There are lot of parental controls available out there that help you manage the content that your kids can see online. However, most of them rely on some sort of content management from you as a parent. You need select the category of websites that your kids can see, and the websites that you kid can navigate to. This makes them pretty cumbersome to use.
A simple solution to that problem is Kidzui. It is a free browser that is specially made for kids of ages 13 and below. Kidzui itself maintains a list of websites, games, and videos that are safe for kids. These websites/games/videos have been approved by parents like you. So, when your kid browses the internet using Kidzui, you can be sure that he/she is visiting only the sites that are safe, and it takes the burden completely off from you regarding managing the content that your kids can see online. Kidzui has more than 2 million approved websites/games/videos, so your kids would not complain of not enough content to browse.
Kidzui is completely full featured, and addresses all the aspects of safe web browsing for kids:
Safe Search for Kids
Search is the area that is sometimes most difficult to manage. Even if your kids search for a completely appropriate term for kids, still it is sometimes possible that search engines list non-related, and inappropriate results. This can sometimes tempt your kids to navigate to those websites. To address this, Kidzui comes with a built-in search engine. When your kids type some search phrase, Kidzui shows the results that are from approved results only. This ensures that your kid can browse only safe content, and not fall in the trap of bad websites. The content that kids see on Kidzui is relevant and appropriate for their age and interest.
Kidzui has some other interesting features also for search:
- When your kid starts typing, Kidzui auto completes search terms, and ranks them in order of popularity among kids.
- With the suggested search results, Kidzui also displays a visual image that helps your kid identify what they are searching for.
- Kidzui provides spelling suggestions to help your kids complete their search terms.
- Related channels are displayed along with the search results. This helps kid in exploring further content related to their interest.
Safe Browsing for Kids
The strongest aspect of Kidzui is that it has a database of over 2 million websites/games/videos that your kids can browse. All this content is approved by parents and teachers, which ensures that the content is completely appropriate, and of interest for your kids. Apart from the fact that kids browse only safe content, Kidzui also helps them in learning because they are encourage to explore other content that kids like.
Kidzui provides lot of features to help your kids navigate through this content:
- Kidzui provides channels for popular content. Your kids can save their channels when they navigate through content. The channels will display on their home page, and new content is added to channels daily.
- Kidzui home page displays popular content that other kids around the world find interesting. Kidzui editors also post interesting websites and content on Kidzui home page to help your kids discover and explore new content.
- Kids can add their favorite websites / games/ videos to their Favorites section, and easily access them anytime.
- Kidzui maintains a very comprehensive history of the content that your kids browse. They can access this history anytime, and explore that content again.
- Kids can even tag content as they browse, and express their opinion about content.
- Kids can easily share the content with their friends.
Social Networking
Once parents start regulating online activities of their kids, one of the biggest complaint that they get is that kids are not able to participate in social networking websites, such as MySpace and Facebook. Kidzui manages that aspect too. Kidzui provides its own social networking community for kids. Each kid can create their page in that community called MyKidZui page. Kids can add their friends to that page. After that, they can see when their friends came online, and share the tagged content with them.
Here are some of the features that Kidzui online community provides:
- Kids can add and block friends.
- Kids can share content with friends. All such shared content appears in their Inbox.
- Ping friends to say “Hi”
- See friends come online and their interests.
Kidzui does not allows any written text / chat / email in this online community. This ensures that even if some wrong persons creates an online page in Kidzui, they won’t be able to email or chat with your kids.
Kidzui even sends you a weekly report of your kids activities online. I wish Kidzui had some better online account management, like Windows Live Family Safety has.
As would be obvious from above, Kidzui is really a very comprehensive way to ensure that your kids browse only safe content online. It not only ensures that the content that your kids see is safe, it also promotes their curiosity by showing them other content that kids like. This means safe growth of the knowledge of your kids.
Kidzui is completely free. Kidzui is natively available for Windows, and Mac. Kidzui is also available as a browser add-in for Firefox. This means Kidzui can be used in Linux as well, by installing it in your Firefox browser in Linux. Love it!