Educating Young Children to go Online Safely

August 22nd, 2008 by mas | Filed under Education & Skills, Films & Social Media, Innovation & Technology.

Heres a short film about the making of ‘Hectors World’. You can see the Hectors World films on the thinkuknow website, set up by the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre.

Whether theres any plans to create something similar aimed at young people I don’t know but I always think its a good strategy to target children as young as possible for stuff like this so that it becomes second nature. The thinkuknow site also offers a downloadable ‘Hectors World Safety Button’ that ’swims’ in the top of the screen and if a child sees something they don’t like they can click the button which will cause the screen to be covered ‘until they get some help’. What the likelihood of a child using that button is I’m not sure as I’m pretty sure its in most childrens nature to be curious about everything!

The buttons only for Windows OS which seems a bit sloppy (can it be that hard to do the same for Macs & Linux?!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw4F0sbJmmU