Google’s Safety Tips for Online Kids

The growing addiction of kids towards gadgets and internet is alarming and are hampering their normal education. Google has recently launched a mission to teach children how to be safe online. Through this initiative, the technology giant is trying to help the school kids to identify and fight against hackers, schemers and other bad actors on the internet.

Be Internet Awesome, is the digital citizenship education program, which Google has recently developed for schools. It comprises of some lessons, a lesson also includes a cartoon game. The games are to help school students between third grade and sixth grade, identify and fight against hackers and other bad actors on the internet. It also helps kids to identify what is bad and what is good for them on the internet.

The cartoon game, which is named as Interland, is an animated world as presented by Google. In the game, children can navigate spammers and hackers in “Reality River” and consider who in their social network can see what they post online on “Mindful Mountain”.

The game which also comes with a lesson plan and classroom activities is helping children understand “the fundamentals of digital citizenship and safety so they can explore the online world with confidence,” according to Google’s site description. Once students learn skills like how to create strong passwords and not share information with strangers, the program encourages the student to be “fearless” online explorers.

At this stage, the program is planned only for the United States but in the course of time, it’ll be launched across the world. Google plans to reach five million school children this year and therefore they have teamed up with the National Parent Teacher Association of the US to organize workshops also for the parents.

In a statement, Julianne Yi, who is leading the Google program, said the program had “proven useful to kids, teachers, and families around the world” and is supported by the National Parent Teacher Association, the International Society for Technology in Education and the Family Online Safety Institute.

Also as an analysis, the Google’s curriculum, which is published in Emerging Library & Information Perspectives, a graduate student journal at Western University in Ontario, writes review about the program, which is very much encouraging, as it writes, “‘Be Internet Awesome’ generally presents Google as impartial and trustworthy, which is especially problematic given that the target audience is impressionable youth.”

Although critics are of the opinion that the program is not addressing the main threat the students face online every day, such as malicious hackers and bullies. Some observer also says that the game is essentially a big advertisement for Google.