Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Digital Citizenship Lessons from FBI - Cyber Surf Islands

We need to be doing as much as we can providing resources for students so they can become educated online digital citizens.  The FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, has created a series of lessons for grades 3-8 in a flash-based game environment called Cyber Surf Island where students are to learn content and then take an exit exam demonstrating their understanding.



Students click into a grade, like Ice Island, and choose from 7 different lessons.  When they have mastered the content they can take the exam.


Lessons include a variety of tasks.  One lesson provide users with vocabulary words to learn and short check for understanding questions.  Another shows video segments from NetSmartz.  Students can complete a word search and learn their definitions.


These lessons might be great to do with one projector and whole class discussion.  Like lesson 6 where students can determine what is actually meant with a common online statement.


Teachers can sign up their school, so their kids take the test, and compete against other schools from around the country to determine if they can make their school appear on the Leaderboard.  Tests are half hour with different questions for each student. 

Who knows, if your schools does extremely well you can even have an FBI agent visit your classroom.