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I had a fascinating time talking to my eight year old kid and the virtual world (others would consider it an MMO, or Massively Multiplayer Online game) that she frequents. It's called Disney Fairies: Pixie Hollow.



Pixie Hollow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Review Disney Fairies: Pixie Hollow - MiceChat

I then observed her as she logged into her account and made her way through the world inspired by Disney's Peter Pan franchise. Apparently, kids her age enjoy the prospect of being in the world of Tinkerbell, the fairy in Peter Pan, and meeting other "fairies" who populate this world with her. What astounded me was her ability to effortlessly connect with other players, especially fairy avatars that she just met in the world, and became her "friend" (she already has a very long friends list). I was enjoying how she played in this virtual world so much that I recorded a couple of videos, which I might upload in YouTube soon. In one of the videos, I was sort of giving her an interview, on what she was doing in this world and asked her to explain to me how to do stuff in it.



I was truly impressed when she started to show me how to navigate the world, and how to collect certain items for bonuses that would allow her to get clothing and accessories for her fairy--it all seemed so second nature to her. Added to this, her English language skills seemed to be aided by being in this world, for the text input parser will show a word in red, if it was typed in and spelled incorrectly, and she would then do backspaces and retype the said word, until she gets it right. Looking back at my own childhood, seeing her being so adept at using such a complex interface and having the advantage of an auto-spell checker, I really think that, learning-wise, the kids of today are truly blessed in this aspect, with the advent of such technologies that actually help them become more social and better at things such as grammar and spelling and interface navigation.



There was this interesting moment when she actually told me that she found out one of the fairies she befriended was actually a boy (the MMO is apparently girls-only). This suddenly made panic bells ring in my head, when I realized that there could be issues of vulnerability in worlds like this--I mean, what if some pedophile was lurking around disguised as a cute fairy? Granted, such a person might be physically distant from my kid, but still, I was more concerned about issues on a grander scale, as regards to security of this virtual world. But before I can continue worrying with this disturbing thought in my heads, she told me that she can actually tell if the fairy is a little girl or someone else (i.e. male or older), but I won't be sharing what she said, and you know exactly why.

Seeing her play in this world, and me being in the business of virtual worlds really created a connection between myself and my child. I believe that the future of education will be continually be enhanced as virtual worlds become more and more sophisticated and hopefully would help children develop skills faster and more efficiently than we ever did as children. This was truly a delightful experience for me and I'm really proud of my kid.

-RODION