ZUI.com

Last night while I was watching mind numbing television after the kids went to sleep I saw a commercial for Zui.com. Now normally I don't pay too much attention to commercials. They are just noise but this one caught my attention because it was for an educational website. I got on and it was definitely not what I expected. I thought it would be another game site for kids but it's not. It's a site that offers collections of games on any subject. Kind of like Google. You type in what you want to learn about and then everything they have comes up.

I started with the tour which was very informational. They explained that they use advertising which is how ZUI keeps their products free but they are very selective in what they advertise and clearly mark advertisements so parents and kids know

what they are looking at. They also recommend that parents stay involved and check what their children are getting into when they are on the site just to keep them safe.

I decided to test it out and search basketball. I really like that you can narrow your search and just find images, games, videos, or websites. You can also just look at everything they

found and pick from there.

I also like that when you click on a link it doesn't take you to youtube to watch the video or to a different website. Everything is embedded in

their site so kids aren't going places on the internet that will get them in trouble.

The site says that it will tell you what your child spends most of their time doing in a pie chart. I haven't gotten an e-mail yet and it took me a long time to figure out how this was going to work. You have to connect this site with your facebook account. They will then send you e-mails telling you about your what your child has done online. I don't really like that I have to use my facebook account to do this because some people don't have facebook. I wish that were an option but that there were also a registration form for others. I also played with the "How old are you?" tab to see if it would give me different content based on the age I put it, but it didn't seem to. I may have just been searching the wrong topics though.

This is a great site and is going into my favorites. I like that it is a safe place for my kids to search for things they are curious about.