Webkinz in the Classroom! Yeah!

As many of you know, I have four children of my own. Their grades/ages are 11, grade 5; 7, grade 2; 6, grade 1; and 3, pre-school. We finally purchased a Webkinz and entered the world of child gaming with the opportunity to chat.

As a parent, I was very hesitant about entering this world. As an ITS, I support the use of technology for education and learning, but I also know about the dangers and wanted to protect my children from them.

I have to say, I am quite impressed with the Webkinz site for learning. My children do not play daily, nor do they see it as a responsibility to keep their animal alive. They figured out very quickly that the animals do not die. Instead, we all became enthralled with a digital Scrabble game where you have to use the letters given to create lists of words. The more letters you use, the more points you get. The whole family gathers round the computer trying to see words among the letters.

Then there are the buy and sell features. Sometimes when you save up to buy something and then resell it, you make a profit. Other times, you get burned and lose money. What a life lesson!

I have to stress the importance of an adult sitting with the child or at least being near by to monitor the child's emotions/reactions to know when to intervene or make inquiries.

The final aspect that struck me as educational is the visual-spatial aspect of the room decorating. Children are exposed to skills that are normally seen as quite difficult. They see rooms in 3D as well as from a bird's eye view. The regular in and out of the animal room will help boys and girls alike develop visual spatial skills that often are stronger in boys because of exposure due to male oriented tasks/games, etc.

What struck me as I did this was how valuable it would be for a teacher to buy a Webkin to have her own account and allow students to play on her account as a center. She might even want to create teams to see how much each team can accumulate by the end of a marking period.

What fun they would have and be learning life skills along the way!