An award-winning site for book-loving kids and moms
Big Universe
An awesome AWARD winning site where kids can read books in a dozen languages and write their own!
The Scoop
Read storybooks and create your own online. Be part of a book loving/book writing community of teachers, authors, and parents.
AWARDS
Mom’s Choice Award, 2008
Parent to Parent Adding Wisdom Award TM 2008
IParenting Media Award for Outstanding Product 2008
National Parenting Center’s Seal of Approval 2008
How It Works:
Free sign up which opens to: “Reader” offers book selections by age level and theme. “Author” with a quick tutorial of “hints” in easy pictures. Creation process uses click and drag and storyboard view. Banks of backgrounds, images, available with the option of importing your own images. Simple prompts to edit/manipulate text size, image size, and font style. A finished book is online to show, share, or submit to Big Universe for publication on site. A membership of $4.95/month, $26.95/6months, $48.95/year adds ability to print your books, use additional pictures and animation, ability to turn off ads and external links, and an automated reading log.
Pluses:
· Promotes love of books
· Promotes, pride, self-esteem and creativity
· Convenient access to themes or titles
· Enjoyable shared experience
· Sophisticated “author” tools, yet simple and fun
· Adults too can experiment with creativity
Minuses:
· Kids may need assistance to author
· Membership required to print
· Type size on reading books is smaller than original
· Low res images of books are watermarked and cannot be saved or printed
· Customer service lags in answering questions
· Only a limited number of created books submitted have been published
Good for moms to know
Also a community with blogs by published authors and a newsletter
Can connect/tag/share with other readers and their storybooks and check out “most recommended, most published” selections.
Members’ avatars indicate “student, teacher, parent”
Show And Tell
6-year old Lailee “make another page…they’re still in space”… “hey, there’s my book!”
Fast Facts
· Brings magic of storybooks to computer screen
· Convenient means to browse, read, or buy
· Hundreds of select titles– categorized by age and theme
· Easy navigator, accessible instructions
· Sophisticate author interface but easy to use
· Opportunity for adults and kids to wax creative
Stats
9,560 members, 4, 141 books, 4,882 books created
Recommended Use:
All ages. Registration must be by person over 13.
How many ‘Clicks’ does this world get?
Come on…this is a total 10 Click site! What do you think? Send your views to OneClickMoms.
Today’s Reviewer is Cynthia Lechan-Goodman
Cynthia Lechan-Goodman is a seasoned educator/counselor/writer/artist. She has a Master’s Degree in Education and Counseling from Columbia, a B.S. in Elementary Education, and what she considers to be the highest levels of advanced education– marriage and being a mommy!
Cynthia writes on parenting and families for publications including Mother and Daughter Bonding, Family Maker Magazine, DUO Miami, is a family entertainment Miami contributor to The Gather Group, has written and edited elementary school books for Scholastic Inc., and taught and tutored from New York down the coast to Florida. For this column on the internet, she brings the grand appreciation of one who has used technology that began with typewriters to the fascination of cyberspace today.
Coming Up Next
Hang on to your hats, because tomorrow we are going time traveling with ClubTimeMachine an amazing place for kids to discover.
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