’s not even an option — last October Build-A-Bearville disabled their open chat option saying that “Until technology is available to prevent potential abuse we will continue to use ’safe menu chat’.” And, WiredSafety recently presented them a “Best of the Web” award at the 9th Annual WiredKids Summit.

The Bad
While I personally don’t have an issue with the business model, several readers of past virtual world reviews have expressed displeasure with worlds that they feel do a switch and bait on their children - luring them in as free, but restricting much of what can be done in-world to those that spend money for premium content access. Build-A-Bearville, while very connected to the purchase of an animal at their Build-A-Bear Workshop stores, also follows that common standard. They note that “you don’t have to have a furry friend to play, but if you do have one, you can play a lot more games and have even more fun.”

The Lessons Learned
If you’ve somehow been able to avoid the Build-A-Bear Workshop at your local mall and your child doesn’t already hound you for a new animal every time you walk by, don’t get them started with the virtual world. The site was built with the goal to “keep children (and their parents’ credit cards) connected with the furry product after the initial sales.” And it works. In the company’s Q4 2008 earnings call, CEO Maxine Clark said 10 percent of visitors to Build-A-Bear Workshop’s physical stores were influenced to visit by the company’s virtual world, and on average those visitors spend more than others on each visit.
But, if you’re already stuck lining the pockets of Ms. Clark, the virtual world extension is a safe, fun place for your kids to hang out.

Check out another great review of Build-A-Bearville.

Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 6-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers. (the apple didn’t fall far) She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.

This is part of a series of posts looking at virtual worlds targeted toward kids.

A commenter on my Handipoints review here asked if I’d heard of another world called SecretBuilders. His child’s teacher had mentioned it, but he was concerned about the safety. (Teachers seem to have been early PR targets during the world’s testing phase, and have their own section on the web site.)

It’s taken a while for us to get back on our safari, and in the meantime it appears that the SecretBuilders world officially launched. So, we’ve taken time here during the holidays to go check it out.

SecretBuilders.com

The style of graphics is very similar to Club Penguin, although the avatars are human figures. The intentions are higher than many other kid-targeted worlds, as their site says they view children not as consumers, “but rather as creative, ingenious beings that will help build a vibrant virtual world that will also impact their real world.”

Screenshot of a room in SecretBuilders

The Good

SecretBuilders is designed primarily for children 5 to 14 years of age and is free to join and use. And, they are very concious of privacy concerns. My six-year-old was able to complete the account set-up process essentially own her own. She only needed my assistance for a parent’s e-mail account, which for safety reasons they require of all children under 12.
Also, restricted chat is the default for those under 9 and parents are required to approve additions to their buddy lists. Free chat is available to children over 10 but moderators will still screen out inappropriate language and speech including bullying, harassment, intimidation as well as revelation of any personal identity information.
In addition to interacting with other children in the Secret Builders world, there are opportunities to chat with historical figures such as Shakespeare and Einstein and fictional characters via artificial intelligence (AI). These characters are supposed to chat with children vis-à-vis a monitored chat dialogue and provide guidance on places and activities in SecretBuilders. The only one we’ve encountered so far was called “The Beast” and looked like the Big Bad Wolf, but I’m guessing was from the Beauty and the Beast story. Results of the AI chat were rather mixed - can’t say it was an easy conversation to follow.

The Bad
It was hard to find much to dislike about Secret Builders. After my girl went back on her own to give her friend from next door a tour, I asked her if she had any criticisms. She said it was cool, easy to move around and had fun things to do (she and her BFF were taking turns painting a picture at that moment).
However, I did have some difficulty finding how to edit the settings of her account after it was set up. Apparently, she must have entered her age incorrectly because free chat was available on her account, as well as safe chat. I couldn’t find a parental login, so I tried logging in as her to edit, but still couldn’t find a way to change it.

The Lessons Learned
While it’s nice from a user experience perspective to know that even the younger users can get started using SecretBuilders without a lot of help, parents should still be involved in the initial set-up to ensure everything is done the way you want it to be.

The one thing I was left wondering after a couple of visits to SecretBuilders was just where the name came from. Were the kids secretly building or building secrets or what? Not being able to really find that answer online, I finally took a shot at sending a note to the generic e-mail address on the site. I soon heard back from Umair Khan, CEO of SecretBuilders:

“We named our world and our community SecretBuilders because it is a world whose builders are children themselves. Children will build this world out, with their ideas, suggestions, creativity and activities. They will build out this world both by helping build venues and features, and also by providing content for others to consume (by publishing articles in our magazine for e.g.) We will provide them with more and more tools, activities and features to help them do so.”

