NEWS$show=/search/label/news

Here's where you'll find all the latest news about technology for children. We love to follow cool new inventions on Kickstarter and we hunt out all the latest announcements about tech toys and gadgets for the coming Christmas holidays. You'll also get our take on children's technology stories in the media.

REVIEWS$show=/search/label/review

Our kids technology product reviews are intended to help you work out whether a toy, gadget or kit is a good fit for your child or family. There's lots of cool stuff available, but is it the right choice for the child or teenager that you are buying for? We'll help you make the right choices and get the best value for money.

GIFT GUIDES$show=/search/label/gift%20guide

Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends assemble. We create gift lists to help you make good choices for kids technology which helps them develop the right skills for the future. We research the best in Coding Toys and Games, Making / Craft Tools and Kits, STEM/STEAM related gifts, Programmable Robots, Electronics Kits and Gadgets for Tech Age Kids and Teens.

PROJECTS$show=/search/label/project

Get crafty with technology. Here we'll post all our ideas and projects using technology to get creative and making with kids. You'll find anything from making a lemon battery to a glow-in-the-dark Minecraft sword. Our projects are tried and tested on our own kids or at events we run, so we are sure you can have a go at home with your kids. Some of our projects use specific tech gadgets which we provide links for you to purchase.

STEM$show=/search/label/stem

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. In recent years there is an increased focus in these areas of study. We like to include Art and Design too, so we often talk about STEAM (A stands for Art). At Tech Age Kids we believe Coding is a new literacy and children need to understand how technology works, practice making skills and grow in their curiosity to make a better future for us all.

CODING$show=/search/label/coding

Coding is increasingly being recognised as an important skill for children to learn. Some will learn to code at school or at a coding club, but it's brilliant if they get support at home too.

ELECTRONICS$show=/search/label/electronics

We think it's really important for kids to get hands-on with electronics and learn how to make circuits and write code to control hardware. Younger kids can start with conductive playdough. For kids who like to combine craft and tech, littleBits are fab. And we love SAM Labs wireless electronics components for making it easy for kids to make Internet of Things inventions. Lots of electronics kits for kids have support for the Arduino microprocessor environment. The DuinoKit Jr is one of our favourites. Arduino is a fab skill for older kids and teens to develop.

ROBOTICS$show=/search/label/robotics

We love robots at Tech Age Kids, especially programmable ones. We've got lots of them and write reviews and projects that use them. Our programmable robots for kids buying guide is a good place to start if you're not sure what's available. Roby the mBot Meccano robot dog is one of our popular projects and has been with us to lots of events. Our Ozobot LEGO trailer is fab for kids who love LEGO and robots.

MAKING AND CRAFT$show=/search/label/making

We're advocates of the creative use of technology, but this needs to be balanced with developing physical skills such as papercraft, woodwork, clay modelling, technical drawing and soldering. If children don't develop these skills as they grow up then physical making projects can become frustrating rather than fun. The Maker Community uses the term 'making' as a broad term to include all sorts of artisan skills or craft activities. Being able to make things can lead to life-long hobbies or even careers. It's a great feeling to be able to take a project from an idea in your head to a real object that does something. We're particularly interested to explore products that combine maker skills with tech skills such as electronics but others focus purely on the physical making skills that are still important to modern making.

Is Kiddle a Safe Search Engine for Kids? Review and Analysis



Kiddle, a new search engine for kids has been getting a lot of press attention recently. First came the articles that repeated Kiddle's own positive description of itself. Some even claimed it was a Google product - it isn't despite its derivative logo. Then came those identifying issues with Kiddle.

I'm a parent, I teach online safety to primary school children, I write about kids technology and many years ago I used to work in search engine and curation technology. So what do I make of Kiddle?


Well, I wouldn't want my kids using it in its current form. I did try it out with my 9 year old son to see how he used it and what he thought of the results.


We don't usually write about products that we don't recommend, there are too many cool things to write about. But this is an important topic and while there are issues with Kiddle at least they are trying to innovate in the kid search space.

Note that I discuss the results that we got which may be different from the results you get at a future time.

