Minyanland

I first read about the online world known as Minyanland on Kevin Jarrett's great blog. I encourage you to check him out for a plethora of awesome resources and ideas. As described in his posting Minyanland is a virtual world designed for young kids where they can learn about running a business, managing money, owning property, investing and much more. I decided to check it out with my 8 year old daughter this morning before she headed off to school and so far we are both pretty impressed.

The registration process didn't require her to enter an e-mail but it was optional for me to enter a "parent e-mail". I decided to do that and immediately received a message with a password that allowed me to login and see basic information about my daughter's account. It appears that all players start with $50,000 in savings and they get a condo worth another $50,000. That's not too shabby although I'm not sure my daughter played long enough to even realize she had a place to live.

From a parents standpoint, or the standpoint of a teacher, I wasn't able to do much unless I was willing to sign up for my own "critter". It would be nice to be able to monitor student/child accounts a bit more but maybe that is a bit too big brotherish. Either way, I'm interested in exploring this world a bit more and seeing what my daughter thinks of it. I may even have her post a comment or two explaining her impressions of Minyanland since I'm sure she will learn about the various features of this virtual world much more quickly then I will.