Markers of Excellence: Websites for 3-5 year olds.
The website that gave me inspiration to create Righteous Servant and serves as guide for design, ideas and depth is http://www.poissonrouge.com/poissonrouge.php . Righteous Servant aims to be similar to Poisson Rouge but with the emphasis on teaching God's Word, principals, virtues, Biblical Stories and characters in a fun and engaging way. Please check out Poisson Rouge, it is awesome! If you know of any websites teaching Christian content to kids that comes close to the excellence of Poison Rouge, please share it with us.
My initial focus for creating Righteous Servant is aimed primarily at 3-5 year olds but older children will also enjoy using it as well. Righteous Servant will adhere to several markers of excellence for a website aimed at 3-5 year olds. 3 year olds or older beginning computer users will need assistance with any computer interacting. Practiced children should be able to interact with the website once the following prerequisites have been met one way or another.
Prerequisites: for traditional keyboard/mouse computing.
- The child either knows how to or someone helps with these tasks:
- The computer is turned on/logged in.
- The website is brought up on the screen. (opening a browser and loading a website)
- The child knows basic website browsing conventions.
- The arrow you see on the screen is related to the the mouse in your hand.
- When the arrow changes to a pointing hand, it means that you can click it/something should happen.
- A back arrow or a site specific icon usually or often means that you can go back to where you were before.
- A forward arrow usually means that that's what you can do next.
Markers of Excellence: Websites for 3-5 year olds.
- The child's home page opens immediately to where a child may begin interacting. If a child cannot immediately begin interacting, you as an adult must stick around and help!
- The child's home page is free from clutter. Links to other parts of the greater site for parents/adults/older children will be placed out of the way and will open in a new window/tab, but the focus will remain on the child's page. Children get confused when a new page opens and they don't know how to get back to what they were doing.
- The design of the interactions are intuitive and easy enough for a 3 or 4 year old to understand. A child shouldn't have to ask for much or any help.
- Intuitive forward/next and back/previous/home icons with consistent placement.
- Arrow/cursor changes to a hand when you can do something.
- Minimal if any instructional text.
- Activities will be designed for 100% success such that there is no possible way to get something wrong. Children need to learn and explore at this age, they don't need to be tested on their skills.
- If all the blue items go in the blue basket, then it won't be possible to put a blue item in a red basket and then later give a bad score for wrong answers. ONLY blue items can go in the blue basket and blue items can go nowhere else. 100% success!
- If spelling a word, the “J” only goes where the “J” goes, nowhere else and no other letter can occupy the space where the “J” goes. 100% success!
- Activities won't require completion before going back or to the next. Partial completion is still 100% success!