Here's why I wouldn't recommend Kiddle at the moment:
  1. The age-suitability of results is very weak because Kiddle has very poor semantic understanding of search terms. A simple search for 'football' includes an article that mentions OJ Simpson murdering his wife on the first page thus offering content that is much more adult than the child was looking for. A search for 'Minecraft Let's Play' videos brought up a very inappropriate article and image on the first page (I wasn't going to click on that one!) A search for 'weeds' returned drug-related results even though the term 'weed' is blocked (I'm not making a moral judgement here, just pointing out the inconsistency.) A good semantic search would apply knowledge about the kind of topics a child would (or should) be searching for. 
  2. The results are very poorly targetted. Kiddle is selecting first from a 'curated' list of websites. Often those websites don't have much relevant content so the results aren't useful. My son searched for 'Minecraft redstone' and lots of the results were from LEGO.com. As he said, "if I wanted to search for LEGO stuff I would have searched for 'Minecraft redstone LEGO'". Quite. (He loves LEGO, but it wasn't what he was looking for, which is kind of the point of a search engine!)
  3. The curated websites selected are often more safe than useful. E.g. Common Sense Media comes up a lot. It's a great site for parents but often a poor match for what children were looking for which leads to a disappointing experience. 
  4. It seems to only use US Google which is not appropriate for UK children. E.g. football results were all about American Football, whatever that is.
  5. The adverts are terrible and often more appealing than the results. I've seen lots of ads for download sites that will install malware on computers.
  6. It ranks pages from a particular children's games site really highly. This is a very ad-heavy site that would be a real distraction. E.g searching for 'easter' returns two results from the site on the first page. Annoying when a child is trying to research a topic and the results are full of tempting games that they weren't even trying to find. 
  7. I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of just returning results from a few websites. That's not what the web is about and will give children a very strange perspective. E.g. We did an image search for Easter and all the first page results were from history.com. 
  8. There's no ability to do an image license search so children can't find out which images they can reuse. And the ones coming up are definitely not available for reuse. 
  9. If a site like this became popular it would limit the sites that receive traffic from children's searches in a very unfair manner. 
  10. Kiddle blocks a lot of search terms that kids should be able to search for such as body related and LGBT terms. It does this because it can't tell what's safe. It's a hard problem and they haven't solved it. 
  11. I'm not convinced that blocking search terms is the correct approach in most cases. Filtering and targetting results would be much better, so that an innocent search about 'weeds' from a young child who has pesky plants growing in their vegetable patch doesn't return results about drugs. If a child is aware of a mature topic then preventing them from searching for it doesn't seem useful either; if a child is searching for information about their body then it would be better to offer them age-appropriate resources rather than to block them and make them feel like they have done something wrong. 
  12. The use of images in search results means that kids are exposed to inappropriate graphics without even having to click through to a site. As Kiddle often returns inappropriate results this is an issue. 
Also Kiddle doesn't offer search suggestions like Google does, this feature is really useful for kids as it cuts down on typing, though it can sometimes come up with inappropriate suggestions so it also needs filtering / targetting.

Kiddle is asking users to submit search terms and web pages for blacklisting so results may improve somewhat over time. But the approach is flawed. A good semantic search for kids would return age-appropriate targetted results and filter out inappropriate results. This is a hard problem and it doesn't seem to be one that Kiddle is trying to tackle.

What Do we Recommend?

Safe searching is about much more than just choosing a kid-safe browser. In particular:
  • Make sure your children know what to do if they come across inappropriate content. This will depend on the maturity of the child, but the key is not to explore the content and to tell a responsible adult. This is obvious to adults, but kids may need some help to make this their default behaviour. 
  • Help children to understand what they are seeing. Make sure they can spot ads and identify risky sites (such as those covered in download buttons.)
  • Supervise their access. For young children this will mean helping them to search, for older kids you might say that they can only use their devices in family rooms when parents are around and for teenagers, well at some point it becomes more about the relationship you have built with your teenager and the skills you have helped them to develop.
Google and Bing's safe-search just removes some of the very worst content. It doesn't claim to do more than that. It's a useful setting, but don't rely on it. If offering a kid-safe search was even just a very difficult problem then Google would have offered a solution themselves by now. They have promised more child-friendly solutions in future, but this is an area that's extremely difficult to get right.

