17th June 2006

imbee supports safe digital networking for kids!

posted in isafety, web 2.0 |

I strongly believe adults in schools and elsewhere should be helping students learn how to safely and appropriately navigate digital social networking environments, rather than merely banning the use of all of them. As I’ve previously noted, Think.com is an outstanding social networking site for students in schools. Now there is another alternative, imbee.com, specifically designed for 8-14 year olds and their families. imbee is available now in beta and offers different parental controls to empower adults help kids more safely network in the digital world. The slogan of imbee is:

Your Friends. Your Stuff. Your Social Network.

imbee tours for parents and for kids are available. I love the first lines of the imbee about page:

imbee is a safe environment for kids to do what kids do. Explore. Create. Innovate.

Kids will be kids. At imbee we understand this and have created a safe, secure environment where they can take chances, connect with friends, trade stories, and explore different aspects of their personality.

The Internet is a powerful and essential part of our society. While it contains potential dangers, it is also a valuable and indispensable tool. imbee kids will learn real world skills, such as reading, writing, problem solving, and social interaction through an interactive and challenging environment. But, most importantly, imbee is fun! Kids will meet their classmates and neighborhood kids online, to do what the big kids do, but at their own pace and in a safe and forgiving environment.

Yes! imbee looks like just the sort of website we need to help students learn more about safe digital social networking! I confirmed recently that that I’ll be presenting at the end of July at the MACE conference in Winfield, Kansas along with Will Richardson (who is keynoting.) One of my spotlight session topics will be safe digital social networking, and I’m sure I’ll be learning a lot more about imbee before that session so I can share intelligently about it. According to the article “Imbee To Take On MySpace For Kids” last Thursday:

Jeanette Symons, the CEO of imbee.com, created the site after her 6-year-old child asked for a MySpace account. She wanted a tool more age-appropriate that can help teach the child how to use the Internet in a safe environment.

Way to go Jeanette!!! We need more parents, administrators, and teachers to know about and use tools like imbee and think.com. Add imbee to your hotlist of Internet safety websites, I have! I have also created an account as a parent/sponsor, so now I can create accounts for my own kids. I’ll share more as we learn more, but this looks great! :-)
Thanks to AHF for this tip! My imbee userid is “wfryer” if you create an account and want to connect with me there!

On this day..

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 17th, 2006 at 10:00 pm and is filed under isafety, web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There are currently 5 responses to “imbee supports safe digital networking for kids!”

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  1. 1 On June 18th, 2006, marcelo said:

    It just looks like imbee paid you to say good things (and get clients)… So many positive words and you haven´t already experiment it…

  2. 2 On June 18th, 2006, Wesley Fryer said:

    Well, I created an account and explored what you can do with the tool. I have an account on MySpace and have used a fair number of digital social networking tools, the main thing that is different here is parental controls. Accounts for kids are setup by default so the parent can “monitor” those activities, but any of them can be changed to “approve.” I’ll be testing this more in upcoming weeks. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out yourself, and if you know of other tools like this, please let me know. These are precisely the sorts of digital social networking tools that I think we need to be using with our kids, to help them learn both safe and smart social networking behaviors.

  3. 3 On June 19th, 2006, Patrick said:

    Noticed that it is not compatible with IE. I love it already!!!

  4. 4 On June 20th, 2006, marcelo said:

    I think education is the key, not the tool itself. Of course imbee says that it social network is “heaven” for kids (as long as their parents pay) but i think most of kids will not want a blog “for their parents”.

  5. 5 On December 5th, 2006, imbee lover said:

    i love it but my parents wont let me use it.they said it was too much like a “chat room”=-(