Site of the Day: Meet Me At The Corner
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Site of the Day on 8 Jul 2009.
We all know YouTube, but I’ll bet lots of you have not heard about Meet Me At The Corner. Meet Me At The Corner (MMATC) is a YouTube-like site, except that videos aren’t all there is. And unlike YouTube, it’s entirely educational in content and completely dedicated to kids.
This interactive site features episodes of videos that are either submitted by children or produced by the site owners for children. According to children’s author and founder of MMATC Donna W. Guthrie, the site aims to build a community of children that will utilize video for storytelling and self-expression.
And why not, when you consider that more and more young children are consuming online videos than ever before. The good thing about this site is that it’s clear about what it wants to do and what it offers kids – providing a safe site for net-gen kids to meet and interact. In the process they get to expand their horizons and that should whet their appetite for learning.
Video episodes on the site have featured an interview with a cookbook author Abbey Dodge, a clip on International Year of Astronomy 2009, and pop-up book artist Robert Sabuda. These videos are all helmed by kids, which is great. Right now, a lot of the episodes come from the US, but MMATC hopes to go global and feature real submissions from kids everywhere. That would be cool. Kids sign up for a free account with MMATC (activated only after parents have been informed), and get to send in their own shorts and video clips.
Every video episode has extended learning activities designed by educators as well as links for kids to go a little further. Visit the feature on Queens Botanical Gardens and you’ll be linked to the Gardens website, instructions on building your own worm bin, and a Discovery Kids page titled, The Yuckiest Site on the Internet. The other neat stuff would be links to Contests that invite submissions – poems, poster designs, etc.
The thing about MMATC that may put some folks off is, almost all of the links lead to commercial sites hawking products, publishers of homeschool curricula (sample pages!), or those that limit access to members, or unless subscription is paid. For instance Recommended Books links you directly to Amazon, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing really. After all it is the biggest bookstore online with possibly the largest range of books available on earth! We’re all so used to free stuff online we forget that good websites can’t keep on giving; sooner or later, someone’s got to pay. So while MMATC is free, you’ll have to navigate through other sites and links that aren’t.
But there’s still loads that give kids (and parents) free access, and lots of educational stuff to keep a child occupied. MMATC is designed for kids 7-12 years and I do think the videos the stuff that will keep them coming back. Pay the site a visit and tell your friends about it.
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