Parental controls on phones, tablets and PCs can also be useful, but are only partial solution.

I've had a look and haven't found a really good search engine for children. There are plenty that offer a front end to Google with thumbnail images and safe search turned on. These are better than Kiddle in its current form. It's interesting that Google itself doesn't offer a search with thumbnails although it provides the interface for others to do so.

There are also curation based search engines, but these are naturally limited in what they offer. One looked great but provided zero results for the search 'minecraft' - that's not going to work for my kids!

The Real Problems are Relevance ...

Having looked into this, the real issue for kids search engines isn't really safety. It's relevance. Kids aren't looking for the same information as adults, just filtering out the inappropriate stuff doesn't cut it.

Curation just doesn't scale so we need automated solutions. Google offers personalised search results. We need that technology extended to take age, maturity and parental preference into account.

Google have already tackled the issue of video search with the YouTube Kids app which filters content and provides a child-tailored experience and importantly ensures that ads are appropriate for children.

The relevance also needs to relate to features such as automatic search completion and related search suggestions as these need to be child-friendly too.

... And Kid-Friendly User Experience

A search engine designed for adults doesn't really match the ways kids want to find information. Kids may be slower at typing and reading. Their queries may not be so well-formed. 

What does it mean when a child types in 'minecraft' to a search engine? What is the most useful way to help them. They might be a beginner who has heard about the game from a friend. They might be an keen minecrafter looking for something cool to try out. Offering them a choice of popular (kid-safe) search terms might be useful, or maybe a visual way to narrow down their search. 

As with adults, the best way to return useful results will be dependent on their search history or profile, but this is a very sensitive topic when related to children. 

Monetization of kids search is also a difficult topic. Many 'child-friendly' search engines include ads that aren't suitable for children. A few offer an ad-free experience, but in that case where is the incentive to innovate and offer a better user experience for children?  

There's clearly room for innovation in the kids search engine space. So we can certainly thank Kiddle for raising the profile of the issue even if they don't have all the answers yet. 

