By Philip Tan
Barbara J. Feldman, a self-professed "computer nerd for over
twenty-five years", has established a community around her "Surfing
the Net with Kids" syndicated columns. At http://www.surfnetkids.com/,
parents find information and get tips for guiding children around
the Internet. Although amateurish in appearance, the site employs
a 'grassroots' aesthetic that works well with the subject material.
Despite its fun and non-threatening visual design, the muted, matter-of-factness
of the writing and the site structure establishes that this is a site
by parents and for parents, not for kids themselves.
The site does include a well-developed hierarchy of web sites, rated
for their kid-appeal, usefulness of information and amount of objectionable
material. However, the links are not set up for rapid browsing or
comparisons, and is not extremely useful as a search-engine for children
who may be interested in finding new sites. Surfnetkids is more useful
for parents doing preparatory research (perhaps from workplaces) before
actual desk-side time with their children. Compared to the wealth
of educational site links, there is surprisingly little information
on non-objectionable, simply 'fun' sites for children, although entertaining
web site building resources are available from this site.
The most useful feature of Surfnetkids is undoubtedly the Forum,
in which parents offer advice to peers to help them with desk-side
surfing. The opinions are varied and informative, with many personal
anecdotes and experiences that keep a visitor's interest. Barbara
Feldman often answers queries personally with useful URLs or snippets
of pertinent information, and occasionally she posts polls to get
a general idea of prevailing sentiment regarding issues that concern
parents and the Internet.
Surfnetkids could stand better development in its link indices, but
its chummy aesthetics and community are valuable assets that are important
for the future sustainability of the site.