Panwapa: http://www.panwapa.com/
This site is for kids all over the world to know about each other and to see the world in different ways. On the homepage, “Word of the Day” is a good idea but I wonder how much vocabulary is totally there. And also, the “Place of the Day” doesn’t really make sense by only showing the name and the flag of a country but not with some brief introduction.
The first activity I tried as USA59007 is an activity that you can tell where you are from and your favorites on activities, food, animals, sports, instruments, and crafts. The part that kids create their own figures and homes is good for kids to explore and create something their own, which might stimulate their imaginative thinking. Kids can collect cards from treasure hunting, that is, to match the target kid by following the clues. It requires skills like identifying relationship, filtering and assigning relevance to data and information, scanning for clues and organizing information. The cards are like the reward to kids, however, I don’t see why it is so special that kids want to collect them. Kids can send and receive messages to and from each other, but the content is fixed with some choices, they can’t type themselves. There is another thing very confusing. When you click many times on any kids, they speak without a proper pattern. You don’t know he or she is talking about his nationality, favorite animal, activity or food. Another annoying and distracting thing is the sound that with every click when kids searching in others’ profiles.
The second activity is the hide-and-seek language game. I think it is a good idea but without complete design. There are some foreign languages that kids can choose from to practice. Without previous learning, only native speakers can find the creature. What is more, there is only one level and one scenario without various options and topics that kids can choose to learn. I count this language game as unsuccessful.
The third activity is the movie theater. I appreciate the idea a lot. Cost-effectiveness is one of the potentials technology owns, kids can see how other kids live and learn in the different corners of the world through multimedia. When I entered the page, the first thing came to my mind was that only one poor creature in the movie theater is too lonely for kids’ joyous activities. There are plenty choices (kids from different countries) there in the movie libraries that kids can choose from. It is a good way to attract kids’ attention because it is like telling stories; more specifically, telling other kids’ true stories. After playing the video, I really like the content but I found one problem that is urgent. Kids cannot pause the video for whatever reasons, so if the nature happen to call them, they can’t answer! (O.K. That did happen…) Maybe I missed the pause button somewhere on the interface. Even if the pause button exists, it is very unclear that I can’t find it after three minutes searching. While I was thinking about which video to see, the creature kept saying: “Choose a movie, click on one picture!” more than five times. The frequency of that sound really annoyed me. Besides, I really don’t like the game of this activity. The game is to find three things happened repeatedly in the video. I don’t know what is the goal for the game and what can kids learn from it. If the purpose is to let them watch it again, posing interesting questions or brainstorming about the video will work better. For instance, instead of pointing out three times when somebody writes in the video, the questions can be: Did you notice what language the character speaks in Guatemala? or What kind of plant the family were growing? What is it for? Anyhow, I mean the questions should be well designed. Otherwise, the game is not really a game. Bill’s big questions allow kids to see other kids’ answers so that they can compare. A little talk about the video and meaningful questions raising in the Bill’s big questions benefit kids which lead them to reflect different kinds of lifestyles from the videos.
