The story plays out as a hybrid of a film, a book and an interactive game. Kids can just watch it unfold the first time, skip around with the page arrows, or crank a mighty gear to jump to their favorite parts. Moonbot co-founders Brandon Oldenburg and Lampton Enoch described the process by which they, along with co-founder William Joyce, create their stories, and its as charming a story as The Numberlys itself.

Moonbot works off a slate of stories, choosing a medium to start with and then expanding the story to different platforms. The first story app, The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore, was a short film first, which Moonbot then extended to be an iPad app, and a printed book is coming this fall. For The Numberlys, the iPad version came first, and the film version is now in production. "We approach all of these stories this way," Enochs says. "The Numberlys will also be a book at some point." Moonbot's process revolves around the stories themselves, bringing them to the media that make the most sense for the audience and the particular story.

"We take all the things we love, stir it up into a pot, and hopefully it takes," Oldenburg says. "With Morris Lessmore, it was Singing In the Rain meets Buster Keaton with a little bit of The Wizard of Oz." This formula helps Moonbot's stories appeal to all ages. "For an older user, there's a nostalgic quality," Oldenburg says. "For a younger user, it's just pointing them towards this wonderful reference and inspiration that they might not experience nowadays."

Creating The Numberlys

The follow-up project began with the concept for an alphabet book staring these five characters, the Numberlys. The creators asked themselves whimsical questions like, "Who came up with the letter G?" The story would invent answers to such questions. As a side effect, Moonbot would get the chance to make an alphabet book.

"Alphabet books are a right of passage for a lot of children's book illustrators," Oldenburg says. "One of the things on our checklist is always to do an alphabet book." For Moonbot, entertaining, engaging stories are the priority, but educational themes manage to sneak into them.

"We didn't really jive well with school," Oldenburg says. "The teachers we got along with were the art teachers." As Oldenburg spoke, the lyrics of part 2 of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" jumped to my mind. The opening sequences of The Numberlys, with its strange automatons marching in lockstep, evoke scenes from the 1982 film based on the album, The Wall.

With the Numberlys idea already cooking, there was a screening of Fritz Lang's landmark 1927 sci-fi film Metropolis in Moonbot's home town of Shreveport, Louisiana. The look and scope of the film became the inspiration for the soaring, black-and-white urban dystopia in which The Numberlys is set. Throw in some Marx Brothers and sprinkle some Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, and that's The Numberlys' gritty, charming universe.

Oldenburg says the iPad was an ideal place to start with this story. The Moonbot team draws on a mixture of experience from computer-generated animation, television and film. The iPad's approachable nature adds the potential of interactivity, allowing The Numberlys to draw in its users with 18 little games interspersed within the story.

Oldenburg and Joyce also decided to frame the story in the iPad's vertical orientation, a more book-shaped than screen-shaped window into the world. "It's a fun aspect ratio to work in," says Oldenburg. "It really helps make it look grand and tall. It helps accentuate the scale."

"It was very fun but also very challenging," Oldenburg says. "Now, taking it out as a short film, what we're going to have to do is vertical letterboxing. We're calling it 'the world's tallest short.'"

Blurring The Line

After Morris Lessmore, people tried to define Moonbot's genre. Moonbot has to choose a category in iTunes, and the best fit is the "Books" category. But as Oldenburg says, this is a bit of a hack. "There are two book categories in iTunes. There are the ones that cost a lot of money, which are basically PDFs, and there are the ones that don't cost a lot - which are really hard to make - which are the interactive ones."

The Moonbot team's set of skills does not fit in these constraints. The creators have settled on "story app" as the best way to describe the versions of their stories that run on Apple's iOS. But as a result of Moonbot's process, these stories stretch outside the confines of one medium. As Oldenburg told me, "It feels like we're doing something right when we start to blur lines."

The Numberlys is available for $5.99 in the iTunes App Store.

In September, information from the International Data Corporation (IDC) said that tablets and smartphones would truly begin killing the PC in 2015. The top three items for kids ages 6-12 are iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone. In 2015, that age group will be 10-14.

Kids will now be able to use Everloop directly from their mobile phones by texting status updates to the network. Parents can moderate the number of texts a kid can use by selecting a monthly limit, ranging from unlimited to 250 texts per month. Everloop automatically sets the limit at 100. Once the child reaches their limit, parents will receive a note.

The first moderation filter is technology-based, and filters out words, phrases and content deemed dangerous to kids, like URLs, someone's address, profanity, or any words that would condone negative, hateful behaviors, or reveal the location of one of the user. The second more interesting filter works on the level of patterns - if a pattern is detected, such as phrases or words that could seem like cyber-bullying, the user's account will be freezed, and then the human moderation element kicks in.

"If you think about kids today, they're all digital natives, they don't know any better, and the majority of parents are raising under 13 kids are digital natives themselves," Everloop's COO Tobin Trevarthen told us in an interview. "As we evolve into social space, we saw an easy opportunity to educate younger generation of digital natives."

