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Ok, I can’t resist one more of these fun widgets. This one is for Greg & Jean and all the penguins at the California Academy of Sciences.

Source: http://abowman.com/google-modules/penguins

An interesting article in the NYTimes tech section today detailing some of the many online social/game/play services for kids. Spore (mentioned towards the end of the article) is due out in September sounds like great fun and educational too.

Spore, from Maxis, a division of Electronic Arts, is more a game than an online service, although it does offer ways to interact with others online. The game, which will be of interest mostly to older children, is the brainchild of Will Wright, creator of the Sims, and is due in September. It can be played from a computer, Nintendo DS or phone.

In the game, you design life-forms that grow into tribes and populate a planet, which you can also design. Things get interesting when you connect to other players’ worlds to see if your creatures can get along with theirs. Finally, Lego Universe (www.legouniverse.com), coming next year, will offer a new way to play: in a world consisting entirely of virtual Legos.

Congratulations to the seven children in New York State who submitted videos about their favorite books to the nationwide StoryTubes video contest.

All the New York State entries have been posted to the NYS Summer Reading Program web site.

To enter the contest, children in grades 1 to 6 made short videos about their favorite books. And they’re delightful to watch!

All of the entries from around the country can be viewed at the StoryTubes site. During May, finalists will be selected the following categories and everyone will be able to vote.

• May 5 - May 11, 2008 - Hair-Raising Tales
• May 12 - May 18, 2008 - From or For the Heart
• May 19 - May 25, 2008 - Of Heroes and Heroines
• May 26 - June 1, 2008 - Facts, Fads and Phenoms

The StoryTubes project was created by the folks at Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin IL. Staff of the Children’s Services department at Middle Country Public Library in Centereach & Selden NY were the coordinators for the Northeast region.

I have to admit, I haven’t been keeping up on search tools for kids. So when a colleague popped GoGooligans into my del.icio.us account I thought I’d take a look.

The first thing that I noticed was a note saying they were keeping track of all my searches and matching it to my IP address. Supposed to scare our kids into behaving? I don’t know, it probably would have worked on me as a 5 year old, (more…)