Vanessa and I explored the wonderful world of PBS kids (http://www.pbskids.org)! It is an amazing site that is very interactive for children ages 3-12 years old. It attracts children by using familiar characters and colorful graphics. This site has a "friendly feel" to it as it makes kids feel comfortable. It is easy to navigate with an intuitive design. For example, the PBS symbol is found on each page for easy access back to the home base. There are many other cases where symbolism is used in place of text. The site is geared both for readers and non readers. There is a table of contents on each page that readers can click on to get where they want to go. For non readers, they are able to intuitively click on pictures that will lead them to the same places. We generally found the whole site easy to navigate. The content and instructions were user friendly and age appropriate. The instructions were written for older children and explained to the younger children.We explored seven different television shows which include: Clifford, Sesame Street, Curious George, Berenstein Bears, Arthur, Maya and Miguel, and Mister Rogers (gag). We noticed the level of difficulty of the activities for each television show corresponded with the average age of those children that watch them. For example, Sesame Street, Clifford, and Curious George were aimed towards children ages 3-6; while the other shows were geared towards older children. We explored the Clifford's Puppy Letter game and noticed that there were easy and hard options. The easy options provide scaffolding to help children learn and eventually work their way up to the harder levels. We, also, looked at Arthur and we focused on letter writing and sign language for older children. With the letter writing activity, it provided choice in what phrase we wanted to express. After we sent our letter we received a quick reply back. These letters provided models of how to write interesting and informative letters. We also looked at Arthur's sign language instruction and it gave us sentences to practice. However, even though it showed a visual example as well as a written explanation, we were a little confused on some of the actions.
The site gives you a chance to practice learning in all kinds of areas including math, art, reading, music, languages, and more! In general we found this site to be "edu-taining" and we would definitely use it in our classroom.
- Posted by Krissy Wallman and Vanessa Richter
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