Everloop was originally founded in 2010 by three moms who wanted a secure social network for their tweens. It was originally named GirlAmbition and targeted only at girls until the founders, who had sons, realized that boys needed a safe space, too. The name comes from the idea of "being ever in the loop."

The other social network for kids, Togetherville, does not offer an SMS feature. Targeted at kids under 10-years-old, this site serves as more of a space for parents to teach kids about online communication, community building and being a good digital citizen. Parents are far more involved in their kids' social networking on Togetherville than Everloop, which allows kids to go off on their own into the land of social networking.

Everloop and Togetherville both serve as sort of "training wheels" sites for the grown-up Facebook which, according to Trevarthen, is not a safe place for kids ages 13-and-under. "It gets sketchy when you're a child and Facebook is asking you to put your real name on there," Trevarthen says. "We have built the site for kids without parents in the site, really a kids site where kids are able to be kids in a safe, well-lit environment."

Launched in November 2010, Everloop went public in February 2011; approximately 40,000 kids use the site every month.

"The publishing industry is moving rapidly into the digital age," says DiTerlizzi. "I see the integrated use of AR as an ideal bridge, enhancing what readers love best about story and narrative while tapping innovation and imagination, to bring forth entirely new experiences associated with the book."

Exploring the World of WondLa

To access the experience, users need to install Total Immersion's D'Fusion plugin and wait for the applet to load within their browser. I found the experience was loading slow on Chrome, and it didn't load a whole lot faster after switching to Safari.

A few minutes later, when it was up and running, I realized some interesting decisions had been made in the development of app. The interaction one can have with the 3D maps by moving the book around infront of the webcam is very limited. You can move the experience up and down, and can zoom a bit, but that's about it.

This is because the app was designed to be a one-way experience. Once the webcam recognizes an emblem, you can set down the book and let the app take you on a tour of the 3D map. This is mostly a good decision, because it makes it easier for young users to quickly understand what is happening (not to mention the fact that the book is rather large, and kids may grow tired of holing it up).

It is slightly disappointing, however, that more interaction was not built into the experience. In this case, as augmented reality is introduced to a new audience of young adults, it makes sense to simplify things a bit. It's great to see a major publisher like Simon & Schuster get behind augmented reality, as implementations like these could change the way young adults read in the near future.

The app, which is obviously geared toward a younger audience, reminded me of some interesting AR apps aimed at children (I wish I could remember them all). One that comes to mind is whistleBox's "Do Crew" augmented cartoons - a series of video stories that include interactive AR games. The games aren't merely "lean forward" experiences on the desktop, they actually get kids up on their feet moving around and being active (much like the Nintendo Wii, or Kinect on the Xbox).

Other great augmented reality examples have been aimed at younger markets as well, including LEGO's in-store project. A kiosk equipped with a camera and a screen lets shoppers (read: kids) hold model sets up to the camera in order to see a 3D representation of the finished project live on their box. Additional projects have brought augmented reality to baseball cards and game cards - bringing athletes and mythic creatures to life.

While at Qualcomm's Uplinq conference in San Diego earlier this summer, I met Andrew Cheeseman of Mattel who was on hand to demonstrate an augmented version of a classic game - Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. Cheeseman told me that Mattel believes augmented reality is going to be a huge hit in the toy industry - and I agree. He also made the very good point that new technologies like AR help introduce fresh generations of kids to older games (like the aforementioned Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots).

So is playtime augmented reality's ticket to bigtime? It's likely that the younger demographics are certainly going to play a big role in the proliferation of the technology, but it probably won't be the only successful sector. Hi-tech as already been making great use of the technology in automobile factories and in the military, and the healthcare industry could certainly be a terrific platform as well.

But never underestimate the power of needy kids when they set their sights on fun new toys. Just ask George Lucas how that's going.

"Cell phones," warns the company, "can be a great way for children to keep in touch with family members," but they can also "serve as facilitators for cyberbullying, sexting and other dangerous behaviors."

That claim may be true to a point, but is reading each and every text message the best way to counteract these behaviors? For that matter, should parents be spying on their kids to this extent at all?

WebWatcher cites data from the Pew Research Center that states some 75% of those aged 12-17 now own cell phones, and half of teens send over 50 messages per day. One in three sends more than 100.

(Hope you parents have a lot of free time on your hands, because that remote snooping is going to take you awhile!)

More importantly, the data point that's skipped over when touting spyware like this... err, I mean remote monitoring software... is that teens text instead of calling their friends in many cases. In fact, Pew says than teens are 10 times more likely to text someone than call them.

That means, for many teens, text messages are the primary form of communication among a child's friends.

And parents reading those texts? Well, that would be the equivalent of a parent in days past surreptitiously picking up the extension (you know - the phone attached to the wall with a cable?) in another room to eavesdrop on a child's conversation.

