Children love experiences. They love to manipulate, control and explore. Finding safe venues for children at this age to experience online is somewhat difficult. Many sites claim to have monitoring software or moderators...but how do you know for sure?
When trying to determine whether virtual world sites for this age group are worthy, I worry a child will be bullied or be introduced to images or language he/she is not ready for. Personally, I see these potential negatives as a chance to teach children more about the online world. However, as a teacher, I know I will also have parents and administration to answer to if something goes wrong. A tough spot that I know many educators are in...
My rules of thumb, at this point, when choosing sites for this age group are:
1. Is it educational? Does it meet the learning outcomes I am mandated to teach in a safe, fun, engaging and in depth way?
2. Does it provide the opportunity for the child to learn more about interacting online in a responsible and safe manner?
3. Is it tied to a brand? I avoid sites that are tied to a particular brand as I feel I need to be more of a neutral party as a teacher. One thing the internet does very well is introduce children to brands and brand names very quickly.
To me, these are my guiding principles at this point. They are the bottom line when I make my choices about where learners will travel online with me.
With this age group I have tended to stay more to the simulation side of things. I have also looked for sites where learners can gain skills to help him or her when entering a virtual world environment e.g. creating an avatar (learning how your avatar represents you), navigating an avatar through a number of tasks, etc.
At this point, our school has turned to Active Worlds EDU (AW EDU) for the younger age group as we can create a closed environment for them to interact in. We plan to have our first group of learners (probably grades 3/4 to start with then move back to the even younger years if interest is expressed by children and their families), experience the world in the fall of 2010. The biggest draw back at this point is that AWEDU doesn't run on the Mac. So...we'll see where it goes...that's what journeys are all about...
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