Spongelab

Spongelab provides interactive simulations, videos, and images, all aimed at teaching kids science using a variety of multimedia content. Its heart is in the right place, but it seems that for every good quality, there's something the site could improve on. Some games, like Biochem Gems, appear flashy and fun at first glance but ultimately aren't intuitive and don't have much learning value. Other activities, like the supercool Genomics Digital Lab, show promise but are slow to load (plus, kids have to navigate through several menus to play). Build-a-Cell has great graphics but isn't that much fun; kids simply drag and drop images into a cell. Knowledge Mine lets kids answer biology trivia questions, but there's a technical glitch that causes the images to block the answer button. Frustrating! If Spongelab could fix all these annoying bugs, they'd have an outstanding science resource on their hands.