Join Our Team To Promote Kids Stamping

dssmith,

Enjoy! You sound full of curiosity which is a great attitude for anyone
who collects stamps. There are hundreds of thousands of different stamps available
from every part of this planet that depict nearly any subject you might be interested in --
and 95% of the available stamps are very very affordable.
I hope you'll share your enthusiasm with others to introduce stamps to new collectors.

I was a bit surprised to find that there are virtually no online, interactive philatelic based games. (APS site only has a few PDF printable game? Hmmm.)
We can't have that, so I generated a few and put them on Stamp Smarter. I can add more if folks think they are worthwhile.
http://www.stampsmarter.com/crossword_landing.html
Don

I looked back through this post, but did not see any mention of a "Stamp BINGO" game.

Back in the 1970s (yes, I'm older than most dirt!) I was part of a local stamp club which had a decent student representation. Someone had taken a set of BINGO cards, and added stamps in place of the numbers. Each of the original 75 numbers on the BINGO card were replaced by a stamp from that country. Thus, numbers 1-15 in the "B" column might have been from countries between A-E, etc., numbers 16-30 in the "I" column then would represent countries between F-J, and so forth. Finally, we had a set of 75 3x5 cards prepared which named the 75 countries represented. The deck would be shuffled, then counties called off in sequence until someone had a "BINGO" or their card was filled.

I suppose with today's technology, one could actually create the BINGO cards digitally, and have them available on-line where they could be downloaded and printed, thus saving the preparation time.

This was a great way to become familiar with the markings on stamps from different countries. And probably inexpensive to make up.

I'd like to thank Don for his link to StampSmarter. We've been looking for any philatelic computer based games for kids. We are in the process of trying to design our own for the Welcome to Stamp Collecting Pavilion at World Stamp Show NY2016. In the youth area we will have six new Dell laptops running Windows 10 Pro available. We hope that the games can be used by APS after the show.

Michael Bloom
Chair, NY2016 Entry Level and Youth Committee
Chair, APS Collector and Student Education Committee

Michael,
If APS would like the code for the games, or like new games generated, I would be happy to assist. That way APS can host their own interactive game web pages if desired.
Regards,
Don

I believe that after talking to my good friend at length his friend is going to take on the task of the website and app. It will cost around $200.00 to get it done. Although the grass is no longer growing in the frozen tundra I've been busy at work on this project. The website will be a forum also. He did bring up an interesting point which is the age you can register (he thinks 13). Will know more tomorrow.
Tom

Tom,
You will need substantial legal advice for a 'kids' web site, especially if you have a forum. You will also need to look at liability insurance and make sure that you limit legal exposure if some predator uses your site to interact with children. You will have to put security things in place that will stand up in court to protect not just the children but also whomever owns the site. A much safer approach is not allow interaction like a forum where 'connections' can be made, a 'read only' site removes much of this potential liability.
Don

Kids are welcome here, duh.

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) is a United States federal law, and the FTC enforces it. They have gone after a number of website including ones like Girl's Life, Mrs. Field's Cookies, and Hershey Foods. The FTC fined the website Xanga $1 million dollars for allowing kids under 13 to sign up without parents consent. Anyone starting a website targeted at kids should get legal advice. Of course, I guess they could go set up a site using a hosting company in Kathmandu and dodge this if they wanted.
Don

It is things like this that makes me ponder our society today. I frankly don't know what to say.

Don, I would be interested in getting the codes for the games. Did you write the game programs? Are you available to write other game programs? I'm new to this forum and don't know if I can post my email address here or how to send you private mail. If you go to the APS website -> Contacts -> Committees you can see a link that will get a message to me.

Michael Bloom, Chairman, APS Collector and Student Education Committee

Don and Tom,

Regarding children. When I started the APS StampBuddy program and presented the program to the APS Board, the APS attorney made it very clear that we were not to deal directly with youth. Of course StampBuddy is a live mentoring program. Unfortunately, it's always wise to seek legal counsel, even if just for one consultation. I don't think you'll have any legal issues with a website, but if there is ever direct in-person contact, a whole new set of warnings apply.

So why did this topic die in early January? It's 4 months later and not one added a single comment. Did everyone move to another topic here?

I've a few out-of-the-box ideas and thoughts that concern BOTH the younger crowd and the older crowd. Nothing sells more than grandpa and grandma pitching in!

Waazwi

Dying?
I don't know about the thread dying, but I put in a few hundred man hours on this topic since January. APS has stayed in contact with me and it appears that they will be using both the World Stamp Identifier tool and the kids games at the NY World Show. I think their will be some prizes for the kids for getting things like the high score on the JigSaw puzzles. The stamps I chose were based upon my understanding of the related classes for kids at the show.

APS also appears to be interested in moving these to the APS server but this would happen sometime after the show. I mocked up a APS looking web page (everything still hosted on my site) at this link http://www.stampsmarter.com/aps/ident/default.html.

I am not aware of other online stamp games for kids.
Don
APS #094826

Hi Everyone,

Don is doing a great job of putting together the best Stamp Identifier and helping us with youth stamp games that will be running on the six laptops in our StampBuddy microscope cluster at WSS NY2016. After the show, we intend to leverage Don's work by putting the stamp identifier on the new servers at APS. Also, we will be ramping up a lot of new programs for both youth and adult beginners. I hope as many of you as possible visit our Welcome to Stamp Collecting Pavilion and the TurningPoint Pavilion Theater. At my suggestion, APS has just completed two professional quality videos: one for youth and one for adults. Come and see it.

If you don't mind a political plug .... I am running for the position of APS Director-at-Large. My portfolio is all about education and membership growth. Please vote for me.

Michael Bloom
Chairman, NY2016 Entry Level and Youth Committee
Chairman, APS Collector and Student Education Committee