This picture is from the article here today in the Washington Post about Webkinz toys. The cutline under the picture: “Megan Leffew, 10, and her brother Brian, 7, play with Webkinz in real life and online.” Like Megan and Brian, the lovable stuffed toys have a life both online and in the children’s real world. Quoting the article:
“It’s a gaming concept, it’s a nurturing concept, it’s a highly interactive concept,” said Paul Kurnit, who heads KidShop, a consulting firm. “It’s really working on a lot of cylinders.”
Here is yet another concept from the online world that has potential for education. Why not, for example, mechanical toys which have parallel online avatars where the toys can be taken apart and rebuilt while the student doing that is learning principles of mechanics? That would get a kid’s mind firing on more cylinders.
