In February we asked Children about their favourite superheros and superhero toys. With new Spiderman and Batman films coming out in 2012, as well the new Avengers movie, this year is going to be huge for fans of silly costumes!

For anyone who has wondered who would win a fight between Batman, Spiderman, and Superman, the answer as far as kids are concerned is Spiderman! The wiley webs-slinger was voted the most popular superhero beating Batman and Superman into second and third place. However, it isn’t just the classic DC and Marvel characters that kids enjoy, The Incredibles polled higher than characters from The Avengers, Fantastic Four, and the X-Men.

If you want to know which characters make the best toys or how well female superheros fared, see the full report on Toy News.

This excellent TED Talk is one of over 400,000 videos available on YouTube for Schools. The presentation by Gabe Zichermann is on how video games can make kids smarter. It’s a great video, but aside from praising games he makes the point that children live in a world full of stimulation and traditional teaching finds it hard to compete – kids want more and they want it faster.

YouTube for Schools is a trimmed down version of the ‘proper’ website and designed to allow teachers access a tailored collection of educational videos organised by the level of their students and subjects.

We know YouTube is popular with young people, but it’s not all about sneezing panders and talking dogs. Previous research of ours has shown that for many school children YouTube is their preferred search engine for homework as they seek out video on their subjects over written articles. For example base jumping Norwegians might not seem educational but can act as a platform to introduce kids to forces.

Research we carried out for the 2011 Children’s Media Conference found that 46 per cent of boys watch online videos at home and of the children who consume online video 66 per cent do so through YouTube. However, YouTube is often seen by schools as a distraction and by parents as unsafe, so is often blocked along with Facebook and gaming sites.

YouTube for Schools will that children learning about the heart can hear from Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor who had a stroke herself; and those being taught statistics can get extra help from the Khan Academy.

YouTube for Schools is YouTube’s most affective avenue into education, but could it also help its parent site lose some of its credibility? We find that children are often attracted to the sites anarchy and layout – it could be the case that seeing the service as a tool for school might result in children being put off.

For a full run down of what YouTube for Schools is all about we suggest you read this article from Digital Trends. Or alternatively, and rather suitably, watch this YouTube video.

What do you think about this new YouTube product? Is it the future of teaching or nothing new?

In December we found out what children really thought of tablet computers and what they use them for. Is it all about Apple or do child-focused tablets like the LeapPad and InnoTab have a place in the market?

Apple awareness starts young, between the ages of six and ten 79 per cent of children are aware of the iPad. Leapfrog’s LeapPad and VTech’s Innotab scored an impressive 59 per cent for awareness, not bad for such new products. Despite the high level of iPad awareness only 19 per cent of the children surveyed have access to one.

If you want to find out how children use the tablets and which score highest reading and playing games, read the full report online at Toy News.

Dubit recently studied the popularity of toys based on online worlds, looking at Disney’s Club Penguin, Mind Candy’s Moshi Monsters, as well as Build-a-BearVille, Poptropica and Webkinz.

The study of 500 kids showed that an amazing 55 per cent of children owned a toy from at least one of these games. The most popular was Disney’s Club Penguin, with 32 per cent of children owning a branded toy from the online world. Club Penguin, which has 150 million registered users (globally) launched in 2005 and has spawned a series of books and video games. Each toy is connected to the virtual world as they’re packaged with a code that allows items to be unlocked in the virtual world.

Moshi Monsters, whose plush toys and Mini Moshling Treehouse are expected to be among the most popular toys for Christmas this year, was a close second. The study showed that even before Christmas a quarter of UK children already own a Moshi Monster or a Moshling (a Moshi pet). Since launching in 2008 Moshi Monsters has gone on to accumulate 50m registered users, with one in three British children believed to be a member. Even with the publishing industry struggling The Moshi Magazine, launched in February, has accumulated the largest circulation of any UK children’s magazine.

As a comparison with toys related to kid’s TV shows, the research shows that just as many children own Club Penguin toys as they do toys based on Dr Who. Furthermore, Moshi Monster toys are more popular (25%) than toys based on the cartoon Ben 10 (20%), and only marginally less than popular than Spongebob Square Pants (29 per cent).*

Interestingly, toys from virtual worlds are gender-neutral, with equal popularity across boys and girls.

73 per cent of the children questioned had played at least one of these online games, with half having played Club Penguin and 47 per cent stating that they’d played Moshi Monsters.