Parental Spyware: For Those Who Can't Handle Tech?

The WebWatcher Mobile product complements the company's standalone suite of monitoring tools, but it's hardly alone here. A whole crop of parental spyware applications have risen up to serve the needs of parents who can't figure out (or can't be bothered, or don't have the time) to understand the modern Web. The PTA-endorsed SocialShield product, for instance, is another recent entry into this field. Like WebWatcher, it works across a number of sites, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Photobucket and others. SafetyWeb does the same. And of course there are the old standbys like Net Nanny, SpectorSoft and CyberPatrol, just to name a few.

Is this level of spying the right way to parent, though? There are alternates of course: Parents could educate their children instead, do spot checks to keep them on their toes, friend them on Facebook and elsewhere across the Web, and keep the computer in a public area of the home.

That said, there are some parents for whom monitoring software may be the right choice: the technologically un-savvy, for example. If the intricacies of Facebook and Twitter are confounding or if you still haven't figured out exactly how to type a text message yourself, you may be a good candidate for remote monitoring software.

A Warning to Parents Behind the Times

But keep in mind that your inability (or refusal?) to keep up with the times in terms of technology while allowing your children to outpace you by leaps and bounds is not only doing you a disservice - it's doing one to your children as well.

Sure, they may know their way around the social Web and cell phones better than you, but they haven't fully developed their interpersonal and social skills in a way that allows them to handle the issues that will inevitably come up.

As a new parent myself, I believe my job is to help my child learn and grow on her path to independence, which includes staying informed on all trends, both tech and otherwise. Parents who can't be bothered to figure out what that "tweet thing" is all about or what "sexting" is should not think this is a badge of honor to wear proudly, as if it makes them more mature somehow. It should be a signal that the world has surged ahead and they've been left behind in its wake.

And please, let's not make this a socio-economic issue, either. If you can't afford a computer or cell phone, then neither can your child. However, he or she may have access to them at friends' houses or at school. You have have access to them via your public library. Many public libraries offer free computer classes, too. You and your child could even take one together. Let your lack of technology comprehension guide you to a learning experience that helps you both, instead of being an issue where you child is left unparented because you don't know what you're doing.

Parental spyware, however, should be a last resort at best.

But that's just my opinion. What's yours?

Latitude created this video to sum up the study's key findings and big pathways for research, innovation and the future of the Web.

Latitude 42 Study Findings: Where Else Will Kids Think to Put the Web in the World? from latddotcom

The results discussion focused on the myriad ways in which kids are bringing digital into the physical world - to enhance interactions with everyday objects, spaces, and social activities. As the study's lead analyst, Jessica Reinis, summed things up: "Currently, we have the 'iGeneration' understanding of device as simply an extension of oneself - and we still think that's pretty novel. But kids are showing us that the next step will be exactly the converse of that. It'll be a shift from smartphones that can go anywhere to The Internet of Things which is everywhere."

If there was any doubt that children are excellent innovators, some recent technology developments are corroborating kids' projections into the digital future. For example, MIT's Fluid Interfaces Group is working on a "food printer" that realizes a concept submitted by one of our study participants.

I'd like it if my computer could convert images or food and make them real." Joanna*, Age 10

Of course, MIT got a bit more sophisticated with its prototypes, but we were heartily impressed with the predictive power of our 6-12 year-old innovators.

"Each one [of the three concept designs] addresses a fundamental process that lies at the heart of cooking, namely the mixing of ingredients; the physical and chemical transformation of these ingredients into new compounds; and finally their modeling into aesthetically pleasing and delectable textures and shapes. Our hope is that these designs will provide a glimpse at the new aesthetic and cultural possibilities, which can be brought forth by a new, digital gastronomy."Cornucopia: Concept Designs for a Digital Gastronomy, MIT Media Lab

To see what our other participants created, check out the two-part study results series here:

1. "The Future of Tech According to Kids: Immersive, Intuitive and Surprisingly Down-to-Earth"
2. "Creation and Design: What Kids Want From Tech"

Latitude currently has other initiatives underway to extend its future technology ideation research with kids, including a second phase of the present study. This iteration will also include children from across the globe; however, it will place a more concentrated focus on children in specific regions, including Latin America, Asia and Africa. The aim of this second study is to investigate cross-cultural similarities and differences, and to tap into more diverse perspectives on Web-based innovation. (Check life-connected.com in the coming weeks for study-related news.)

*Name has been changed to protect the participant's privacy.

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how new information and communications technologies can enhance human experiences. Latitude's user-centered research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify concrete opportunities for Web-based innovation. "Children's 'Future Requests' for Computers and the Internet" is one installment of Latitude 42s, an ongoing series of open innovation research studies which Latitude publishes in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and opportunity discovery. For more information on this study and its applications to your business, email Neela Sakaria.

Video created in collaboration with designomotion.

