Teaching Students Online Safety... But Not Like The Dentist

 



Every time you go to the dentist, they make sure to remind you to floss your teeth (because everyone does that every day, and after every meal, and before you brush, because it allows your toothbrush to do a better job). For most people, they nod and agree with the dentist, "Yes, of course I floss. Yes, of course it's important. Yes, of course I will." Yet only about a third of Americans floss their teeth. Unfortunately, similar attitudes can be observed when it comes to talking to young teens about online and internet safety. 

When I taught 6th Grade Tech class, there was a fun slideshow that took about 2 days for our class to get through on many online safety things: texting, posting videos, commenting on social media, and sharing personal information on scams. It was a light course that related to 6th graders well, but it didn't prevent teens from making the exact errors that were outlined in the course. Why? "Because it's the Dentist's job to tell me the effects of flossing daily. Only they care about it." In other words, teens don't care about the long-term effects. This makes sense given that teens don't have a fully-developed frontal cortex to assess risk and forecast future consequences. 

Interland is a fun, passive way to take the 2-day slideshow discussion of internet safety and extend it throughout the school year. This digital tool gamifies the lessons of internet safety so that students don't easily forget the importance of being safe online. 

The games themselves don't teach in-depth lessons on what happens when someone shares personal information on a likely scam, but it does help students recall those lessons while they play a game about attaining as many icons that represent personal information as they can, while hackers try to take their information icons.

I would say this tool is a great post-lesson activity that can be used as a bell-ringer activity, or a reward for completing other in-class assignments. 

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