Cbeebies, 20.10.11

On Thursday 20th October, BBC Cbeebies gave a talk on the importance of continuing relevance and engagement while maintaining a safe environment for its target audience of 6-12 year olds. They posed the question:

'how to create a safe environment for children online without discouraging participation?'

They then discussed the use of their notice board. It appeared that the majority of the message board users were female and between the ages of 10-13. They also stated that even though the target audience was 6-12 year olds, children are allowed to participate on the message board up untill the age of 16.

How to make signing in something people want to do and rewards for doing so were also discussed. The ideas of a hosted personality web-chats, personalised profiles and identities and the production of compelling content were all ideas.

Enticing people to sign up with new ideas, games and up to date content were used as ways to retain interest and ensure broader usage and exploration of the website.

There are many options open to answering this question, for example talking to both parents and children. Going into schools and doing some research and looking at statistics.