Goodbye, the site is owned and was operated (until he went to prison for the 2nd time) by a twice convicted paedophile who is now probably out of prison and earning money every time somone downloads a resource from the website.
Funky this is the letter I used:
Dear Mrs. D
Whilst looking through E's bag this weekend at her homework I noticed that the times tables grid she has been given was downloaded from the Sparklebox website.
I am a little uncomfortable with this as the owner of the website Samuel Kinge, a former primary school teacher, was in January of this year (2010) convicted and imprisoned for the second time for child internet pornography offences. His first conviction in 2005 was under his previous name of Daniel Kinge (he changed his name by deed poll apparently in order to make it easier to continue offending).
Before his conviction there was concern that he was using the blog part of the website to access children and encourage teachers and parents to send in photographs. The site had something called a conduit toolbar which users downloaded and this generated income and tracked visits to websites. I am not entirely sure how it worked. However my current concern is the way in which google ads generates revenue for him. Revenue is earned not only from click-throughs to ads but every time a unique user views an ad. This means that simply visiting or downloading resources generates profit for the owner.
Additionally of course I feel very uncomfortable about a school and children distributing and displaying resources which bear the Sparklebox branding. Many local authorities have blocked the site although the reasons for this were not made public at first in case it hindered the police investigation and I know that many teachers are not aware of the true situation.
Yours sincerely
Elphaba Thropp