It is a desire as old as human kind, to make the imagined real. Pygmalion imagined a woman that he then sculpted, fell in love with, and in the end, the gods granted his sculpture life. Perhaps it is some of this drive to make the imagined real that is responsible for the success of great artists making that which they imagine real in the form of their artwork, and the success of great politicians making that which they imagine real in terms of reforms to make the world a better place.

To me, the ability to take ones imagination into a piece of technology and make something real is an important part of what makes good technology interesting. It is part of the requirement I placed on my older daughters. They could play any computer game they could create. It is part of why I’m so interested in the N900 as a phone where I can easily create new applications.

Yet perhaps the place where this is most important to me is in computer games. Years ago, the text based virtual worlds that I found most interesting where those that gave the most opportunity to create. LambdaMOO was a great example followed by Second Life as we moved to three dimensional games. These were virtual worlds where adults could create things that they imagined. OpenSim became even more interesting as a virtual world where there was even more opportunity to create.

So, I started my kids programming in Logo. I introduced them to SmallTalk and its variants, with Squeak EToys being my current interest.

As a general rule, I’ve disliked many of the commercially produced games, especially those that target kids. They are too mind numbing and there aren’t enough opportunities for creativity.

Yet the other day, I read a press release for Shidonni. “Shidonni, winner of the 2009 Parents' Choice Website Gold Award, is an online community designed for children ages 6-12 that focuses on nurturing children's creativity and imagination.”

The website had a video introducing Shidonni:

The idea of a virtual world where kids can draw their own pets, worlds, as well as food and clothing for the pets is very appealing. A downside is that it uses Microsoft’s Silverlight, which limits the machines it can run on. I did manage to get it loaded onto an old Linux Laptop that I have, but it ran incredibly slowly.

Yet the idea of kids being able to draw their own pets and worlds is a great starting point. What if you could take a drawing of a pet and have a stuffed animal created from the drawing?

Pretty Cool. However, at $79.99, it is pretty expensive. That’s over twice as expensive as many of the high end webkins, and ten times as expensive as some of the lower priced webkins.

However, when Fiona saw the one-of-a-kind Shidonni animals, she of course wanted one right away. She offered to chip in some of her savings. I told her that she should save up for it.

So, besides learning about the joy of creativity, she may also learn the value of waiting and the value of a buck. All of them are great lesson. So, I’ll be keeping a close eye on Shidonni and encourage any of my readers with kids in the six to twelve year old range to consider doing the same thing.

What do you have found for cool online tools to encourage creativity?