I’m always a little disconcerted seeing kids in Vegas, but kid tech I can get behind. Yesterday in the Sands there was a whole section dedicated to making money off the under-10 population. Mattel’s set-up included everything from custom Barbie nail decals, to virtual tweener worlds, to mind control games complete with pulse-sensing electrodes. Really.
Of the products I could see my three-year-old actually using, my favorite was something called Kidthing. Simple in concept, Kidthing is a downloadable browser front that offers tons of free content and games as well as a storefront to buy extra stuff. I’m not particularly concerned about my daughter surfing the Web yet, but having an app that consolidates kid entertainment on the computer is extremely valuable, especially when the company behind it has partners like Dr. Seuss. Kidthing also just launched an alliance with the National Education Association and has a project underway called Dear Mr. President to collect kids’ letters to the White House chief. I can just imagine the requests: Dear Mr. President, please bring me world peace and a princess kitchen. Cuteness factor=huge.
The kid tech market is set for an explosion now that so many folks have Internet at home. Economic collapse? No matter. Parents will always pay money to help keep their kids productively entertained.
We wanted something similar for our 4 year old so that he could easily get to PBS Kids, etc. We ended up installing Glubble, which is a firefox plugin which comes with a preconfigured set of web sites, and an easy interface for parents to add more, and control which sites a kid can get to.
The elementary school I’m employed by has really taken to KidThing, especially the lower grade levels. The first version of the software I tried claimed to be beta (or pre-release) but was really more alpha quality and frustrated me something terrible trying to support it for my teachers. It has improved now and I’m rather impressed seeing it getting coverage here.
Clayton, Glubble looks really interesting… thanks for mentioning it.
Mari, I’d love to see more of the Kid Tech stuff from CES. I wonder if there are any iPod Touch / iPhone software vendors there. It’s a great device for children. My 4.5 year old daughter is addicted to the iPod Touch, her favorite apps, so far, are:
Scoops
Math Magic
Jirbo Memory Match
Scribble
I received several emails for kid tech and senior tech products and talks, but I ignored most of it (sorry, Rakesh) – so targeting specialized markets is definitely on exhibitor’s and manufacturer’s minds.
Cassidy- very interesting to hear your teachers have picked it up. How did they learn about it? Word of mouth, or was it outreach from Kidthing?
Rakesh- Thanks for app the recommendations. My daughter loves the Touch too.
I’m pretty sure it was the NEA Read Across America program. Last year it was a “Horton Hears a Who” interactive, um, “book”. This year the NEA website mentions the Dear Mr. President project. http://www.nea.org/readacross/