Bada Bing!
I recently learned about this and had to share with you. Why? Because I'm awesome! Also, you're awesome and want kids to have a good education with as little distraction as possible. Because the pads, pods, smart phones, tablets, abacus and whatever else they have is way too much already.
File this under "oh, I hadn't thought of that". I'm glad the good folks at Bing did. See, here's the thing: search engines contain ads. Search engines also can rarely be stopped at the hands of a kid wanting to get their hands on inappropriate material during school hours. How do you battle that? Sure you can set parameters that can be hacked by an overzealous teen looking to impress their friends (or my almost 4 year old who is currently learning the fine art of coding).
Enter Bing! They have kicked off their new Bing for Schools initiative. What is it? Goodness in a browser, that's what! At least that's what Matt Wallaert, resident behavioral scientist tells me. But seriously, here's the breakdown from what I remember (just kidding, I can barely remember what I ate for dinner. I took notes):
- Schools are generally an ad free zone. So, why do we allow ads to pop up when kids are searching the internet at school? Now, from all searches done from Bing.com, there will be no ads served up on their searches. How awesome is that? Also:
- When a school signs up for this program, it effectively turns on a safe search to filter out adult content. At the school level. Kids can't turn this feature off! Lastly
- Teachers will have access to a short lesson plan to go with Bing's homepage image in order to reinforce digital literacy skills
Are you as excited about this as I am? As the frog princess gets older, I continue to learn more and more on how to keep her safe, focused and engaged. I love that Bing is doing this and here's what I love best: IT'S FREE. Yeah, you heard me. FREE!
How can your child's school get this? Easy. Tell them to! Head on over to Bing for Schools and let your school know this is something they should be looking into! Also, let them know I sent ya and that they should totally be reading what I have to say.
Now for you homeschoolers out there, I did ask about getting those lesson plans to teach digital literacy skills. Head on over to Microsoft's Partners in Learning network for more information you can use in your classroom.
Sooo...what do you think? Â Who wants this in their kids' school?