I remember a saying from my youth that “Fighting for peace is like [expletive deleted] for virginity”. In a similar way comes an interesting post from Jim about a novel approach towards getting kids active that has been taken by the NZ sport and recreation commission.
MissionOn is a social networking site aimed at rewarding kids for getting out and getting active. On the site users earn points which can be spent on customising their personalised web pages. I’m trying my hardest to not be sceptical but creating an engrossing and entertaining website in order to get kids away from their computers and outside?
Huh?
Ben Kepes is an analyst, an entrepreneur, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a technology commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and extensively online. Ben covers the convergance of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users. 
As a skeptical parent of young children and web commentator, you’re the perfect candidate to be converted into an enthusiastic advocate. Get your kids’ school to sign up early, so you can see for yourself how it works. I look forward to your hat-eating report back in 3 months time!
Nice try Jim but my kids go to a Steiner school so their learning style (at least at this tender age) is in direct contrast to what I spend my days writing about!
I think Bernard’s daughter summed it up pretty well – parents will struggle to get their kids to sign up to anything uncool…
[...] have me scratching my head in wonderment. First comes the post by Bernard Hickey about MissionOn. I posted about MissionOn back in February (yes, you saw it here first) and my appraisal was that it was a [...]
I just left a point on Bernard’s blog pointing out that 2 of his daughter’s favourite websites, club penguin and Neopets, and the youtube viewer that in his opinion is the most popular destination for 5-12 year olds are built using flash, and he deleted it within 45 seconds. I’ll be very interested (and quite surprised) to see if you censor this comment.
It’s a shame that Bernard wants to score points rather then presenting the facts. His attitude is not helping New Zealand children.
Apologies – it must have been a technical glitch. My post showed up then vanished for a while, and now is back again, so I jumped to a conclusion thinking that Bernard had deleted it
@Cath – I have received over 1500 comments since I started blogging and censored exactly two. One because the commenter asked me to pull it and one to protect the anonymity of one of my contributors.
In Bernard’s defence I think there is a difference between the examples you give and Mission-On which is one big (huge) flash trap