By Jeannie Ben-Hain
The first thing I noticed about Noodlehead.com was the kid-friendly
choice of background colors and buttons. The bulk of the pages have
a bright yellow background and the sidebar navigation buttons are
TV sets of many bright colors arranged in rainbow order. This element
of the site clearly appeals to children, reflecting their preference
towards bright garish colors evoking a sense of fun and play.
Noodlehead.com's main focus is to help kids get a voice. In order
to accomplish this, they offer kids a chance to create their own videos.
Children are the main creative forces behind the videos with Noodlehead.com
giving them the opportunity to script, act, direct, film, and edit
their original works. The website advertises these opportunities and
gives kids contact information about how to get involved. The style
and tone of these descriptive areas are written clearly so that they
appeal to both children and adults visiting the site. I was impressed
that the site didn't talk down to children as many sites aimed at
that demographic tend to do.
Another area of the website listed and summarized examples of earlier
videos made at Noodlehead. The creative energies of the children seemed
to often be focused at issues that affected their daily lives. Many
videos were produced to inform their peers about such consequential
issues as the environment, peer pressure, racism, gangs, and suicide.
It surprised me that many of the videos had been made by high school
aged kids. I would have liked to see more productions from younger
children who had been given a chance to express themselves. This area
of the website also seemed to be aimed at adults rather than the children.
There were links that allowed visitors to purchase the videos either
for themselves or for schools and libraries.
The area of the website which seemed most clearly focused at child
visitors were a virtual tour of Noodlehead's offices and a diary of
the animals that lived there. The tour of the offices was written
by a kid and described great kid-friendly environments like a Kids
Room (with No Adults Allowed) and a Glow-in-the-dark bathroom which
was painted black, had a black light, and glowing stars on the walls
and a glowing sink. The JungleRoom is an area which has a online journal
describing the lives of the 3 iguanas, a tarantula, a turtle, goldfish,
and various other animals living with the Noodlehead crew.
Lastly, Noodlehead offers kids come links to "Kid Culture"
with some separations for sites good for kids and sites good for educators.
All in all, Noodlehead.com offers a very informative site for those
looking for information about their video program. Embedded within
that context are some kid-friendly areas as well as some pages aimed
at grown-ups and educators.