Mara+Pets

Mara Pets is a great social networking site designed for children. The site gives children ample opportunity to commnicate with one another while learning important things about pets and how to take care of them.
 * 1. What is the site's mission? (i.e. purpose of the community and its objective) **

**2. Who are the community's members?** The community's members SHOULD be children, although I did not find anything that enforced that all members are in fact children.

**3. What are the guidelines for membership?** The only guidelines for membership is a valid email address, I did not think this was very safe.

**4. What are the guidelines for adult involvement? (teachers, parents)** There were no seperate guidelines for adult/child involvement. Birth date was asked while signing up but I used different years, making myself older and younger, and all ages were accepted, a valid email dress was the only requirement.

This site has so many great features. There is a vast discussion forum that is divided into sub topics as to what you what to discuss, for example, topics related to Marapets, games, and entertainment (movies, books, tv shows, etc.) are all possible dicussion forums you can enter. The site also has games in which you can earn currency to take care of your Marapet. The site has Maratalk, which is a chat area. The site also has a Trade feature, which you can trade items or currency. There is an adoption feature, where the player can go to adopt a Marapet. Tons of fun stuff!
 * 5. What features are included in this site? (e.g. message areas, discussion forums, blogs, chats, photo and video sharing, games, etc…) **

** 6. Is there a clear rationale for the features that have been included? ** Yes. All the features are clearly labeled on the homepage, when you click a feature their is a clear definition of what that feature should be used for.

** 7. In your opinion, can this site be used for an educational purpose? Can it be related to curriculum? Why or why not? ** I think that this site can be used to educate children about proper treatment of animals. I think it is important to teach children that animals have needs too, just like humans do. I think it is a good idea to educate children on the importance of adoption, and this site teaches that. It is also good for showing how you need money to take care of things, when you play a game on this site you earn currency which is used to care for your pet. I am not sure if this could be related to curriculum though because with the way schools are today, unfortunately there is little time to stray from the rigorous curriculum in which we follow today.

I do not think I wold recommend this site to parents simply because of the safety issue. Although it offers great things, I would not want to be responsible for anything that could happen. Also, there are advertisements on the pages that some children may be curious enough to click on. Any children's page that hosts ads I do not trust completely.
 * 8. If it can't be directly tied to curriculum, would you recommend it to parents? Would you let your own children use the site? Why or why not? **