I have to hand it to the Ganz company in their creation of Webkinz World. Many of you in the technical community know what that is, although if you don't have small children in your life, you might not be familiar with the phenomenon.
Webkinz World is essentially a social networking website for kids. You buy a stuffed Webkinz toy, and it comes with a pass code. Then you go online to Webkinz World and sign the code in to create your account and adopt your pet.
Once my daughter discovered Webkinz World, a number of amazing things happened. She became computer literate overnight. She got much steadier with a mouse, clicking, dragging and dropping, using menus and toolbars and typing in text. (She started when she was six. She's seven now, and she's a pro.) She learned about emailing and chatting. If you know your friend's usernames, you can send them messages on Webkinz and play with each other virtually.
Webkinz also has about five hundred million games, many of which are vaguely educational in nature. It is also an infantized version of virtual reality gaming using avatars. My daughter picks out furnishings, clothes and food for her pets and earns kinzcash to pay for them.
I do have to make sure she doesn't spend too much time on there and that she doesn't let her face-to-face interpersonal skills atrophy. I guess that's my biggest fear - that her generation of learners doesn't know how to translate virtual social skills into real interactions. (Not to mention the fact that she will need to stay physically active for her health and well-being.)
So let your child play with Webkinz with the caveat that it is very clearly a gateway to total online submersion, and be sure to make her log out from time to time to feed and care for her real pet . . .
