FBI’s SOS Safe Online Surfing Game is a Hit With Students

 https://sos.fbi.gov/ is a great resource for students, parents, and educators to help engange students in learning about online safety. The lessons are broken down into “islands” for the appropriate grade level and covers a wide range of online safety topics including: Privacy, Reporting, Cyberbullying, Passwords, Netiquette, Copyright, Virus Protection, and Online Predators.

Screen Shot from FBI’s SOS online safety website

Students enter the appropriate grade level island and will start working their way through the levels. The first few levels ususally give the students background information, vocabulary, and lead them through questions to get them thinking about the various topics. By the time students reach level 3, they are given a variety of videos to browse and discuss.

I have found that a few of the levels would benefit from an inclass or online discussion of the topics discussed, but these activities serve as a great starting point for a unit on online saftety.

Student Exams: At the end of each island, is the opportunity for students to take a summative exam on the topics covered in the activites. To give your students access to these exams, you will need to apply for a teacher account using the “teacher registration” form. This usually takes a few weeks to get a response, but once you get a confirmation email, you will be able to create “classes” and generate test codes for your students. Although the process is a little cumbersome, it does give you a nice neat package for a lesson on cyber safety.

Do you have any other great online resources for teaching or learning about cyber safety? Share with us in the comments below.