Dubit’s head of research, Peter Robinson, commented: “Children are spending more time playing in virtual worlds and now those worlds are becoming part of their offline playtime.

“Today’s kids are platform agnostic and don’t care where their favourite stories and characters come from. It used to be the case that books or TV shows launched characters and toys, but now online entertainment is proving just as important.”

*Research into children’s TV shows was carried out in October for Toy News.

In November we found out what will be topping kid’s Christmas lists and whether toys are still the biggest gift or is it all expensive gadgets and video games.

When given the opportunity to pick anything for their lists, unsurprisingly high value electronics were the most popular gifts, followed by video games. It wasn’t all bad news for toys, as while they weren’t too popular with older children they came top for seven to eight year-olds.

Wondering how lists differed between boys and girls and whether kids really want gift vouchers? Read the full report online by visiting Toy News.

Dubit’s research focused on children’s online video consumption answering questions such as where do they do it, for how long, and what’s popular?

You can View the whole presentation below. Visit our contact page to get in touch if you have any questions about the study.

I’m 19, and I genuinely wish Facebook hadn’t even been started.

Yes, I use it daily; I have it synced to my phone so I don’t miss a wall post, a status update, or a photo tag. As much as it hurts me to say it, I probably couldn’t live without it, but for me, teenage life would have undoubtedly been easier without it.

Next time you’re on Google, type in your name, see what comes up. When I type in my 13-year-old sister’s name I see her Facebook profile, her address, and even her phone number. Privacy settings? I Doubt she even knows what they are.

How many Facebook ‘Friends’ do you have? 100? 500? 1,000? My 13 year old sister bragged to me she had “nearly 600 friends!” When I asked her how she knew that many people, she just rolled the eyes, and replied with “I don’t, but it’s a big number isn’t it?”

Schools need to start educating their students by updating their own knowledge on social networks, and then educating 13-year-old girls (and others) on the dangers of having a public profile or accepting people that they have never met before. If I asked my sister who Ashleigh Hall was, and how she died, I wouldn’t get the answer that was all over the media last year.

There is also the stress and pressure of being entertaining, and getting Likes. My sister uploaded a profile picture and it only got two Likes in the space of about an hour, so she changed it. Isn’t this the opposite of what was drummed into us all at school? That you shouldn’t care what people think about you, as long as you’re happy? Of course this causes insecurities, jealousy, and unhappiness. But that’s another issue altogether.

Of course, this isn’t specific to girls in their early teens. I have friends who do it too. They will post pictures of themselves in their prom dress and be genuinely upset if their picture receives less likes than their friends. Hurtful comments are nothing new, it’s just Facebook makes them more visual.

We’ve all seen the stats, heard the reports, and most likely experienced cyber bullying. For me, Facebook makes it easy. It removes the face-to-face, personal element of bullying, and makes it even easier for those insecure bullies by simply putting a screen between them and the victim. It’s almost as if Facebook removes the consequences from the act, as bullies think that they can just, get away with it.

I understand that there are many advantages to Facebook, but I’d struggle to say the good outweighs the bad. Sure, it allows me to manage parties and share photos but teens have been doing this for years, without Facebook or even the internet.

I’m still using Facebook; the company knows being connected to our friends is more important to teenagers than another demographic and takes a brave teen to step away from this, I just hope more can be done to protect and educate those just starting out on the social network.

We wanted to see which current shows have the best toys and what shows children think could make great toys in the future. Who is going to be the next Spongebob?

Of all the shows the children were asked about, it transpired that CITV’s Almost Naked Animals was the show most kids wanted to see as a toy.  The show scored highest in both show popularity and toy preference.

Of the shows that already have toys, Spongebob Squarepants was the most popular with 57 per cent of children watching the little yellow water dweller.

You can view the report online by visiting Toy News.

The Seminar combined new research with existing experiences to outline how young people want to consume stories. The Swiss Family Robinson, which turns 200 years-old next year, was chosen as a case study.

Our presentation used original research, focus groups, and knowledge learned through working with young people for over a decade. The result was a guide on how to take children’s stories online.

The video includes clips from our focus groups which are represented as screen-shots on Slideshare.

The presentation is available below as a slideshare and you can also watch the video on this page. If you want more information on how to take your stories online then get in touch. You can also subscribe to our YouTube and Slideshare profiles for future presentations.