26 February,2013 04:14 AM IST | | Ruchika Kher
Focus Kids, an integrated kid's media company has launched Internet for Kids, an initiative that is aimed at championing the cause of responsible usage of Internet by kids.
"The objective of launching the Internet For Kids campaign is to acknowledge the fact that kids today are at some point in their lives exposed to the Internet, whether their parents, teachers or any other elder person in family likes it or not. These kids are born in the age of âGoogle' and âlikes'; and the Internet has invariably become their way of life.
This early exposure and knowledge of Internet and technology is somewhere resulting in increasing the gap between kids and parents," says Swapnil Puranik, business head, Focus Kids.
The initiative intends to bridge this gap by making parents and kids understand the medium better, telling them about effective ways of using the medium and thus, helping them make responsible and correct decisions.
Involve the school
Special sessions at schools are being orgainised to propagate the same. Till now, the initiative has seen audience in schools such as St Francis Xaviers (Kanjurmarg), ST Mehta High School (Ghatkopar), Savitridevi Hariharan School (Kandivali) and St John Baptist High School (Thane). In the coming days, sessions are lined up at PJ Pancholia School (Kandivali), Sri Ma Balniketan School (Thane), DJ Doshi Gurukul English Medium School (Ghatkopar) and St Anthony's Girls High School (Chembur).
The sessions focus mainly on three aspects - Introduction to the concept by a representative to the students and teachers, presenting a three-minute interactive edutainment AV (audio-visual), with two characters, namely Good Internet and Bad Internet, and Distribution of Annual Activity Calendar to be filled by the kids, noting down their daily activities on the internet at the end of the session. For example, which website did they visit? What purpose did they use Internet for on a particular day?
"The core purpose of all these three elements is the interaction which we do with kids. It has been an encouraging experience so far with more than half the attendees participating in the spot quizzes, opinions and other interacting points," shares Puranik.
To make this initiative more effective, the representatives of the campaign intend to reach out to at least 300 schools in 2013, and connect with 2,00,000 kids and their parents. They have also developed a PDF guide for better Internet parenting, which can be downloaded from their website. For each 1,000 downloads of this PDF, they will donate a desktop computer to a deserving school.