Digital+Citizenship

My major is elementary education, so I wanted to choose a site that would help an elementary classroom. The site I chose to use was Privacy Playground: The First Adventure of the Three CyberPigs. It is made by Media Awareness Network and is designed for ages 8-10. The site follows three CyberPigs who are playing games on their favorite internet sites. Along the way they encounter marketing ploys and schemes and online predators. The purpose of this game is to teach kids how to spot marketing scams and spam and teach them safety about online predators. There is also a teacher’s guide on the site that gives the teacher instructions for the game, background information on the topics, and worksheets and handouts for classroom use. The site is easy enough to where kids could play on their own, without teacher help. The kids could play the game in free time and learn about internet safety, so that the teacher does not have to monitor them so closely when they are on the internet. Throughout the CyberPigs adventure, there are five questions that are asked to the user playing the game. The questions are about internet safety and if they are answered correctly, a star is given to the player. There are five questions, so the player can have 5 possible stars by the end of the game. I think I would grade this activity on participation, with maybe extra points for the number of stars earned. If the class was given background information on internet safety and had spent time on the subject prior to playing the game, I might modify the grading to take into account the number of correct answers. This game would be fun for kids and they will like traveling with the CyberPigs and playing with their friends. There is also another adventure on the website, the second adventure of the CyberPigs, which could be played after the first. 