Third Challenge: try Hoopla in KIDS MODE!
So, of course, the public library does not filter content for children. We believe in free access to information for all people, regardless of age. We do not filter our internet for kids, and we let kids check out any book they darn well please. We believe it's a parent's job, not ours, to determine what's appropriate for their child and work with said child on finding books and media that are right for them.
With all that in mind, let's approach Hoopla's KIDS MODE setting as a tool for parents, not for library staff.
Pretend you're a busy parent and you want your third grader to pick a movie the whole family can watch during a long car trip. You want to make sure whatever she chooses will be appropriate for everyone, including your 2-year-old, who's been having nightmares lately. NO scary movies! Time to try using Hoopla in Kids Mode!
Sign into Hoopla, click settings, and set Kids Mode to "ON." Now go back to browsing content.
What differences do you see?
Are there times you would recommend Kids Mode, and times you would not?
With all that in mind, let's approach Hoopla's KIDS MODE setting as a tool for parents, not for library staff.
Pretend you're a busy parent and you want your third grader to pick a movie the whole family can watch during a long car trip. You want to make sure whatever she chooses will be appropriate for everyone, including your 2-year-old, who's been having nightmares lately. NO scary movies! Time to try using Hoopla in Kids Mode!
Sign into Hoopla, click settings, and set Kids Mode to "ON." Now go back to browsing content.
What differences do you see?
Are there times you would recommend Kids Mode, and times you would not?
tv and movies are appropriate for kids and families.
ReplyDeleterecommend for when parents want to let kids choose something. no for when adults want to watch adult shows.
A world without adult content...I will point out the option when I demonstrate Hoopla.
ReplyDeleteKids mode takes multiple clicks to find on my phone (Main screen -> three dots -> settings -> kids mode). I also noticed I can't filter by age range in any category... - Rebekah R.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's not exactly granular. Everything from toddler music to Star Wars chapter books. If I were letting my 4 or 5 year old browse, I'd still want to supervise. Still, a really nice way to hand my iPad over to my kid and not worry too much what he's gonna consume.
ReplyDeleteKids mode is a great option for letting the little ones have access to materials they would enjoy watching and reading.
ReplyDeleteKids mode was easy to find on an iOS, but I did notice I could not search within various genres, like you can on regular mode.
ReplyDeleteIt's great. I like being able to pass over my ipad to my son and letting him pick out whatever he wants. Kind of lets him feel like he's running the show- no pun intended!-Xochitl
ReplyDeleteSeems like a great option for younger kids, though my 10 and 12 year olds probably wouldn't find much that interests them.
ReplyDeleteThe main thing I have learned in this experiment is that Prince is not considered safe for kids! I wonder why not! Darling Nikki?
ReplyDeleteANYHOW! I like that it says Kids Mode at the top all big and visible so that it is obvious to parents that this setting is on (or not on).
Even with younger kids who aren't selecting on their own I find Kids Mode helpful just to find things that they are more inclined to enjoy....makes browsing more that more easy. So that is a way I would recommend kids mode! I would NOT recommend it when librarians are showing Hoopla to kids...or when you want sexy words in your songs.
I searched on a desktop and easily turned on the kids' setting. I tried the search box, after someone's comment that you can't search by genres, and saw that the keyword search was pretty effective. When I put in Animation, though, I noticed it brought up all the animal shows, so it seems like it just looks at the initial letters. Good for bad spellers! I looked up Snoopy and it brought up a fun collection, including some tiny learning books (words,shapes, numbers, etc.).You can search by format but you have to come up with the subject search .. in other words, adventure, family, fantasy, etc....These all seemed to work pretty well, though. -- Emily O
ReplyDeleteI noticed that A GOOFY MOVIE and NEWSIES are my top kids' movies, which seems... accurate. It was really easy to turn on and off, which means any kid 7 and up is going to figure out how to get around it immediately (unless there's some sort of password you can add?), but would make maybe "safer" to hand to your littler ones.
ReplyDeleteThere was no option for me to sort by recommendations in Kid Mode. Maybe because I've only checked out stuff with sex and violence so far? Definitely a good option for parents who share devices with their kids.
