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How to fight net bullies?
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How to fight net bullies? What kind of photos can I share about myself in Facebook? Who stole the items I had bought with my Linden dollars in Second Life? Can someone rob my furniture in the Habbo hotel? How can a child avoid being cheated in the Internet? Such questions may the children of the new digital era ask.
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One answer to these questions is the Sim Safety net game, which was presented to the SimSafety project partners for the first time at their Nicosia meeting
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in Cyprus November 8-10, 2009. The game, designed and developed by the project consortium, aims at improving the safe net use of children.
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A web tool to protect children
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The project partners felt enthusiastic about the SimSafety game, the test version of which was available for the first time. The project partners expected that the SimSafety
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game would gain popularity in schools and believed that the game could be an important web tool for schools and homes to protect children from the dangers of the net.
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Dangers simulated in a safe environment
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SimSafety is a 3d game created on the OpenSim platform, similar to Second Life. The players who are presented by their personal avatars in the game, move - go or fly - in an environment
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looking like an amusement park. So the risks of the Internet are placed in a safe environment where children can face simulated dangers without having to experience the real ones.
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Learning scenarios will be available
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Learning scenarios will be developed for teachers of primary schools who can take the SimSafety game and other SimSafety materials into use in their lessons. The pupils can use the SimSafety game almost intuitively, whereas the teachers need to know more about the pedagogical significance
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of the game, of course.
The SimSafety game can be used as a learning object and as a tool of eLearning, and the project consortium hopes that the SimSafety game and the whole learning scenario can be involved in the syllabuses of schools and in national curricula in many countries.
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Testing begins
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Dafnord Association, the Finnish partner of SimSafety, was represented in the Cyprus meeting by the language teachers Saara Peutere-Heikka and Ilpo Halonen. They presented the plan of extended participation of SimSafety test groups of children in Bulgarian, Finnish,
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German, Hungarian, Italian and Slovenian schools. The SimSafety game will soon be experimented in the schools of the partner countries in Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Romania, UK and Finland, and the partners do their best to expand the use of the game also elsewhere.
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Next meeting
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SimSafety belongs to the multilateral projects of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the EU in
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2009-2010. The next meeting of the project partners will take place in Portugal in June 2010.
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11/11/09 - Ilpo Halonen
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EU and Internet Safety
