'Kids Online' Festival to Highlight Kid-Friendly Online Resources

EghtesadOnline: The final phase of Kudak Online (meaning Kids Online) festival will be held in late November to award 25 outstanding ideas, the event's secretary said.

News ID: ۷۴۸۶۷۴

09 October 2019

“Initiated and financed by the Information and Communication Technologies Ministry, the festival is aimed at helping promote the production of children-friendly online content,” Seyyed Jamal Hadian was also quoted as saying by the ministry's website.

The festival was initiated last November, when some 1,100 plans and ideas were submitted for the event, after the ministry invited content producers, including writers, animators and artists, to submit their work through the festival's website.

In the second phase, 25 best ideas were shortlisted in June, each presenting a demo of their work, Financial Tribune reported.

The selected works included, but are not limited to, stories, short animations, web series and educational material.

“Since past few months, the ministry has been offering finalists with financial and technical support to commercialize their plans,” Hadian said.

The winners have been busy making two series of their work, each consisting of 10 episodes. At the closing ceremony, a brief version of their work will be shown to the audience, including prominent investors and animation companies.

Hadian said this will be a great opportunity for animators and artists to encourage private investments, along with the festival's assistance, and boost the commercialization of their works.

ICT Minister's Visit

In a Sunday visit to the accelerator company, Kudak Online, supporting the festival, ICT Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said each one of the teams has the potential of attracting their own audience and finding the market share.

“After the closing ceremony, participants will hopefully be strong enough to survive in the market and expand their activities without the accelerator's mentorship,” Jahromi said.

"That is when the festival's cycle will start anew and the second public call will be issued for the owners of ideas."

Emphasizing the fact that the ministry never interferes with the nature of the content produced during the yearlong event, Jahromi said, "We have only created an integrated framework and an equipped working place for the professionals and owners of ideas. They themselves know how to do the rest."

What It Does

The children’s ever-growing use of the internet has goaded Iranian startups, knowledge-based firms and artists to introduce online services compatible with the Iranian culture.

Concerned with the increasing amount of time children spend online, parents have been looking for ways to monitor kids’ activities on the World Wide Web.

However, according to a survey by ICT Ministry, most parents remain unfamiliar with online parental control services, or do not have access to it.

Because of a shortage of appropriate content for children, the authorities hope to boost the activities of Iranian artists and content producers.

Efforts have been made to devise new means of monitoring kids’ internet access and subsequently, numerous applications and online platforms have been launched in this regard.

For instance, the tech firm Dorsa Family has introduced a full suite of parental control tools in a mobile application for protecting kids online, which block access to inappropriate websites.

The parental control app Dorsa's World allows parents to restrict kids' access to communication services and limit access to undesirable online material. The app can be downloaded from the firm’s website Dorsafamily.ir.

However, controlling kids’ access to the internet alone cannot solve the problem, since there are always ways of circumventing such limits.

Kids have become more tech-savvy than their parents. Offering good quality and children-friendly material, which can appeal to kids, would indeed be a better solution to the growing universal problem.