Editor’s note from the future – Many of the links mentioned in these articles are dead. Follow them at your own risk. Or invent a time machine. Either way is cool with us.
Kids.com
Wednesday, June 19
Kids.comSo you’re three years old, and consequently, you’re a Sesame Street fan. Sesame Street is over for the day, and you haven’t had enough Muppets. Trouble is, there’s only so many times your parents can stand watching CinderElmo, and your Sesame Road tape melted in the car’s tape deck, and you’ve filled up all your Bear in the Big Blue House coloring books, and you’ve lost your Sesame Baby Big Bird, it’s two hours until the next repeat of Play with Me Sesame, and you live in America so you can’t watch The Hoobs — so what do you do?
Until very recently, there was nothing you could do. You were out of options. Trapped in a world beyond hope, without any Muppet-based entertainment, until, conceivably, the next morning, when Sesame Street would be on again. But now, thank the sweet merciful Frog above, there’s one last option: Websites for kids. Finally, you can visit Sesame Street, Bear in the Big Blue House and Play With Me Sesame “virtually.” As opposed to watching them on TV or video. Because… Um. Never mind.
Of course, if you’re reading this, then you’re not really three years old. Which brings us to the first problem when it comes to websites for kids: Kids can’t use them without Mom or Dad’s help. Hey, maybe that’s not such a big problem; I mean, learning should be a caring, sharing experience for the Whole Family, so it only makes sense that kids need assistance navigating to a website, and then finding the right part of a website, and then figuring out whether you’re really at the right part of the website, and then for Frog’s sake how to work the damn thing, and — hold on, now Mom needs help too.
Well, that’s okay, there are plenty of other, non-Web based things for you to do while you wait for her to stop muttering under her breath — you could do some coloring, or do a little dance, or match up pairs of… Wait, I’ve found another problem. If you’re a kid, there’s very little you can do online that you can’t do just as well, if not better, in the Real Live World. It’s just that online, it’s themed. (Of course, that hasn’t stopped Microsoft Solitaire from being the most popular computer game in the world ever. And think of the time you’ve saved every day by not having to shuffle and re-deal manually. That’s money in the bank, my friends.)
But let’s ignore those fundamental problems for a while, and pretend that websites for three year olds is actually a feasible idea. And let’s also assume that somehow, by a miracle combination of effort, luck, and technical support, a child actually finds his or her three year old self in front of, let’s say, SesameStreet.com.
For starters, good luck. For some reason, the Sesame Street interface is really, really small. Normally, with products for little kids, all the important parts are made bigger, sturdier, clearer. Picture books are bigger than normal books, with large print and big pictures. My First Learning Computer has big bright buttons. Duplo blocks are bigger and harder to swallow than regular Legos. But Sesame Street’s website bucks the trend and only uses the half the screen. Maybe it’s better for the environment; they’re saving pixels for future generations. Whatever. It’s also Flash-based, and slower than it should be, and really seriously not intuitive.
Time out to set the scene: Basically, it’s a cartoon version of the Street set, and in front of you, along the bottom of the screen, are little icons of all the major Muppets’ faces. Each face takes you someplace different. Oh, there’s also Elmo’s World, which a different icon, somewhere up above. And there’s a whole bunch of things to click on over on the Street sign to the left as well. And some things kind of embedded in the set, too. Confusing, perhaps, but also — EXCITING! Let’s explore! I’m going to click on… um… Ernie!
Okay, here’s an idea. If you design a website that’s supposed to encourage “exploring,” something should happen when you click on things. That sense of adventure is really seriously curbed when a kid’s first curious, impulsive click on a random icon is followed by a minute of counting while the next Flash animation loads. I’m bored.
Let’s try bearinthebigbluehouse.com instead. There’s an “Enter” page — oh, I forgot to complain about Sesame Workshop’s Enter page, and I wish I had, since it’s so overloaded with junk, and the “go to Sesame Street” button is actually, literally, scientific-textbook teensy, but never mind, it’s too late to go back and change it, so what was I talking about? Bear. Right. It takes too long to load. And the “activities” are, um… well, they’re downloads of PDF files. You click on them, you wait, you open them with Adobe Acrobat, you prin them out, and then you color them in. And I guess the logical conclusion would be to scan the pictures and admire your finished work on your monitor. It’s a cute enough site, but I can’t see actual kids enjoying it.
And so, on to Play With Me — oh, wait. One more thing about the Sesame Street site. What is it with Sesame Workshop and cartoon Muppets? The Sesame page is all about the Muppets — but it’s all cartoons, even the static pictures. Muppets, Muppets everywhere, but not a trace of fleece. It’s like they had a meeting with two proposals on the agenda: One, that the Muppets should be the icons and flag-bearers of the Street, and two, that they give Bernie’s brother-in-law some animation work. And bingo, Animated Muppets. The dumbest idea ever. (And I saw Rob Schneider’s The Animal.)
Right. The Play With Me Sesame website. Take it away, three year old Kynan:
The website? Is like really cool? And fun? Cause you get to play all the games? And when you wait for the real games? There’s like other games to play? So you don’t get bored? And Grover dances! And I watch him dance for too long, and I forget to click on anything, cause it’s like totally fun watching him dance, again and again? And again!
Praise just doesn’t come much higher than that. But just to completely ruin the magic of a virtual three year old praising the site in a purely innocent way, allow me to comment that Play With Me Sesame’s website is exactly like a Bizarro World SesameStreet.com — It’s entirely Flash, but it’s also entirely charming, and it feels like the show, because the characters are all there, not just animated versions of them, and they interact with you, and there’s no waiting time, and it’s kid friendly. And, my friends, Grover dances.
by Kynan Barker