Doesn’t sound so secret, but it does sound very admirable!

For another good review of SecretBuilders, check out: Kids Computer Games Recommendations

Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 6-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers. (the apple didn’t fall far) She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.

This is part of a series of posts looking at virtual worlds targeted toward kids.

Augmentation or immersion? It’s a popular debate among the virtual world crowd. Do people enjoy virtual worlds for the escapism they can allow when you fully immerse yourself into another character? Or, do virtual worlds simply augment your current life by allowing new ways to interact with information and other people? Studies of teens have shown that they tend to fall into the augmentation crowd - socially playing online games with others that they already know. The subject of our latest virtual world exploration has really landed on how to capitalize on that with an even younger set.

Pixie Hollow

In beta for quite some time, Disney’s Pixie Hollow officially opened October 23 - two days before the fairies debuted at the Magic Kingdom and five days before the Tinker Bell movie comes out on DVD. And if all that cross-promotion wasn’t enough, the real jewels in the crown in my opinion are the toys. Sure there have been Disney Fairies toys for a while, but the dolls my girl had already collected are nothing like these new Fairies toys. I’d heard Steve Parkis mention them at his Virtual Worlds Expo keynote and was most amazed at the scenario he painted where two girls could meet on the playground, touch their bracelets together and then go home to find their virtual Fairies already connected in-world. Oh, and for the kids who already have cell phones, there’s a mobile option through which users can use their phones to create butterflies as pets for their fairies!

Pixie Hollow is free to play, although there is an option to do more for a monthly fee of $5.95. During our weekend excursion in-world, however, we found plenty to do without going in for the membership option. You can create up to three fairies. You can design clothes for them that are either yours exclusively or available to the entire community. You can play games with fireflies, fish, spiderwebs and probably more we didn’t find. Your fairie has a home and a few bits of furniture with which to furnish it. You can chat with other fairies, although we found very few that would talk back to us. Through the parental controls (pictured below with the more matronly fairie) you have the option to allow free chat or restrict chat to a preset list of options.

The Good
I can’t say enough about the fantastic graphics of this world. To quote my girl “what a pretty place!” The images are pure Disney animation style and create a natural fantasy land that really invites you to explore. If you have sound turned on, you get soothing background noise that coordinates perfectly, as well. When flying close to the water you hear the babble of a brook, but fly higher in the same spot and the water sounds fade out to be replaced by chirping birds or soft breezes.
It’s easy to learn how to maneuver your fairy by moving your mouse across the screen which creates a nice flowing feel to fairy flight. When moving from one “meadow” to a “vale” or into a particular game, the flight is much more reminiscent of a Second Life teleport. Even then, however, my girl said “I like when my fairy flys. She looks so cute!”

The Bad
I really can’t find much bad to say about this world unless you’re one to worry about “the conflation between consumption and consumerism and citizenship” due to all the cross-marketing between the virtual and the real world toys and merchandise. Me, I’m not one to fight the Disney machine because as much as I may lament the amount of my money they get, this time of year, I’m still much happier to spend it on a princess costume than some Bratz costume.

The Lessons Learned
My girl’s first instinct when furnishing her room was to try to drag and drop items, but she quickly adapted to the click and download format of this world. Flying by moving her mouse was also different from using the arrow keys as she has done for most of the worlds we previously visited. But, again she easily adapted and picked up on the new user interface.
Flying around picking up “ingredients” such as berries, dandylion fluff, sunflower seeds and other in-world currency can be addictive. It’s just so easy and so much fun - like an online Easter egg hunt that can go on for hours before you realize it. It can also take a lot of time to customize your fairy due to the large number of options available. However, considering that the number one thing my girl always asks to do when she sees me in Second Life is to change my clothes and hair, that’s something right up the alley of their target audience.
Overall, it’s a definite thumbs up from us and I predict many returns.

Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 6-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers. (the apple didn’t fall far) She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.

This is part of a series of posts looking at virtual worlds targeted toward kids.