In our previous post, we looked at the findings from an interaction angle. We discussed how younger generations expect to have increasingly intuitive interactions with technology - and not just localized to swiping and tapping an iPad, but really moving things in the world of physical activity and objects. This represents "a shift from smartphones that can go anywhere to The Internet of Things which is everywhere," said Jessica Reinis, the analyst who headed up the study.

Today's post will focus on a few other themes that stood out in the kids' "future requests" for technology and why we think they're worth acknowledging.

Confidence Through Creation and Creativity

Study participant, Dylan, age 6, killing time on his visit to Latitude HQ.

It's no surprise that gaming is popular with kids. But creation and design? Yep - unsung favorites. Thirty one percent of technology ideas proposed by children were a tool or platform for creating something (a Web site, a game, a video to be shared, a physical object, etc.).

"Artistic creation and design were common underlying principles for a large subset of the kids' technology concepts, with truly incredible diversity across disciplines. Kids wanted to be 3D game designers, Web designers, fashion designers, landscape designers, industrial designers, musicians, 'traditional' artists - and then, of course, the study itself was an exercise in imaginative creation," said Reinis.

"I'd like to paint and draw right on the computer screen and have it show up." - Abby*, Age 8

"I'd like to make up my own video game." - Zack, Age 8

"I'd like computer games to learn about fashion designing." - Klara, Age 11

Per usual, MIT's Media Lab is doing great things. This time, it's providing the tech infrastructure to help kids create. It devised a simple language called Scratch that kids aged 8 and older can use to make interactive animations, annotated stories, games, music and art. Through an external sensor kit, media created using Scratch can interact with everyday objects such as pencils or water.

This study suggests there's more opportunities to build and extend environments like Scratch (especially ones that are conversant with the physical world) as children's offerings. (And, of course, when given these types of generative tools for ideation purposes, kids can contribute real value to innovation processes.)

Interestingly, kids' drive to create - and the expectation that technology will assist creative expression - was highly under-acknowledged by parents. When we asked participants' parents outright what their children's favorite computer activities were, only 7% chose some form of creation or design as an option while, not surprisingly, 70% selected gaming. By contrast, children's own inventions revealed artistic design as a close second to gaming.

Selection of themes coded in children's drawings (n=126)

The Social World is Growing - and Shrinking?

Social networking was especially popular amongst 10- to 12-year-olds, who contributed 56% of all socially-enabling innovations. What's more, some participants expressed a desire to expand their social spheres beyond family and friends; they wanted to meet children in far-distant locales (e.g. remotely through immersive "chat" environments).

"I want to video kids on the other side of the world using a different kind of language." - Emma, Age 7

"Continuous connectivity to people and information via the Web is the norm for many kids today, and it seems to be making them feel more capable and independent - making life opportunities feel closer at hand," said Reinis. They can look up any piece of information on Wikipedia in real-time, they can self-learn with sophisticated, interactive games, and they can even video chat international language partners on Skype for free - and many of them want to do these things.

"We see this drive to experience the world at large and the drive to express oneself in it as symptoms of a much larger phenomenon - a special brand of confidence - which we're calling 'digital optimism'," she continued. For kids today, the world, ironically, feels smaller and more accessible - just as their awareness of its size, diversity, and possibility is increasing.

*The names of some of the children have been changed to protect the participants' privacy. In select cases, participant drawings may be modified solely for the purposes of removing identifying information (e.g. the participant's name).

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how new information and communications technologies can enhance human experiences. Latitude's user-centered research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify concrete opportunities for Web-based innovation. "Children's 'Future Requests' for Computers and the Internet" is one installment of Latitude 42s, an ongoing series of open innovation research studies which Latitude publishes in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and opportunity discovery. For more information on this study and its applications to your business, email Neela Sakaria.

Understanding that kids are excellent innovators, Latitude Research in conjunction with ReadWriteWeb recently conducted a study asking children to ideate concepts for new computer and Web technologies - and the results are in.

While it's not too surprising that kids today think about digital technologies (and the experiences they enable) as a given, the study found that kids desire increasingly immersive content experiences, better integration of digital technology into physical objects, spaces and activities, and more intuitive interfaces - 37% of participants' creations didn't even bother with the traditional keyboard/mouse interface.

What's more, our participants' ideas weren't just forward-thinking; they were also surprisingly down-to-earth, with only 4% of kids' "future requests" being impossible demands for today's developers (e.g. time-travel, teleportation, etc.).

"We chose to use kids for this study because they're closer to the problem at hand - closer to their core desires," said Jessica Reinis, an analyst at Latitude who headed up the study.

"They're not thinking within the confines of current market offerings or in terms of routine life situations; they're thinking about what they'd like to do right now, without regard to what's possible or what would be popular with other people. Those are questions that we explore more in adult innovation studies like The New Sharing Economy, but kids are able to tap into a more basic creativity that's great for ideating on really broad questions like this."

