A New Web Safety Learning Challenge
At the Institute of Digital Inclusion Acceleration (IDIA), we work with community partners of all stripes to improve access to digital technologies. Recently, a local Daisy Scout troop arranged a meeting in one of our locations so that their Daisy Scouts could learn how to stay safe Online.
Designing a web safety lesson for children at this age group is challenging; the lesson needs to be developmentally appropriate, engaging, and, for the purposes of this design, needed to be designed as a potential "one-off" lesson. As such, we eschewed using a typical slide deck and lesson structure.
Our Approach
Instead, we started with a story designed to show how a young person (or bee!) could make safe decisions to maximize their joy from web encounters. We focused our lesson on three takeaways: using the Internet when a trusted adult was near to help, alerting adults to unfamiliar things using the phrase, "When it's new ask what to do!" and sticking to "approved" sites and resources like PBS Kids.
We included one additional element in the story that was a huge hit with our Scouts. We used real photos from the community with which we were working, and real photos of our staff in the book as well. The scouts loved seeing their community and feeling like the story was about them (and it was!).
Outcomes
The learning outcomes were stronger than we could have expected. The scouts were excited and engaged. They loved reflecting on and naming safe adults in their lives that they could trust for help, and the "When it's new ask what to do" phrase was easy to remember and will facilitate long-term safety online. Finally, the scouts (and parents!) were able to ask the Digital Navigators teaching the class about websites and applications they'd heard about, and the Navigators were able to help everyone navigate safely!
Take-Aways
- Web safety is absolutely an appropriate topic for kiddos in the 4-7 age group, but it should, as noted by other posters in this forum, be a constructive and empowering experience. Teaching fear of technology or relying on dry slide decks is not a sustainable pathway to web safety for young learners.
- Using the anthropomorphic bee character was a tremendous success because we could include visible indicators of her belonging to the neighborhood without accidentally excluding anyone due to physical traits.
- Using a story-based approach to teaching web safety was effective; it encouraged engagement and resulted in high achievement of the learning objectives.
- Including elements from the immediate neighborhood created instant buy-in. We're now working to build similar picture books for our other locations.
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