Club to empower tweens
The new Beacon Street Girls’ safe social networking site and online club (Club BSG) provides girls 9-13 with a myriad of online activities designed to satisfy their ever-growing need to create and communicate with each other. Tied to the literary world of the award-winning Beacon Street Girls book series, and modeled on a junior high school, the free online club provides a fun and exciting online community for preteen girls around the globe. And like the books, its positive and healthy messages help girls feel empowered to be their best selves.
Tweens, to their parents' consternation, are very interested in MySpace, Facebook and other social networks even though those sites aren’t COPPA-compliant. This means that they don’t meet the standards of the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act which governs websites for kids under the age of 13. MySpace and Facebook are designed with adults and older teens in mind and don’t provide necessary safeguards for a child’s personal information.
Safety is paramount on the Beacon Street Girls site. While Club BSG mimics the “friending” and social networking conventions found on teen and adult sites, the Beacon Street Girls’ website controls do not allow any direct contact between strangers. Girls build their profiles by making selections from pre-defined menus. All comments are reviewed by adult monitors before they are published to the site. Only posts that follow all the “Club Rules” are allowed. No personal information is collected. Additionally, the online world of the Beacon Street Girls provides girls with a friendly format for receiving real-world advice and guidance from a panel of leading experts in adolescence. These experts focus on such topics as body image, online safety, diet and healthy lifestyles.
As part of Beacon Street Girls, club members:
*Design and decorate their own locker and personal space;
*Select a personal avatar/icon that identifies all their contributions;
*Safely “friend” the Beacon Street Girls characters and other Club BSG members from around the world and get and give each other advice;
*Connect with a variety of celebrities, role models, literary figures and experts;
*Get advice and guidance from the BSG panel of adult experts;
*Join special online clubs, team and special interest groups.
The latest news from Beacon Street Girls is that the Olympic gold medal gymnast Nastia Liukin will serve as a role model on the site. Club BSG friends can leave messages on Liukin’s whiteboard. Fans also can catch up with the gymnast in the Club BSG Gymnastics Team. There they can read exclusive interviews with the champion. Girls connect with Liukin on a personal level, not just as an Olympian.
“Club BSG is important to how I connect with my fans,” said Nastia. “I appreciate all the encouragement and love reading the notes girls leave on my Club BSG whiteboard. Plus, through the Gymnastics Team on the site, I have the ability to reach even more girls than ever before! On the site, we will be talking about self-esteem and staying fit through positive life choices.”
Virtual wizard school opens
It’s back to school time for lots of kids and a brand new online academy has opened at Wizard101 (www.wizard101.com). In this magical 3D environment, aspiring wiz kids can gather to adventure with friends and save their world from creatures like a pumpkin-headed Harvest Lord and a zombie named Wormguts.
Designed for pre-teens, Wizard101 features magical adventure and card style gameplay. Players enroll in the Ravenwood School of Magical Arts and begin a course of spell study. Immediately upon arrival at wizard school they are tapped by the Headmaster to help save the school from a renegade teacher who has disappeared but who seems to be behind some mysterious happenings.
At Wizard101 kids can customize their Wizard avatars in a wide variety of outfits and accessories. They have the ability to adopt magical pets, such as a flying dragon or a mischievous imp. Players can summon creatures such as a leprechaun that slides in on a rainbow and showers opponents with gold. There are also puzzles and mini-games that challenge players and provide a place to rest and rejuvenate after duels.
Wizard101’s collaborative play style supports an environment where players benefit from working together in adventure quests and lower level characters can play alongside higher level ones. A three-tiered chat system and pre-defined character name generator create a safe community for younger players. The game contains no blood, and characters don’t die if they are defeated in a duel of spells - they simply go to a safe area to regain health. The basic version of Wizard101 is free-to-play, with advanced play content available by subscription at $9.95 per month. To play, PC users simply go to www.wizard101.com and download the game installer.
Twinkle, twinkle little star
It’s the perfect tool to help amateur astronomers and backyard stargazers expand their universe of knowledge. Meade Instruments’ mySKY PLUS is equipped with a vast encyclopedia of new and updated multimedia content that includes astrophotography, entertaining audio descriptions, videos, mythology, folklore and scientific fun facts on the planets, stars, constellations, clusters, nebulae and galaxies. mySKY PLUS utilizes Meade’s “point and shoot” technology, a full color LCD screen and easy to use controls to instantly turn ordinary backyard stargazing into a fully-interactive “out of this world” experience.
Functional right out of the box, mySKY PLUS’ point and shoot technology enables users to locate, identify and learn about more than 30,000 celestial objects — stars, planets, clusters, galaxies — with the press of a button. Users can choose to satisfy their deep space curiosity by discovering random objects in the night sky using the mySKY PLUS’s illuminated alignment sight, or embark on one of mySKY PLUS’ built-in guided tours of the universe including a look at the best objects in the night sky tailored to the time, date and location using the device’s innovative “Tonight’s Best” feature. It retails for $299 from www.meade.com.