The latest stop on our kid-focused virtual worlds safari took us to a world of cute dinosaurs. Dinokids was a major sponsor of the recent Virtual Worlds Conference & Expo, so I not only got their promotional cards in my conference bag, but also got to watch commercials for them prior to every panel and keynote. Not sure if my little review will give them enough return on the money spent for that placement, but here goes. <wink>

Dinokids

One of the first things that struck me about Dinokids is how game-like it seemed. Not that it’s any different in regards to the games it offers in-world – it’s very similar to most of the other kid worlds we’ve visited in regards to the activities offered. No, when I say game-like, I’m talking about the way your dinosaur actually moves around inside the environment. Not having played many video games in quite some time, I still immediately thought of Mario Brothers when I saw ladders and ropes to climb to different levels. This video illustrates it better than I can explain:

In fact, one of the times my girl seemed to be having the most fun in Dinokids was during a game of chase with one of the few other dinos she met in-world, much like what you see in the video.

Speaking of videos, my girl discovered a movie theatre in-world while I had stepped away. She mentioned finding it, but said it just had some “teenager videos” in it – which I immediately made her go back and show me. Turns out they’re running YouTube videos inside Dinokids that appear to be primarily G-rated movie trailers for kid/tween-targeted moves. Whew!

The Good

Dinokids has a definite focus on parental involvement. When we first explored the world, I noticed two types of accounts – authorized and unauthorized. Having seen the subscription model as the main method other kid-focused worlds use to create cash-flow, I just assumed that unauthorized accounts were free and authorized ones cost. Turns out that both are free, but authorized means that a parental account has been created and associated with the child’s account.

This allows the parent to set several parameters for how your child will interact in Dinokids, including not only the choice between pre-programmed responses or free chat, but also setting time limits for how long your child can be logged in during a day. I really like that one as I’ve often thought about setting a timer when my girl gets on the computer to keep myself from losing track of just how long she’s been sitting there.

Also good is the educational element in some of the games such as the math one in the school building. And, dinos can learn about good citizenship and environmental stewardship by picking up trash around their world and placing it into a trash bin to earn eggs (the Dinokids currency).

One other thing I think I would rate “good” that I think is a unique feature in Dinokids is the camera for snapping pics of you and your friends in-world. I can see this as a nice bonus feature. It’s something you have to pay extra for, but gives your little dino a nice scrapbook of snapshots that they wouldn’t be able to grab via your basic screen capture.

The Bad

I’ve had to rewrite much of this section of my post after making the discovery that authorized accounts didn’t cost. Many features that I thought should have been at least partially available to free accounts are available, they just require that you as a parent authorize the account. So, “the bad” section of the post got a lot shorter.

Free or not, one thing I still didn’t really like was the controls for the athletic games such as track. Making your dino run requires hitting the space bar on your keyboard – over-and-over, faster-and-faster. In older users hands like mine, that can be done pretty easily, but in a six-year-old’s hands that repetitive fast motion turns into parent-cringing pounding on the keyboard. And don’t even ask them to try to do that and hit a letter key at the same time to jump over hurdles.

The Lessons Learned

Dinokids just launched as a public beta in September, so you won’t find the traffic numbers of a Club Penguin or Webkinz when your kid is looking for someone to talk to or play with in-world. And, many areas of the world are still under construction. Also, you may encounter bugs with such a new application. My first attempts to authorize my girl’s account didn’t work, and after a nice e-mail exchange with the team in Korea who is building Dinokids, it was determined that a bug in the system didn’t like the underscore character in my e-mail address. They quickly fixed it, and I can feel good about the fact that I’ve helped make it a better process for those who come after me. But, not everyone wants to be an early adopter and deal with the issues that can sometimes bring. Overall, we both liked what we were able to see and my girl has returned several times on her own, so if you’ve got a kiddo who’s crazy about dinosaurs this world is probably a good one for them.

Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 6-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers (the apple didn’t fall far). She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.

“Some of my friends are on Facebook,” my daughter told me the other day. We were riding in the car, both facing forward, but I noticed her gauge my reaction with a quick sideways glance. “Anyway,” said Caroline, who is 11 going on 41, “I don’t think it’s appropriate.”

Later, I checked out the Facebook profiles of a few names she mentioned, friends who — like Caroline — just started middle school. Because Facebook doesn’t allow users under age 13 who aren’t in high school to set up a profile, the sixth-graders lied about their ages and about what school they attend. I noticed quite a number of them –- maybe 30 or 40 that I recognized. I noticed the profile of one girl’s mother, too, networked with all of those kids.

