Our family seems to constantly be on the move. We both grew up moving from place to place first with our parents, and now with our family. We seem to have a big problem with itchy feet.
One of the most important things for families that do this is finding a way to communicate with loved ones via long distance. Well for us there is Facebook, Skype, Whatsapp, Instagram etc. But is it really kid friendly? Unless the parent is there constantly looking over their children’s shoulder, the answer is no.
My son just recently turned 9 but like his dad, seems to be very technologically savvy. Here is an example. About a year and a half ago I got both of my kids ipads and put on the parental control features on the web browser, as well as YouTube kids for them to watch age appropriate videos.
Well, Gabe got frustrated with not being able to watch the gaming channels that he used to watch, so he completely bypassed the app by using Safari and going directly to YouTube that way. My point is that no matter how secure you think you have made things for your kids, if they are determined, they will find a way.
This is where we come to monster messenger. Most families now a days have cellphones and no land lines. Some young kids might have cellphones, but ours do not. Monster Messenger is a cute, free, kids friendly app. This app lets kids send and receive pictures, messages and short audio clips to parent approved contacts. The best part is that you get a notification for any friend requests, messages sent etc. to make sure that your kids are safe.
We are not getting paid to review this app. We just wanted to share Monster Messenger because our kids love it.
About Monster Messenger:
Monster Messenger was created by the eduPad team.
eduPad is a startup based in Paris, France, which publishes educational apps under the iTooch brand. iTooch apps, a portfolio of 160 apps covering CCSS curricula from 1st to 8th grade in Language Arts, Math and Science, have been downloaded 8 million times since 2011.
eduPad’s founders, Daniel, Stéphane and Jérôme, are passionate about the potential of tablets and smartphones for education, and committed to bringing to market apps that help children grow and learn with fun.
We’ve received more than 100,000 users’ feedback from the in-App feedback feature in our iTooch Apps from children, parents, and teachers, giving us an unmatched insight into children’s and parents’ needs. It turned out that a lot of this feedback was generic thoughts about children’s’ needs and issues with tablets. Specifically, the main concern was about communication needs/ issues:
- Children were asking to connect with their friends, to collaborate and chat with them;
- Parents were praising our apps but were complaining they found it in general more and more difficult to connect with their children as they were inexorably absorbed by their screens;
- Teachers were raving about educational apps but wished kids would stay away from inappropriate social networks before they were allowed to, because they risked exposing themselves to bullying, violence, and abuse.
One morning in June 2015, they decided they had to do something to address these needs/issues, and boom! Monster Messenger’s concept was born.
They decided to craft an app which would bring children the best of social networks’ features to a secure environment that would foster parent-child communication.
We stated that Monster Messenger’s mission would be dual:
1- to educate children so that they are prepared when they join social networks in the future
2- to help parents re-connect with their childrenIt is a marvelous, never-ending journey we have just started, and we hope a lot of educators and parents will join us and enlighten us with their feedback and personal experiences along the way.