Kids today have different experiences with technology during a critical learning period than present adults did, which means they also have different understandings about what it can and should do. "Kids will figure out how to use whatever they get in front of, and that will become the framework inside of which they experience, critique, and create everything else," said Geoff Barnes, Director of User Experience at Elliance. "I think that kids' visions into what the future of technology will look like are highly collaborative with present-day, actual paradigm shifts, like the interaction paradigm shift of multi-touch."

Study Background

The study was comprised of 126 children, aged 12 and under, from across the globe. Here's what we asked them:

"What would be really interesting or fun to do on your computer or the Internet that your computer can't do right now? Please draw a picture of what this activity looks like."

Parents told us some basic facts about their child's Internet usage and technology exposure, along with household demographic information, and submitted their child's drawing.

Screenshot of participant drawings in a Web application (part of Latitude's Lumière Suite) that allows users to contribute and interact with visual input in a behavioral environment.

Latitude coded each of these images (future technology ideas) for common themes, then analyzed them in aggregate. Some examples of broad themes included: interest area, interface characteristics, degree of interactivity, physical-digital convergence, user's desired end-goal, social connectivity, etc.

Next page: "I'd like it if my computer could convert images or food and make them real."

Study Findings: Digitize the Offline World

Thirty eight percent of children's innovations called for more immersive content experiences than are commonly available now, with features like 3D effects (10% of all submissions incorporated 3D) or seamless integration of digital technology into the physical world. In many cases, devices could create physical objects such as food or facilitate physical activities such as playing a sport.

"I'd like it if my computer could convert images or food and make them real." - Joanna, Age 10

These requests don't seem too radical if you've ever encountered MIT's SixthSense technology, which transposes digital information onto everyday, physical surroundings, and relies on more instinctive, gestural interactions:

For kids today, true synchrony between physical and digital worlds is becoming an expectation rather than a novelty. And the demand for it is expanding beyond the realm of visual media.

"Currently, we have the 'iGeneration' understanding of device as simply an extension of oneself - and we still think that's pretty novel," said Reinis. "But kids are showing us that the next step will be exactly the converse of that. It'll be a shift from smartphones that can go anywhere to The Internet of Things which is everywhere."

There may be openings to apply mobile RFID/sensors, or even something like Stickybits (which allow people to attach digital content to real-world objects) to register and socialize offline activities through smarter device interactions. HopeLab is currently developing gDitty, a wearable device for kids that records and converts physical activity to points which can be redeemed for "virtual goods and real-world rewards, including customizable avatars, gift cards, even the opportunity to make a donation to a cause."

Regardless of physical world integration, the vast majority of participants, 83%, desired technologies capable of highly intuitive interaction. They requested responsive virtual environments, 3D games, "homework help" computers, telepathy as a form of device input (4% of all submissions), etc.

"Virtual mind-reading games" - Mark, Age 12

Future Request: Content Interaction (As Opposed to Device Interaction)

Kids are already thinking about 3D effects for in-home gaming and media viewing, an offering which is just beginning to hit the market as 3D-enabled TVs. This anticipation of the near-future suggests that visually immersive features alone won't satisfy any audience for long. "We've been investigating a number of emergent media trends and this big idea always comes through; essentially, that users are, more and more, desiring additional ways and means to interact with content - to interact with it and to personalize it," said Reinis, who has worked on 3D studies recently and specializes in interactive advertising research at Latitude.

Kids today approach technology with matter-of-course acceptance - and greater expectations. "It took my 7 year-old son, Alex, under 10 seconds to figure out how to turn it on and unlock the iPad's screen, and no time whatsoever to understand that touching icons launched apps. Or that swiping the screen controlled pagination. Or that pivoting the screen revealed different data presentations," wrote Barnes in a recent blog post.

"I'm hard-pressed to envision his generation entering college and enrolling in required courses with names like 'Introduction to Computing,' to learn about file systems, Microsoft Office, the worldwide web, and email. As I watch Alex, in fact, the idea is as nonsensical to me as offering college courses on how to read an arrow. It's become that obvious," he wrote.

So what might next-generation interaction be like? Based on study findings, it seems that, eventually, each user will crave the ability to architect his or her own content experience: to step into it, to interact with characters, to add and remove plot constraints - ultimately, to alter the course of future events. It would mean the difference between interacting peripherally with a technology, and interacting with the actual story being told through the device.

Download a PDF of the study summary. Part two of the results will be published tomorrow, July 8.

*The names of some of the children have been changed to protect the participants' privacy.

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how new information and communications technologies can enhance human experiences. Latitude's user-centered research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify concrete opportunities for Web-based innovation. "Children's 'Future Requests' for Computers and the Internet" is one installment of Latitude 42s, an ongoing series of open innovation research studies which Latitude publishes in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and opportunity discovery. For more information on this study and its applications to your business, email Neela Sakaria.