As I’ve written in the past, social networking is definitely trending younger and younger.  And it’s occasionally an awkward place to network – when I bump into Caroline’s almost 17-year-old brother there, I always politely turn aside like I didn’t actually see him, sort of like if I accidentally walked in on him in the bathroom. It’s just that weird for us to be Facebook “friends.”

Generally, I think it’s fascinating to observe the very definition of a “social circle” shifting and expanding and the notion of “play” expanding as our kids, tweens and teens participate in Runescape, or Club Penguin, or Webkinz.

But at the same time, it gnaws at me to see 11-year-olds on Facebook, using their actual photos, with their actual identities. Setting aside the dishonesty that’s required to open an account for a minute –- and yes, that bugs me — I worry about them exposing too much of themselves online before they can really grasp the implications of it.

Do I want them to start a digital trail before they’ve really had a sense of understanding what’s appropriate to share, and what’s not, what’s okay to talk about, and what’s not? No matter how much I trust my kids, Facebook remains a public forum with very public repercussions. And being a parent for almost 17 years, I’ve learned not to be too surprised when kids have a giant lapse of judgment. Things happen.

Given that my own digital trail is fairly well-traveled, I realize how odd my position might sound. Maybe I should just relax? I thought. So I asked other people – some parents, some not — what they thought, via the microblogging tool Twitter. Here were their responses to the question:

“Would it bother you to see your 11-year-old on Facebook?”

@matthewbennett: surely it’s really easy for teenagers to get around anyway if they want to - “I was really born in ..mmm, let’s see…1956″ … and given that, should probably just teach them how to use it properly.

@melfi: reverse. it would bother me to see my mom on facebook. facebook has become what AIM was 10 years ago for kids

@idaho_jamie: No, because I understand FB and would PARENT him/her and monitor. No different then skateboarding, etc.

@MikeDriehorst: Yes, it would — without my permission. Wife & I (mostly her) very, very cautious about exposing any of our kids’ ID online… With openness of soc media - good and evil - it’s not worth exposing our kids to whoever may be lurking.

@sonnygill: Yes. I think at that age, children need to grow and nurture their friends/relationships through face-to-face interaction… Basically, it’s important for kids at that age to grow their relationship skills, not w/a Facebook page, but w/real-life.

@amachina: YES! I have two kids, 10&12. Not allowed on FB, MySpace. I tell them about [internet predators], but they’re too sheltered to get it.

@Jennydecki: No. My three year old knows what Twitter is. They won’t know how to market products/services if they aren’t familiar.

@rockandrollmama: Yes, it would. I shut my 12 yr old down about FB the other day. He doesn’t get the risks, and there’s no reason for it.

@JessicaGottlieb: yes it would. Before we send our kids out we have to prepare them. Play alone in the park first.

@StacieAndrews: Not really - we can’t let social media die with us (like it could) but nurture the next generation of social media-ists

@Nedra: I don’t think an 11 y o has the judgment yet to know what’s appropriate to share on Facebook (not that many 20 yr olds do!). My 10-yo has a blog, but it’s anonymous. Facebook is not anon, and therefore more potential problems re: safety/social issues.

@FiurInformation: 11 y o online in FBook would be OK only like any other online experience at that age — with parental supervision.

@jamesdickey: We absolutely do not allow our 12 or 14-year-old to have facebook/myspace pages. Too risky and very little benefit.

@busymom6: Yes, from the Facebook research I’ve done I think it is a completely social group for anyone underage

@JackLeblond: with proper guidence, I would be OK with it. Both mine were online young, with rules

@NoOneYouKnow: Nope - my 9 y.o. has a job/intern at www.creaturepark.com and email. Why not FB? However, he can’t friend me just yet ;).

@johnheaney: my kids can be on Facebook with conditions: only friends can see profile, I have the password, strict rules on posting

@leah_mullen: Yes it would bother me to see my 10 y o on a social networking site with adults.Amazing Kids! has a great pen pal program.

@DeirdreS: my daughter is now 19 and has been online since age ~10, pre-Facebook. online communications skills are essential today

@GriffinClubMerv: I have an 11 and a 12yo. We wouldn’t allow it. We have a zero tolerance policy on Internet privacy for children.

@mlogan: Yes. I recently found my 9 y o daughter had joined a socnet site. I let her stay, but made her take down pix and personal info

@EllasMom: It would bother me to see any 11 y.o. on facebook. They are too young to understand where the boundaries of privacy exist.

