Cybersecurity for children has become a rapidly growing topic due to the increased availability of the internet to children and their consequent exposure to various online risks. Children start going online at an early age and are doing so even more after the sudden rise in remote schooling due to the COVID19 pandemic. It is therefore very important to provide teachers with proper training in cybersecurity skills so that they can transfer them to their youngest pupils.
SuperCyberKids aims to respond to this need by providing children aged 8 to 13 and their teachers with an educational ecosystem providing learning content on cybersecurity, using a game-based approach to increase motivation and engagement. The content will be delivered through a gamification platform, including two games on cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity games
The overall project approach is based on the delivery of the two main project results: an educational ecosystem on cybersecurity-related skills for children and the related guidelines for implementation.
There are two cybersecurity games developed by the project partners that we are working on and further improving:
- Spoofy (available in Estonian, English, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian)
- Nabbovaldo (available only in Italian at the moment)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cnr.nabbovaldo&hl=en&gl=US
https://apps.apple.com/it/app/nabbovaldo/id1551108241
Project results:
- Design, develop, and test a comprehensive educational ecosystem on cybersecurity-related skills for children, as a socio-educational infrastructure to be used by diverse actors (i.e., pupils, educators, parents) based on innovative game-based pedagogical approaches that can motivate and engage pupils and support teachers in learning design and evaluation, including a wide range of attractive educational materials dealing with the topic of cybersecurity in the classroom to promote kids’ engagement, providing high-quality learning resources focused on cybersecurity.An important aspect to consider in the design is the engagement of the users for whom they are designed, particularly schoolchildren. For this purpose, also digital games and a game-based learning approach can be used. (see WP2 and WP3 in Section 4.2).
- The related guidelines for implementing it. The Guidelines will address two levels of analysis and recommendations: one countryspecific linked to the specific characteristics of the national / local context where the pilot took place, and a second more general level, expressed in terms of policies and recommendations.
Duration of the project: 1-1-2023 to 31-12-2025
Project website
Project partners
- Institute of Educational Technology of the National Research Council of Italy (ITD-CNR)
- GRIFO multimedia (Italy)
- University of Mannheim (Germany)
- ESHA
- European Cyber Security Organisation (ECSO)
- AVANZI (Italy)
- CGI Eesti AS (Estonia)
- Tallin University (TLU)