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Parents are taking an active interest in their children's safety online, going as far as to checking their search habits, using parental controls and filters and setting limitations on the amount of time their kids spend online and on cell phones. Yahoo learned that 71% of parents have implemented one of these tactics in an attempt to keep their children safe online.

Another popular way for parents to keep an eye on their kids' online footprint is to run a search on their name and see what comes up. Dads seems to be more protective of their children online, as 53% said they search for their kids' names 2 to 3 times a year, while just 38% of moms do so. Dads are also slightly more likely (71% versus 63% of moms) to take action to help their kids understand the ramifications of posting information online.

Personally I find these numbers encouraging. Online privacy has been a hot topic for discussion lately with the highly-publicized concerns over Facebook - the social network of choice for the majority of Internet users. Overall, Yahoo gave parents a rating of B+ in terms of how well they are doing to protect their children. In other words, parents are doing okay, but there is still more they could be doing. Parents sometimes don't want to become a nuisance or a nag to their kids, but when it comes to online safety and privacy, it's a good thing to be annoying about.

"Our research illustrates the clear link with literacy resources at home and a child's reading ability," said Jonathan Douglas, Director of the NLT. "By ensuring children have access to reading materials in the home and by encouraging children to love reading, families can help them to do well at school and to enjoy opportunities throughout their life."

The connection between books and cell phones in the hands of children is a strange one for the NLT to make. In the press release announcing the study, NLT does not define what they consider to constitute "owning a book," - a significant factor that could change the way readers interpret the study. There are, however, ways to help the literacy problems by taking advantage of the popularity of mobile devices.

While children certainly seem more interested in chatting with friends on their phones than sitting quietly and reading a book, some argue that this debate shouldn't become about the media which children consume. Teacher and education blogger Vicki Davis told ReadWriteWeb that she believes kids benefit from reading on phones or computers as much as they do from paper.

"Whether on a mobile phone, iPod, Kindle, or handheld device or paper - the medium should be irrelevant. The important thing is that students can read and write, or in this case read and text," said Davis. "If ancient man had demanded that their children continue to use their tools - we would still be looking for cave walls to draw upon - paper has been an essential tool of the mass-produced industrial age and electronics are the essential produce of the interconnected information age. Education needs to wake up and harness these tools for learning!"

Redefining "Reading"

Michelle Manafy, editorial director at Information Today, says older generations need to open up their definitions of what "books" actually are. "The very notion of literacy and reading itself has evolved beyond the capacity of many who grew up with linear reading experiences to understand," she says.

"If every kid has a phone, then maybe we need to be looking much harder at creating content optimized for this reading environment, to creating a reading experience that coincides with their voracious appetite and shorter attention spans, with their tangentially and serendipitously connected non-linear reading style and socially mediated tastes," said Manafy

Mobile technology blogger Jason Harris agrees with Davis and Manafy, and adds that the drop in reading skills are likely due to a combination of factors.

"The world is changing in that mobile phones are falling into the hands of new populations, including young children," said Harris. "Of course, there's a competition for time in this age group, so if they're on their mobile phones then all leisure activities, including reading, will take a hit. But are reading scores falling because of this one factor? I doubt it."

Are Parents to Blame?

Marnie Webb, co-CEO of TechSoup Global says the technology is not to blame for the decline in reading skills. As she puts it, the onus is on the parents to make sure the kids have the same access to books as they do phones.

"It doesn't have to be an either or. We can't make it an either or," says Webb. "But that seems to me to be up to grownups [...] I have to put the books in the kid's pocket. Just like we put the phone in the kids' pockets."

Agreeing with Webb is Peggy Anne Salz, founder of MSearchGroove.com, a leading blog on mobile search. Salz says the report is "a call to parents to participate in their children's education, a process they can only improve and enhance with anytime, anywhere mobile access to educational materials."

"Read between the lines, and this is not about a connection between children having a mobile device and any drop in grade school literacy skills," adds Salz. "The report argues there is a link between having literacy resources at home and a child's reading ability. That's an access issue that mobile devices can solve for children in the U.K. and around the world."

It is certainly true that mobile handset penetration is reaching a younger and younger audience, but that is not necessarily a direct catalyst to lowering reading scores. Whether the presence of books in a home affects a child's ability to read is another argument, but it seems strange to try and hook that on mobile phone usage. As technology evolves, so too will the way kids "read" and consume information, so basing studies on the presence of older forms of information digestion may become less and less appropriate.

UPDATE: I received a response after reaching out on Twitter to LeVar Burton, known famously for his love of reading and as the host of the children's show Reading Rainbow. What did the book lover think of the fact that more children own phones than books? "I believe kids need both," he said.

Photo by Flickr user eyeliam.