@kirstenewatson: My 12 yr old is on facebook but I am one of his facebook friends - its a rule - 6 months or so and counting - so far ok

@busymom6: Yes, in fact I just was alerted to my 13 yr old having a fb page by my sitter, all hell broke loose around here

@robertlendvai: My 11yr old daughter is on FB. She knows that I look at her postings, chats, etc She’s cool with that.

@jennysoucek FB is like the new AIM, parents didn’t like their kids using AIM with all the weirdos up there, FB could expose them to the same 4 minutes ago

@pdeluca It would not bother me. My 11 y o has a cell phone which we monitor, FB is no different. Plus, we have many relatives on FB. 18 minutes ago

@SusyP I’m nowhere close to being married or having kids, and the idea of an 11 y o on fbook terrifies me and makes me nervous to be a parent.

@Note_to_CMO It would bother me. His blog is private. His LinkedIn page is down.

@chelpixie Yes it bothers me to see my 13 year old on Facebook. It depends on the interactions and I wasn’t comfortable with hers.

@jpickett1968 I saw a picture of my 15 year old, kissing her boyfriend. I wasn’t too happy.

@eugenelee Many of my tech laggard parent friends joined Facebook specifically because their kids were and they wanted to monitor.

As you can see, the responses are all over the board – some say lighten up, some say not in a million years, some say a qualified yes – with plenty of supervision.

My take is that this this isn’t an easy issue. There’s  no obvious answer, like there is to “Should I let my kid smoke crack?” But some questions are tougher to answer. Life online, and offline, these days, requires a far more nuanced touch.

So what do you think? How would you feel about letting your underage child on Facebook? Please leave a comment below.

* * *

Ann Handley heads up content at MarketingProfs and also writes her acclaimed personal blog, A n n a r c h y: Subscribe to A n n a r c h y here. It’s really fun to follow her on Twitter.

This is part of a series of posts looking at virtual worlds targeted toward kids.

As with nearly all things Disney, when they embraced the technology of virtual worlds, they did it in a big way. Not that it was without a bumpy start, mind you. Their earliest venture into the space called ToonTown launched way back in 2003 and has been panned pretty hard - or worse, simply ignored. But, as I heard from Steve Parkis, SVP of Disney Online Studios, when he spoke at the Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo, Disney is not only improving the worlds they already have, but also taking the technology for creating them and adding a bit of the “Disney Difference” to it.

Club Penguin
Not everyone was sure it was a good thing when Disney bought the popular world of Club Penguin last August. Many took a wait-and-see approach to the news; and one year later, some users still don’t like it, while others have embraced it as a good thing. Founded in November of 2005 in Kelowna, Canada, Club Penguin is the flagship of Disney’s virtual world arsenal. It has more than two million accounts and its online newspaper, The Club Penguin Times, is apparently more widely read than New York’s Daily News, the Chicago Tribune or the Dallas Morning News. So, we decided penguins would be next on our safari of kid-focused virtual worlds.

When first going to the site it seemed that we would have to purchase a monthly subscription to enter, but a little more poking around and we found where we could create an account to get in-world for free. The sign-up process requires e-mail verification, supposedly by a parent. This was the first sign that parental involvement is definitely encouraged in Club Penguin. During sign-up, you’re given a choice of open (but human-moderated) chat or restricted chat. I thought about going with the open chat to allow more interaction, since I had heard from Parkis about the millions of lines of chat their moderators have reviewed; but, in the end, I opted for the pre-set conversation options.  Might as well take the super-safe side while she’s unaware of any other way to do it.

Once in, we picked a penguin color and name then headed off to see the sights. My girl picked the “nightclub” first, which turned out to be pretty tame - a dance floor downstairs and a couple of video games upstairs. The games we found as we explored beyond that starting point to the beach, the mines, the soccer field and more ranged from easy to challenging - a good thing for the wide range of ages they want to attract.

The Good
One of the best things about Club Penguin is their definite focus on kid safety and parental involvement. Related to that is the moderation and interaction the company has with their users. Here in Austin last week, one of the Club Penguin founders, Lane Merrifield, spoke about that moderation and interaction during a keynote of the Austin Game Developers Conference: “‘We rarely hire techies to take care of the kids… we hire people who care about the kids,’ with backgrounds as teachers and other professionals.” More than 150 of them respond to e-mails, have direction interaction with the Club Penguin members and, with the help of game veterans, enforce a constantly evolving censorship list.

