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August 27, 2008
Ask Relaunches AskKids.com with Updated Design, Cool Drawing Feature
As a new homeschooling parent, finding online learning resources that are safe, well-designed, and fun for my kids is important - but inexplicably difficult. That's why I was thrilled to learn about Ask.com's expansion and redesign of AskKids.com.
I've already found Ask.com itself to be a great search engine for my kids, with its suggested searches and images in the sidebars.
But AskKids.com gives me even more confidence. Plus, there's a SUPER FUN feature on the front page.
At the bottom right corner, there's a box with a pen, pencil and highlighter. You can grab one of the utensils with your mouse and draw directly on the page! It rocks. There's also a tab for "stickers" that you can put on your drawing.
Moving on to the search side of things, on the front page, in addition to the traditional search box, there are 5 categories kids can go directly to: Schoolhouse, Movies, Games, Video, and Images.
Clicking on one of the categories brings up even more options along with traditional search results.
Conducting a traditional search was much like doing so on Ask.com There's only one sidebar, on the left, and no images.
I do have two criticisms:
1. The design theme is built around a traditional school setting. Kids are so much more than school. The background design of notebook paper is not a great way to reach kids, who learn much better through visual and interactive approahches and are far more tech-savvy than traditional, old school (pun fully intended) educational methods.
2. The search results have ads taking up a good portion of the space. The same criticism can be made of the Ask.com page. Being user-friendly and not ad friendly almost always wins the day and it would be nice if Ask could figure out a more user-friendly way to make the moolah.
Still, the homepage design is at least better than the old version:
What do you think of the new AskKids.com? Leave us your impressions in the comments.
Related Reading:
Student Searches: The Top 15 Searches for the K-12 Set
The New Multitaskers: Kids Split Attention Between TV, Internet
Content for Kids
Learning from Our Kids
Posted by Nathania Johnson at August 27, 2008 10:14 AM
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Comments
I love it, I think it's fun and that kids will use it as more like a tool for school, rather than a leisurely search engine.
Posted by: mandagd2003 at August 27, 2008 3:20 PM
Ask.com - gets it. Learning is a "relevant" process that goes on and on - and advertisers want to be associated with credible, relevant content. Who is the most influential person in the lives of children? Moms. All Moms are "teachers" -- and many Moms even "get paid" for being a teacher.
Ask.com just purchased Lexico Publishing - which includes "educational tools" - language reference products and services -- such as dictionary.com, thesaurus.com and reference.com.
Ask.com is building a "school" -- not a search engine. How do I know this? I'm a Mom and a former teacher.
Posted by: S.Dombrowski at August 30, 2008 8:22 AM
I used it with 5th Graders today and an image that I didn't approve of came on. It was a kid's backside--illustrated. There were also pictures of women nearly naked sunbathing. When they say it's a "kids site" what age kids are they talking about?! I was so embarrassed!
Posted by: Heather Bennett at October 10, 2008 2:24 PM
