Saturday, January 8, 2011

Kid-safe browser - KidZui

My 9-year old granddaughter from Maine was visiting over the Thanksgiving holiday. One afternoon she came and asked me to help her with an assignment that needed to be completed before returning to school on the following Monday. It was an interview where they were comparing how our lives from "a long time ago" were different from now. After we went through her list of questions (and she got over the fact that I had to watch what my parents chose on the TV and music came from a radio that sat on top of a table - yes, I'm older than dirt), we needed to go online and do some backup research for specific time periods.

I didn't want to turn her loose with Google and had just started testing a kid-safe browser called KidZui. It is used mostly by children under 12 and is a free download to your computer. Parents set up the main account and add their children's accounts with a login and password. KidZui only allows them to go to certain sites and selected content from YouTube. An extensive list of approved sites/content has been created by teachers and parents over a period of about three years. Parents even have the rights to see which sites they've visited.

Angie easily found the information she wanted and then got side-tracked checking out all the educational websites that caught her attention. She was happy as a clam using her new technology to find out more about my old technologies.

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