Image Source: Lucélia Ribeiro 





24 days of Scratch coding book cover and cute penguin
Name

2013,13,2023,1,3d printing,5,3DTin,2,accessories,1,activities,1,adafruit,1,advent calendar,2,adventure games,1,amazon,13,amazon fire,2,amazon prime,1,android,6,angry birds,1,animation,6,anki,1,app,19,app toy,4,app toys,8,appcessories,1,apple,1,apps,25,arcbotics,1,architecture,4,arckit,9,arduino,33,art,1,artificial intelligence,5,astronauts,2,astronomy,1,augmented reality,11,automaton,1,awards,1,battle bots,2,battling robots,2,bedtime,1,big kids,103,big tablets,1,bigtrak,1,bike,1,binary,1,birthday,4,bitsbox,1,black friday,2,blockly,1,blogging,1,bloxels,1,bluetooth,2,board games,7,book,2,books,35,boolean box,1,breadboard,2,bricks,1,brixo,1,buying guide,11,camera,4,cameras,1,card game,1,careers,2,catroid,1,celebration,1,cellphone,1,ces,2,chemistry,2,chess,1,christmas,44,circuit cubes,1,circuit playground,8,circuit scribe,10,cleaning,1,climbing,1,code clubs,1,code-a-pillar,1,codebug,1,coder,2,coding,173,cognitive learning,1,communication,1,comparison,1,competition/challenges,9,computational thinking,3,computer,2,computer games,2,computer science,2,computer vision,2,computers,1,computing,1,conductive playdough,2,connected toys,7,construction,40,conversational ai,1,cozmo,1,craft,34,craft cutter,3,creative thinking,1,creativity,3,crochet,1,crowdfunding,120,css,1,cubs,1,curiosity,1,curious chip,1,cyber monday,1,dads,1,data,2,deals,4,dens,2,design,10,design process,1,design thinking,7,digital parenting,2,digital skills,13,disability,1,disney infinity,1,dog tech,1,dolls,2,drawing,2,drones,2,duinokit,1,earth day,1,Easter,4,ebooks,11,eco,1,edblocks,1,edison,5,edtech,1,education,79,egypt,1,electricity,1,electronic pets,2,electronic toys,2,electronics,141,electronics kit,4,electronics kits,1,electtronics,1,elementary,1,elenco,2,energy,1,engineering,17,entertainment,1,ereader,2,ereaders,6,esafety,1,escape the room,1,event,21,ewriter,1,exercise,4,family,12,family tech,2,fathers day,1,Festival of Code,1,fiction,1,fire,1,fitbit,1,fitness,1,fitness tracker,3,flotilla,3,flow charts,1,flutterbye fairy,1,flying,1,force awakens,2,force friday,2,future,2,gadgets,36,games,35,games console,2,games consoles,8,gaming,3,gift guide,55,gifts,12,girls,24,giveaway,4,glow in the dark,1,google,1,grace hopper,1,grove,1,hackaball,2,hacksoton,1,halloween,13,halloween costumes,1,hardware,3,headphones,1,health,1,hexbug,3,hexbug aquabots,1,hexbug project,1,high school,1,history,26,home,1,home education,2,homeschool,4,hot toys,7,hour of code,3,html,4,humanoid,4,ICT,1,in app purchasing,1,indiegogo,13,industry event,9,innotab,5,innotab 3,3,innotab 3s,1,internet access,1,interviews,1,invention,4,ios,3,IoT,4,ipad,7,ipad mini,1,iphone,2,jacquard,1,japan,1,java,1,javascript,5,k'nex,7,k'nex robotics,1,kano,8,keyboard,1,kickstarter,92,kids,3,kindle,7,kindle fire,8,kit,2,kits,5,kodu,1,kubo,1,label printer,1,languages,1,laptop,1,laptops,1,last minute,1,leap motion,1,leapfrog,2,leappad,7,leappad 2,3,leappad ultra,3,leappad2,1,leapreader,1,learning,5,learning resources,5,learning tablet,2,learning tablets,9,leds,2,lego,36,lego boost,1,lego chain reactions,1,lego mindstorms ev3,5,lego power functions,2,lego technic,5,lego wedo,2,let's start coding,1,lights,1,lightseekers,1,little kids,110,littlebits,16,logiblocs,1,logic,3,logical thinking,4,loom,1,machines,1,magnetic,1,make it,2,makeblock,16,makedo,1,maker,6,makey makey,6,making,54,mardles,1,mars,1,mars rover,1,marty,1,math,3,maths,1,mbot,6,mbot ranger,1,me arm,1,meccano,6,meccanoid,5,meccanoid 2.0,1,merge vr,1,mews,1,michael faraday,1,micro:bit,9,microbit,6,microcontroller,5,microscope,1,microsoft,2,middle school,6,miles kelly,1,mindstorms,3,minecraft,21,minecraft mods,1,mixed reality,1,mobile,2,modular electronics,2,monsters university,1,morse code,2,mothers day,4,motion capture,1,motors,2,mover kit,3,movie,1,movies,4,mu,1,mu toys,1,munzee,1,music,10,my first robot,2,national dog day,1,nature,1,new,1,new