My kids play online games all the time. The biggest problem I have with the games, besides not having time to play, is how some of the games try to lure kids into a monthly subscription. Club Penguin is a good example of this. You can only do so much with the free version. My nine year old has subscribed to Club Penguin several times for a month. She always gets bored of it after a few days. Then it is always a trial finding out how to cancel the subscription so I don't have to keep paying $6 a month for a game she isn't using. Six months later, she rediscovers it and wants to subscribe again.
This being said, I love all of the free opportunities online for kids to practice reading and math in the guise of playing a game. I love all of the opportunities for kids to develop thinking and creative problem solving skills through gaming. I love the opportunities for learning to work cooperatively through games. This past summer, we began circulating ds games and hosted some share play days where we supplied the games and kids bought their ds. All of the games we supplied were single card-multiplayer games. It was a blast. We also had Scratch classes for kids in fourth grade and up to give them the opportunity to create their own computer games and share them with other kids online. And just think, when I was in library school in 1991, there was this cool new thing called the internet...
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