I agree with Mindstorm. Teaching kids about programming/technology HAS to be play-based. Legos are very play-based (if you like them, of course). I have volunteered with several classes that teach programming to kids and very few seem to grab their attention because they start with teaching "this is a variable, this is how you assign a value, and at the end of the class when you've slogged through all this stuff, you'll get to do something fun with it." Most of the time the end-of-class project was something the kids never wanted to do in the first place. It has to feel like you're playing the whole time you're learning programming. For myself, when I'm having the most fun programming, I feel like I'm playing with a computer, not working on it. If you don't start with PLAY, it feels like WORK, and if it feels like work, then I say go play soccer.

So does each letter have a unique image then? I would build your image string separately and not use Replace. I'm not a VB coder so here's some pseudo code: sGlitter = Request.Form("text") imageString = "" For Each Letter ltr in sGlitter imageString = imageString & "<img src=http://www.icecandyeffects.com/glitter2/pink1/" & ltr & ".gif>" End For Sorry for the inexact code, but you get the idea???