The problem though, as any good parent will tell you, is that young children need to be taught how to use these types of services appropriately. They don't instinctively know what details should and should not be shared, who is safe to friend and who isn't ("don't friend strangers" is the new "don't talk to strangers," it seems), and they certainly aren't prepared for the real-world dangers of using larger social networking services like MySpace and Facebook where issues like digital stalking, harassment and cyberbullying are a sad consequence of public socializing.

Enter Togetherville.

Togetherville is Safe

In the press release, the site creators call Togetherville a social network with "training wheels" and the description couldn't be more accurate. The network has been designed from the ground up as a safe place for children to try out social networking.

Here, parents can be highly involved with their children's online ventures. They don't have to demand the login from their kids - they're given their own login where they can access their child's account and activity, as well as interact directly with what the child is doing.

One of the most interesting aspects about the new service is how it establishes online friendships. Instead of leaving it up to the child to friend others, Togetherville uses the parent's Facebook account (by way of Facebook Connect) to instantly build communities of trusted, real-world friends the child's parent already knows. These communities, dubbed "neighborhoods" in Togetherville's terminology, are made available to the parent who can then pick and choose which adults and children their child may connect to.

Facebook Connect allows the parents to discover other Facebook friends who have already established an account on Togetherville. It streamlines the process so parents don't have to "re-friend" their friends, they just "discover" them. When a child logs into Togetherville, the approved parent and child combos are seen as neighborhoods where "kids" are separated from the "grownups." There is no way for other, unknown users to contact a child outside of this process.

Another important element to the site is the lack of anonymity. On Togetherville, children use their real name and an actual photo. That may be startling to some adults who have traditionally been told that posting your child's picture online is dangerous, but in Togetherville's safe, stranger-free environment, it's not a concern.

...And It's Fun!

Beyond the stringent safety measures, which should assure parents, Togetherville is actually fun to use. Site activities include posting "quips" (pre-screened status messages like "Aced the test! Oh yeah!"), playing games and creating art projects via third-party, pre-approved apps, watching (age-appropriate) funny videos and cartoons, sending virtual gifts, earning badges for positive behavior and earning a virtual "allowance" that can be spent on goods, games and gifts. (Virtual goods and the allowance launch later this summer.) Games, videos and creations made on-site by the child can also be liked and commented on by parents, and can be easily shared back the parent's Facebook account for "instant bragging rights."

Growing Up Digital: Some Concerns

Togetherville is one of many new social networking sites aimed at introducing kids to the concept of digital identities in safe environments. Everloop, for example (still in private beta), is similar but is positioned towards older kids, tweens and young teens.

The idea of using sites like these as safe training areas where children can learn best practices and good online behavior is brilliant. The only downside is that a child's history of interactions, creations and friend lists don't come with them when they move from site to site as they get older. Although Facebook Connect makes the set-up process easier, we wish the exiting experience could somehow be improved so that the child's creations are archived off-site for later access. At the very least, it would be nice to export the child's art projects as digital photos.

One day, when these sites are no more (or simply forgotten about), so much can be lost. Unlike Crayola-made drawings hanging on the fridge, digital art and expression is harder to archive. Status messages that fade away into oblivion are more ephemeral than pen-and-ink diaries that are a kick to re-read after years have passed. But perhaps that's just how it is these days. Impermanence is par for the course on grown-up social networking sites like Facebook; it's best to prepare kids early on for that fact of digital life.

Best of all, with games like these, kids will no longer be passively glued to their sofas as this new AR project encourages the kids of stand and use their body and arms to control the games. The Do Crew developers state that their mission with the game is help combat the growing epidemic of child obesity.

"Children will not stop watching television, and parents will not stop feeling guilt about that fact. So, where does that leave us? It leaves us with a rare opportunity to acknowledge this epidemic and treat it at the most basic level," the site says. "The Do Crew team is dedicated to making all passive media active, and we believe that with a little technology and imagination we can reimage the personal computer or console video game system as effective electronic exercise equipment."

Going after the children's entertainment market could also be a boon for the augmented reality industry which has yet to find the public spotlight. Time Magazine named AR as one of the top tech trends to watch in 2010, and by engaging children, AR may be able to make significant strides towards mass public adoption and acception.

Actually, AR experiences aimed at kids are not a new concept; a LEGO Store installation that helped kids see 3D reprensentations of model kits right on their boxes, and a web-based Topps baseball card experience that made the players on the cards come alive in 3D are two of the most well known AR roll-outs to date. New projects like Do Crew are not only great for kids, but also for AR as a whole as it strives to gain credibility and traction with as wide an audience as possible.

Dave Stanton of the Poynter Institute leads an SxSW session: "My Three-Year Old is my Usability Expert."

Recently, PayPal's Developer Challenge crowdsourced ideas for better integrating payment into developers' own applications. And last year, Netflix awarded $1 million to the team that improved its recommendation algorithm by more than 10%. (Over 50,000 contestants entered the challenge.)

With so much impetus behind technological advancements, some innovative minds -- particularly in the areas of design and usability -- are looking back to a kind of vintage simplicity in distilling the problem and solution principles underlying their creations.

