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Less-is-More YouTube
If, when you type “beaver” into the YouTube search box, you’re looking for a broad-tailed rodent to show your kids, TOTLOL may be for you. It’s a “community-moderated” web site where parents can find YouTube videos vetted by other parents for kids by age group. It’s free to join.
Parents scout YouTube fare via a TOTLOL interface—the YouTube experience is the same as always, but you don’t leave the TOTLOL site—and then easily submit videos to TOTLOL with a review and tags. The community then views submitted videos and answers survey questions. I watched three such videos, and the only questions I got were “Is this video appropriate for children?” and “What age will enjoy it most?” While I suppose these are the key questions, I think “Will this video drive adults insane?” would also be useful, though this can be covered in the YouTube-like comments section provided under each selection.
Although TOTLOL is fairly new, the offerings are widely varied. Aside from current TV clips, collections include Schoolhouse Rock, French animation, all the music your kids love and you’re sick of (Dan Zanes, Laurie Berkner, The Wiggles), and animation from the Vancouver Film School (“Canada’s premier post-secondary entertainment arts institution”).
The community aspect includes a few regular perks of such sites, including friend-ing and messaging. The home page is a bit bare-bones, but with greater use, this will undoubtedly change. TOTLOL is user-friendly, and may make entertaining your kids a little easier. But, if because it’s on a computer, and maybe in a foreign language, you think TOTLOL is somehow loftier than TV, it’s not. Your kids are still staring at a screen.
Tags: community-moderated, TOTLOL, youtube
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"Your kids are still staring at a screen."
Better that than beaver.