As always I’ve been on the lookout for great finds! This week Son1 and I spent some time at www.imbee.com, a brand new online community for kids that was created to give kids a safe place to connect with their friends. Below I am offering more information about the site as well as my personal thoughts and experience (and a snippet of my son’s experience) with it. If you check it out and blog about it please leave a comment with a link to your post so that we can see what you thought too!
What’s it all about? Imbee offers children a variety of activities, groups and more to participate in ~ there is something for everyone. Children can join groups based on their interests ~ favorite sport, activity, show, channel, celebrity and more. They can blog (parents can choose to approve all posts before they are placed on imbee if they want), create trading cards, invite their friends to join and chat with their friends (that you have approved). They are given a site that only their friends can access, and the people they are able to add to their friends list must be actual friends of theirs . . . from school, church, etc. When a child is signed up they are automatically sent some imbee cards to invite their friends. Many teachers are using imbee as a teaching tool for their class.
My Perspective . . .
Safety: As a parent it is imperative that I know my boys are visiting sites where they won’t be preyed upon by adults who are lurking or posing as children!!! The way that imbee does this is by verifying all adult identities and requiring that children have parental permission (also verified) prior to completing sign up. You can go to www.imbee.com and sign yourself up as a parent and once you are verified you can even sign your children up and set their limitations right away.
Appropriate Content: I am very careful about the things that my sons are exposed to, especially online! Although I know that my standards are more extreme than many families I was thrilled to find that I have control of pretty much the entire experience for each of my sons. Obviously the amount of freedom I give each of them will depend on their age and responsibility level, and I can change their limitations any time I want. By signing myself up first and then signing up each of the boys under me I was able to immediately verify that they are my children and set the limits I want imposed for each one individually.
Ease of Use: As a parent I found it very easy to use! Setting up everything for my children was easy. Once logged in as a parent you see a little different panel than your children do, the parent’s panel offers easy access to changing children’s settings, adding more children, and to view anything any of your children have created on imbee.
More Thoughts: I Loved getting an email the next morning from www.imbee.com with the subject line “imbee Report”! Here’s a quote from the beginning of the email:
“Imbee reports are just one of many imbee tools that empower parents to take an active and supportive role as their child learns how to use the Internet safely.
Your choice of whether to Monitor or Approve your child’s activity on imbee will be indicated next to each entry. If you chose Monitor, no action is required. If you chose Approve, click on the Approve link next to the entry to visit your Approval Queue, review the request and submit your decision.”
I have to admit that I love the level of information I have access to in regards to my son’s activities on this site. I also love that I can look at his “site” anytime I want, but that I (or any of his friends) have to be logged in to see it! I can choose to have him “cloaked” within groups if I want to keep an even stronger level of security.
I am trying to teach him to please not mention actual names and although he doesn’t completely understand this yet, I feel much safer about teaching him this way (it is so easy for a child to forget, they don’t always know how to mask identities or even realize that they are sharing too much information). If he posts a blog it has to go through me first and I can go through and edit out the information I feel is too personal.
Son 1’s (almost 12) Point of View (it will be short and sweet!)
To quote him in a nutshell . . . “It’s cool!”
He really liked that he could personalize the way his site looked and he hopped around to different things. He put a couple of pictures in his album (that I approved of course), created some trading cards, and basically got a feel for the site.
He loved being able to do something online that showed his personality and wasn’t just looking around for information. He really wants to invite some of his friends to join so that he can link up with them and they can share football pics and thoughts.
Conclusion
Admittedly I am still a little nervous about my kiddos being online, and will monitor the crud out of their behaviors and activities at this site. I have a huge monologue about how society as a whole seems to provide plenty of ways to desensitize and overstimulate kids . . . but I’ll save it for another post (heehee). Suffice it to say that I am happy to know that they do have a place that allows a parent to still be a parent and watch over their child . . . doing what parents do, protecting them!
So I throw out the question to you . . . what do you think? Have you visited, signed up your kids? Just curious!
Do you have a fun find? Leave us a comment so that we can visit you to see what you found.
