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Net-mom's newest book (January 25, '02 issue)
We (NetFamilyNews.org and SafeKids.com) are "Net-mom approved," so we're admitting our bias right up front. Still, there is no more reliable source for families wondering where to go for truly useful and safe - whether educational or just, plain fun - Web sites for kids (or anyone else). We're referring to "Netmom's Internet Kids & Family Yellow Pages" by writer, librarian, and mom Jean Armour Polly.
The 2002 edition (the 6th), now available on bookstore shelves, reviews more than 3,000 Web sites in more than 130 subject areas. Add those numbers to sites perused for the previous five editions to get a feel for how many sites Jean's reviewed! She did the math. In a talk she gave at the Bertelsmann Foundation Conference in Germany last fall, Jean said, "Recently we estimated how many sites I have personally explored since the first edition of the book. We were stunned to discover that I have visited about 182,000 Web sites. If I looked at eight or nine sub pages for each site, that works out to about 1.5 million Web pages I have personally inspected since 1996." In that talk, she describes her site-selection process and policies - something that might be useful to other parents, librarians, and educators, as they undertake smaller versions of Jean's task.
For a very useful sampler of Jean's picks for the book, see the "Hotlists from the 2002 Edition" in her Web site. Almost all of these are sites she chose specifically for kids, from preschoolers to those who love math, science, reading, writing, chat, or pen pals. Oh-so-cool "Son of Net-Mom" (Jean's teenage son) has his own special category of Web picks among the hotlists.
No one who works with the Web for social studies homework or school research should miss "The World According to Net-mom". You really see the librarian at work in this remarkable new feature of the site, linking to sites - listed alphabetically by country - that Jean believes contain "some of the best information available on the Web about countries of the world." Information on hundreds of countries is linked to here, all of it screened for children's ability to understand it. And every single site (from several to nearly a dozen sites per country, including its dependencies) is described by Jean in child-friendly language.
We'd appreciate hearing from you or your kids about your/their top picks for useful and/or fun Web sites at home or school. Do email them to us (and tell us why you picked 'em!).
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