ReplyDeleteI looked through the comics... Archie Meets Kiss! That exists! Other than that startling revelation, I wasn't blown away by kids mode... good option for letting the kid choose the movie, but it cut down on the sorting options. I don't think "kids" is a genre. It's an audience.
ReplyDelete[this is Margaret btw]
DeleteIt be great if we could sort by age group and language.Seems like there's a great selection of language support materials. I can see this being very useful for parents who let their children use their account. They would simply have to change it to "kids mode" in settings and the adult items they have checked out won't show up. I could see some older kids easily bypassing this since it's pretty simple to change. No password or confirmation needed. If that's the case those "savvy" kids would be accessing Hoopla on their own account/devices I hope:)
ReplyDeleteSorry,I will bypass this one. All the kids I know are either not interested or else beyond kids mode.
ReplyDeleteSorry,I will bypass this one. All the kids I know are either not interested or else beyond kids mode.
ReplyDeleteDoing the challenge on Monday as I don't work on Fridays. Turned on kids mode on the desktop and my Android phone. Pretty straight-forward. Lots of content for younger kids, maybe not so much for tweens. I came across lots of the old Hayley Mills Disney flicks that I used to watch with my grandparents. I probably won't bring it up unless a parent asks. And my three year old already knows how to navigate Netflix and Youtube (#subparparenting) so I probably won't need to occupy him with searching in Hoopla but I might use it to more easily find audio books for us to listen to.
ReplyDeleteThe differences that I noticed, aside from the modified content, was that in Kids Mode there are not featured items at the top of the page and there aren't categories of materials to help filter items. I guess I'd recommend Kids Mode if someone was looking to just see children's items for convenience reasons. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to parents as a way to prevent their kids from accessing content as it seems like a pretty easy setting for kids to turn off.
ReplyDeleteI downloaded a read-a-long book for my daughter 'dragons love tacos' and it was great. It showed the pictures of the book and had good voice over work. She loved it because she hasn't had much screen time.
ReplyDeleteI went to get another read-a-long and looked up Pete the cat. Well after download it, it didn't have the illustrations just the book on tape... Who wants to listen to Pete the cat audio book without pictures?!?! So then I tried a Pigeon book by Mo Willems and the same thing!!!
I figured out that if you look in the audio book section it will not have pictures even for picture books (!?!?) . But if you go to the movies section and see a picture book, then it will have a read-a-long. We then downloaded chicka-chicka boom boom and it was a proper download.. unfortunately it just used up all my downloads for the month.. oh no!!!
I went back to look at dragons love tacos yesterday and I could only have it for a week, ugh! Its more of a book than a movie, but hoopla counts it as a movie.
DeleteI think the Kid Mode is great when you want the movie picked out to be something that you don't have to sit down and explain tricky complicated "adult" things to kids to.
ReplyDeleteBut the lack of genre separation or age range makes it clunky.
I'd recommend it but tell the parents (or guardians) to play around before letting their kids use it.
Some of the books I was looking into checking out were not available which were some YA books and also adult feature films.
ReplyDeleteThe only times I would recommend it is when I know that the kids would be the primary users and sometimes that't the case, that is why I recommend the parents to explore hoopla with their kids so both can feel more comfortable.
The adult content is filtered out in Kids Mode, leaving a huge range of reading/comprehension/interest levels left in the mix. Browsing ebooks, a Berenstain Bears title is right next to The Lightning Thief; seems frustrating to use if you're the kid trying to find something to read. But I can see how it would be useful, to hand over a device without worrying about adult content (especially for movies).
ReplyDeleteI read Josh's comment and I like the kids mode for narrowing down the books for narration for kids. I need more of these but it great to know if a bunch of kids from the same class want the same book, I can direct them to hoopla. I like because it is so easy and so easy to explain.
ReplyDeleteI would say mostly for the younger kids. The kids music selection seems aimed at young kids.
ReplyDeleteI was also trying to limit by age range, ratings, etc. and noticed that wasn't possible. It's good to know this feature exists.
ReplyDeleteTurned on kids mode just to see what it looked like. I've actually checked out an item previously that was from the children's collection. I found it while in "adult mode" because I did a search for Trombone Shorty and a children's book came up.
ReplyDelete