State Creates Corner on Web for Kids

By Edwin Garcia, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Mar. 4–SACRAMENTO — The state of California today will unveil Kids Corner — a Web site designed to bring government closer to children.

State officials hope to provide school-age computer users with an expansive collection of links and information, ranging from research tools to entertaining computer games to a not-so-exciting 5-minute, 45-second video of Caltrans engineers singing about driver safety.

The site is: www.ca.gov/HomeFamily/JustForKids.html.

“Oftentimes, parents, especially, are worried about their kids on the Internet, and this is a safe site,” said Rosario Marin, secretary of the California State and Consumer Services Agency, which built the site in partnership with Google. “The information in here is exciting,” she said. “It makes learning fun.”

The site is largely a portal to other child-friendly sites run by the state and federal government.

Some of the links include: movies made in California, a wildflowers coloring book and “healthy eating games.”

A link to the Caltrans Kids Page features printable pages of quizzes, an activity book and travel bingo. The site also links to Find the Potholes! (“See how fast you can find all the potholes as you drive along the highway, but watch out for Caltrans construction zones!”).

Kids Corner will be a highlight of the California Cyber Safe Summit 2008, a two-day convention in Burbank that is sponsored by the state

and offers information about how to better protect children and safeguard privacy.

Contact Edwin Garcia at egarcia@mercurynews.com or (916) 441-4651.

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