October 7, 1999
LIBRARY / CHILDREN'S SEARCH SITES
Online Help for Inquiring Young Minds
By MICHELLE SLATALLA
ere
is a partial list of questions that the two most curious humans on this planet
asked me the other day while they
were eating an after-school snack:
What are the stages of a solar
eclipse? When is the Backstreet
Boys' next concert? What are the
definitions of mean, median and
mode? How can we get tickets to a
Backstreet Boys concert? Why do
some bees have longer legs than others? Can we buy a color printer, go
online, find color photos of the Backstreet Boys, print them out and tape
them to our bedroom walls?
As I looked at my two older daughters, ages 10 and 8, I realized that for
once I had got lucky. While there are
some days when Zoe's and Ella's unrelenting need to know everything
about everything stumps me completely, this time I knew the answer:
No, you may never, ever put tape on
the walls.
As for the rest of their queries, I
decided that this would be a good
time for them to use some Internet
search sites that are designed for
children -- and which in theory
should know a broader range of answers than I do. ""O.K.,"" Ella said.
""But we can only do it for an hour because we want to watch 'The Simpsons.' ""
Fine, I said, because I secretly had
my own agenda: I wanted to see how
easily they navigated each site. I had
spent a few hours earlier in the week
conducting test searches at five children's search sites, but as a mere
adult, what did I know about what
kids like? All five sites promised to
have the best collection of online information for children, and all five
employed human or software filters
to block pornographic, profane and
violent sites. I wanted to put both
claims to a test.
As usual, my children's opinions
differed from mine. They were
charmed by all five sites, found each
easy to navigate, never ran across a
single inappropriate link and became so diverted when their queries
led them to intellectual tangents that
they forgot to log off in time to watch
""The Simpsons.""