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Review of Nick.com
Nick.com offers a wide variety of games and activities to keep pre-teens and teenagers busy and engaged. A word of warning for parents, any underage child should be monitored while working or playing online. The ability to chat with other kids from around the world is a wonderful way to enhance your child’s view and understanding, but it also comes with inherent risks. Make sure that your computer is in a room where the entire family can view it, and that your child has been taught the dangers of chatting online and what they can and can’t furnish on an open chat line, or in private message to other users. If parents stay active and involved, and children are well educated about uses and dangers, these forums can be a wonderful place to explore. Nick.com has an easy to read, kid friendly explanation page on what is and is not advisable to list online. Read it over with your kids and take it upon yourself to get further information to help keep kids safe.
With that word of warning out of the way, Nick.com does offer a wide variety of free games for kids, starring their favorite Nickelodeon characters. There is a new, spotlighted game of the week, and a whole selection of various games and skill levels for each program they enjoy watching. This is a nice way to let your kids enjoy a little gaming without spending a great deal of money on buying games for the computer. It also alleviates the need for memory and space that those installed games take up in your computer.
There are varying skill levels available, more advanced for older children and less for the younger ones. They can play games against other users or completely on their own. Other features are articles, blogs and pod casts, which allow your child to read ad view their favorite actors and characters online.
Boards can be fun, because the child gets to include their own commentary in a forum that their favorite actor will read. Nick.com offers joke boards, where kids can see jokes written by other users and include their own. There are also kid friendly articles about nutrition, sports, activities; you name it, if kids are interested in the subject, it’s likely represented on this site. There are pod casts from your child’s favorite Nick band, such as the Naked Brothers Band, and songs from the different series shows that make up the Nickelodeon line up.
Another great feature is the chat and chat transcripts. Different creators and actors are available for chats, and users can attend the chat, and get the opportunity to ‘talk’ to their favorite star, or check out an archived chat to see what other users had to say. Another great benefit of this is it gets kids interested in writing, a skill they will use forever. Chat and board writing isn’t in proper English (most of the time), but it will give them a creative outlet in writing, which can help in their ability to translate that into more educational communication. Today’s youth should be actively encouraged to improve their online skills, as well, and this is an easy and fun way for them to learn. After all, by the time today’s thirteen year old is out in the job market, there won’t be a profession left that doesn’t actively use the Internet to gather information and run their day to day business.
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