Rewards for chores goes virtual

(Handipointa found Via Dusan Writer)

Handipoints is taking the use of star-charts and scorecards for children’s good behaviour and help with chores around the house into virtual worlds. Combined with tools for creating scorecards, and helping parents with developing reward schemes is a virtual world with cat avatars. Sign up as a family – parents get to set tasks and rewards. Rewards can be linked to rewards from real shops (parents pay for these, as ever!) or to virtual rewards for the child’s avatar.

Avatars can be dressed and accessorised, and the virtual world contains games and the usual good stuff. The one area that could be more detailed on the website is the actual HandiLand virtual world content – is it multiplayer like Club Penguin? If so what safety features does it have?

The reward scheme is detailed however:

Earn purple “Bonus Points” for doing your chores, studying, and staying healthy. Use your Bonus Points to dress-up your Cool Cat, play games, and watch cartoons in HandiLand. What are you waiting for? Don’t just “do” chores, turn your hard work into cool stuff and fun games today!

Still looks fun, and a reward scheme that I can stomach far more easily than that of, say, Barbie Girls. With HandiPoints, spending power comes from chores and parental reward schemes. BarbieGirls currency (B Bucks^TM) is earned in three ways:

1. Play games! Go to the games page to get started.

2. Watch Shows! Visit B Cinemas^TM at the mall to check ‘em out.

3. Enter special codes! They come with select Barbie Girls^TM products. Click the key symbol to type in your code.

To be fair to Barbie Girls it isn’t the only virtual world for kids that worries me – with its not-so-implicit goal of training children to be good little consumers. Reinforcing the concept in children that rewards come from playing games, watching shows (themselves somewhat promotional, I’d guess) and from buying products does not seem a good one, and I was despairing of seeing a model other than this. So while I’ve yet to delve deeper, Handipoints appears to be the first imaginative alternative.

However, I wouldn’t suggest that Barbie Girls is likely to be any less educational than Handipoints. Just about everything is educational.

The question is do we want children learning about rewards the Barbie way?

Even after the recent furore over Miss Bimbo, I suspect that this question will slip by unnoticed by most.