The Bad
You really need to pay a monthly subscription fee to get everything out of it. Some things like the ability to buy merchandise for your “room” are limited. The options for non-subscribers to customize are there, but they’re fewer in number and your child will beg for the subscription so they can get the things they see, but are unable to purchase.

The Lessons Learned
There are plenty of fun games for your little penguin to play; but, if you want the full experience, be prepared to pay for it. A one-time purchase of a stuffed animal will not get it for you. Also, there is way more to learn than can fit in one post. The world has entire blogs focused on it, wikis, lots of game cheat sites, and apparently, in-world armies that have epic snowball fights. And that doesn’t even include the active Disney-run community blog that keeps penguins up-to-date and in-touch even when not in-world.

Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 6-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers (the apple didn’t fall far). She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.

This is part of a series of posts looking at virtual worlds targeted toward kids.

Following my recent post here on the virtual world of Webkinz, there seemed to be some interest in taking a look at other virtual worlds targeted toward children. These are more often 2.5D, rather than true 3D, environments. At last year’s SXSW Interactive conference I heard one venture capitalist say they were the only virtual worlds she was investing in due to their strong growth.

And grow, they have. I’m on an airplane now heading to the Virtual Worlds Conference in L.A. which has an entire track just on kid’s worlds. With new virtual worlds popping up every day, this could become a never-ending series. I’m just going to start with those I have personal experience with and see where it takes me from there.

Handipoints Chore Charts
This is actually a review of a new world that I had not heard of until it was mentioned by someone in a comment on ThisMommyGig! The Handipoints Chore Chartssite seems to be an interesting new angle on a virtual world because it is fronted by a more “virtuous” goal of getting children to do their chores. Always a fan of hiding learning in fun, I thought this might be a great opportunity to encourage good work by using the online hook.

The Good
It certainly appealed to my daughter who seems to spend more time on the computer lately than on that other vice of television. I was embarrassed to answer during her recent kindergarten orientation that what my child liked to do at home was play Webkinz.

But, the promise of possible bathtimes without nagging or yelling appealed to me, so my girl and I sat down together to chose a variety of tasks and chores for her to keep track of to earn Handipoints. Even new things that had not previously been her responsibility (i.e. water the plants) grading system went into the list. See lessons learned below for more on that.

Allowing the child to input what they’ve done encourages more responsibility, and the grading system allows parent to come behind and not only verify that the tasks were completed, but also grade them on how well they were done. For example, when my daughter turns off her nightlight without any reminder, she gets an A.  When I have to prompt her, she gets a B.

The actual virtual world component, Handiland, has a user interface that is very similar to other such worlds, so my daughter was able to navigate it easily right away.  The number of locations you can go are fairly limited and nicely illustrated through an island map. Your child chooses a cat character that they can dress up and a room to decorate. They can interact with other Handiland cats in environments such as a playground or school.

The Bad
This interaction with the others is the part that still has me a bit nervous. Handiland’s chat is not as restricted as conversation in Webkinz. While not open for free-form chat, there are more choices in the pre-programed conversation than we’ve encountered in Webkinz. While it still prevents children from sharing such detail as their exact address, it does get into more personal information such as the state in which your child lives.

The only other not so great thing we’ve discovered is that the fun of the virtual world can overshadow the task manager - which led to another lesson learned. Sometimes pop-ups even surface while you are in the task reporting area that entice the child away from there for stamp-hunting expeditions and such.

The Lessons Learned

The first lesson I learned was to be sure to set the target high for rewards, or limit the number of tasks.  There were so many behaviors I hoped to improve that I loaded several in there. Then, my girl wanted to add some new chores to the list, which all sounded helpful, so why not?  Well, with all of those options for earning points, what I thought would take a month to do was completed in a week. Now I’ve got to go buy another Webkinz.

The other lesson we’ve learned was to drive home the importance of inputing their task updates before heading into Handiland. Time will get away from them and the next thing you know they’re not meeting their requirement to go to bed on time, which leads to fewer points (and in my household, much whining, crying and begging for a do-over)

[UPDATE 9/19/08: At the request(s) of Mary at Handipoints, I've changed the title in the links above from "Handipoints" to "Handipoints Chore Charts". Whatever the name, after cashing in on her first goal, my girl's interest in the site has dropped dramatically. We set a new, higher goal, but it's been a week since she's bothered to visit the site and input any tasks she has completed.]

Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 5-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers. (the apple didn’t fall far) She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.