year,1,news,170,news coding,1,nikola tesla,1,nintendo,2,nintendo switch,3,ohbot,3,ollie,3,on the web,1,opinion,19,origami,1,osmo,4,outdoors,13,ouya,1,ozobot,10,papercraft,3,paperwhite,1,parental controls,2,parenting,34,parrot,1,pc,1,people,8,pet tech,2,pets,3,phone,1,photography,1,photon,1,physics,3,pi day,1,picks,2,pimoroni,1,pinoccio,1,pixel kit,1,pixelart,4,play,2,playstation 4,3,plezmo,1,pocket code,1,pocket money,1,pokemon,4,pokemon go,4,poll,1,pre order,1,pre-teens,2,prehistory,1,preschoolers,42,primary,41,printable,1,products,34,professor einstein,1,programming,15,project,102,projects,12,puzzles,4,python,10,racing,1,raspberry pi,29,reading,12,reivew,1,remote control,1,research,3,resource,34,resources,2,retro,2,review,223,rights,1,robot,11,robot dog,1,robot fish,1,robot wars,3,ROBOTERRA,1,roboticals,1,robotics,32,robots,140,role models,1,role play,1,romo,1,romotive,1,root,1,rover,1,safety,2,sam labs,6,samuel morse,1,sandbox,1,schools,3,science,16,scratch,48,scratchjr,3,screen time,2,screenless,15,screens,1,sensors,5,servos,1,simbrix,7,skills,1,skylanders,3,skylanders superchargers,1,skylanders swap force,1,smart pens,1,smartphone,1,smartwatch,1,snap circuits,2,social media,1,solar power,2,soldering,2,sonic pi,1,sony koov,1,sound,3,space,9,sparki,2,speaker,3,speech sythesis,1,sphero,12,sphero mini,1,spider,2,star wars,6,stars,1,STEAM,1,stem,10,stikbot,1,stop motion,2,stop motion studio,1,storage,1,story,2,strawbees,2,students,1,subscription,5,subscriptions,1,sugru,1,summer,7,swift,1,tablet,3,tablets,23,tangible coding,2,tech,3,tech age,1,tech craft,4,tech is bad,7,tech is good,4,tech toys,21,tech will save us,10,technology,2,technology will save us,3,teens,64,teknikio,3,tekno,1,teksta,1,tenka labs,1,tesla,1,textiles,1,thames & kosmos,2,the extraordinaires,1,tim berners lee,1,tinkercad,1,tinybop,3,toddlers,9,toot-toot,1,top pick,9,touch,1,toy,1,toys,5,travelling,1,TTS,1,TV,1,tween,1,tweens,119,tynker,2,typing,1,ux,1,vehicles,1,videos,3,view-master,1,views,10,virtual reality,8,voice assistants,1,voice recognition,2,vr,4,vtech,8,web,2,websites,1,wifi,1,wii,2,wii u,2,windows 8,1,wonder workshop,9,wowwee,2,writing,7,writing. education,1,xbox one,2,xyzprinting,1,
ltr
item
Tech Age Kids | Technology for Children: Is Kiddle a Safe Search Engine for Kids? Review and Analysis
Is Kiddle a Safe Search Engine for Kids? Review and Analysis
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4q09Q4OGsIX74Q9fl1W-0DJM2kybigS-ikxzRSyH0XkyNrbNDGP8MhzCTt0LoTVvRkR5vszqff12RiIjMBb_3ckLN5knVn5ftWeTm86j2czATCqa5s3hoYP3jnE5ZejmnTszQ7xWRkkw/s640/kiddle-finding-safe-search-engine-kids-2.png
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4q09Q4OGsIX74Q9fl1W-0DJM2kybigS-ikxzRSyH0XkyNrbNDGP8MhzCTt0LoTVvRkR5vszqff12RiIjMBb_3ckLN5knVn5ftWeTm86j2czATCqa5s3hoYP3jnE5ZejmnTszQ7xWRkkw/s72-c/kiddle-finding-safe-search-engine-kids-2.png
Tech Age Kids | Technology for Children
https://www.techagekids.com/2016/03/is-kiddle-safe-search-engine-for-kids.html
https://www.techagekids.com/
https://www.techagekids.com/
https://www.techagekids.com/2016/03/is-kiddle-safe-search-engine-for-kids.html
true
15639169850959392
UTF-8
Loaded All Posts Not found any posts VIEW ALL Read more Reply Cancel reply Delete By Home PAGES POSTS View All RECOMMENDED FOR YOU LABEL ARCHIVE SEARCH ALL POSTS Not found any post match with your request Back Home Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat January February March April May June July August September October November December Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec just now 1 minute ago $$1$$ minutes ago 1 hour ago $$1$$ hours ago Yesterday $$1$$ days ago $$1$$ weeks ago more than 5 weeks ago Followers Follow THIS PREMIUM CONTENT IS LOCKED STEP 1: Share to a social network STEP 2: Click the link on your social network Copy All Code Select All Code All codes were copied to your clipboard Can not copy the codes / texts, please press [CTRL]+[C] (or CMD+C with Mac) to copy