Last month at SXSW, Dave Stanton, a cognitive researcher and Technology Fellow at The Poynter Institute, ran a session entitled "My Three-Year Old is my Usability Expert."

In certain contexts, children's natural limitations turn to strengths. "Children are terrific UI testers because they haven't developed the language necessary to parse text instructions; they have to rely on visual cues," explains Stanton. "Children can help us balance intuitive interfaces with the domain-specific attributes designers use to convey personality."

My 3-year-old daughter is my usability expert

Young children adopt a fundamentally different approach to technology. We can see this at work in simple ways - in the toddler who, accustomed to her mother's iPhone, instinctively approaches a laptop by swiping a finger across it. "We are moving toward more naturalistic interfaces utilizing feel, sound and sight for both user input and device feedback," describes Stanton. "I'm excited to see the elegant modes of human-computer interaction we can uncover by studying how children leverage these mechanisms in problem-solving scenarios."

In conjunction with ReadWriteWeb, Latitude Research is taking children's unique approach to technology one step further. "This project is a step toward understanding how children can help us generate abstract solutions with potential real-world applications," Stanton says.

As part of an open innovation study (whose lead analyst is Jessica Reinis), we're asking kids, age 12 and under, to create ideas for future Web technologies (or, more likely, to demonstrate the underlying, creative-thinking principles which beget these types of innovations) by drawing the answer to a simple question: What would be really fun or interesting to do on your computer or the Internet that you can't do right now?

"The difference between today's children and yesterday's was what technologies were available to them as they tried to make sense of the world around them," said ethnographer and social media researcher danah boyd, when we asked her how pervasive digital culture might be affecting younger generations. "But youth accept whatever contemporary technology is available and try to see if it makes sense in their lives. Adults are the ones who have to shift their understanding of the world based on technology." Naturally, we're interested to see how Web solutions can be informed by more technologically "intuitive" sensibilities when child becomes creator.

Screenshot of the Latitude/RWW study: Kids' Future Requests for Computers and the Internet.

To participate in the study, click here. Latitude's open innovation privacy policy is available here.

Photo by cell911.

Now prepare yourself for POGS' return - POGS 2.0, if you will. Except this time around, the chips have been wired for the digital age. And today, the "game" is a social network called FaceChipz instead of a old-fashioned variation on marbles.

FaceChipz is a new social networking site designed just for kids. Intended primarily for the "tween" set who's outgrown children's websites but hasn't quite aged into Facebook yet, FaceChipz merges real-world networking with an online component. After purchasing a starter set of five chips, the child has their parent register an account for them on the FaceChipz website. Then the game begins.

The child registers all their chips online using the unique identification code found on the back of each token. When all the chips have been registered, they can be distributed to friends. In return, the child's friends will hand them their FaceChipz. When the exchange is complete, the child returns to the computer to register the new codes from the chips they've collected. The end result is a social network of friends with a physical counterpart in the real world - a brightly colored collection of FaceChipz that can be toted around just like POGS were decades ago.

Social Networking Training Wheels

Parents will appreciate the fact that the FaceChipz network offers a more secure and private environment for their kids than traditional social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. No strangers can solicit friendship requests here - the child's only online friends are those they've connected with in real life. There isn't even a search mechanism for friends to find each other without first trading chips. While that design decision is obviously meant to keep FaceChipz sales steady, the company claims it has another goal as well: to prepare children for the online world of social networking. Reads the company website, "FaceChipz wants to help kids stay safe, but also enable them to communicate using today's technology platforms...If your kids are savvy enough to make appropriate real world friendships, we believe that those relationships will be suitable and appropriate for the digital network they create."

Other privacy protections are offered too. For example, the code on the back is only valid upon first entry. Afterwards, if a lost chip ended up in a stranger's possession, they couldn't use the code to connect to the child. Also, FaceChipz profiles are designed so kids are only permitted to post a limited amount of information and their email address is not stored. FaceChipz makes sure that none of their site's pages are indexed by search engines. Finally, when the child is ready to graduate to a more adult network, their account can be permanently deleted.

Will FaceChipz Become the New POGS?

All the elements are there that could make FaceChipz a success: collectible tokens, an online element and parent-friendly company ethics. There's another bonus, too: the chips are cheap. A five-pack is just $4.99 at ToysRUs and the one-time site registration fee is only $1.00. If anything, the fee is only there so mom or dad get involved and are made aware of the child's online activities.

However, in this day and age, FaceChipz may be too innocent a portal to attract tweens. On a web filled with insane YouTube videos and the (often disturbing and occasionally pornographic) webcam-hopping service, Chatroulette, will a "your first social network" site even have a chance? Will today's youngest generation take to a modern equivalent of POGS or have they seen too much already? Only time (and sales figures) will tell.

Thanks to Springwise for spotting this.