Season Five of the Cyberscout Program opens with almost 300 kids trained

Season Five of the Cyberscout program opened successfully in the beginning of 2019, and until March twelve two-day trainings were already conducted. A total of 295 more fifth-graders from 10 localities in the country have joined the growing community of cyber scouts.

The Cyberscout training program of the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre and Telenor is successfully carried out for a fifth consecutive year and raises more and more interest among the schools in the country. For this season the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre has received almost 60 applications for the training from all over the country.

During the trainings the new cyberscouts they became acquainted with general network risks and the ways to prevent against them and to handle them while using different interactive exercises. The children are already prepared to advise their peers on internet-related problems and to spread knowledge on online safety among other kids, while getting together in groups and carrying out different activities.

During the first day of the training, by using a ‘studying through experiencing’ technique in individual and group activities, students learn about the main threats on the Internet: technical issues (viruses, ‘hacked’ profiles, etc.), risks associated with the network as a social environment (contacts with strangers, possibly with bad intentions and including pedophiles, also online harassment from peers, etc.) and problems that could occur when using the Internet as a source of information (fake news, manipulations). Students study the standard methods of prevention (antivirus software, social media profile safety settings, verification of information that strangers provide online) and reaction (reporting and blocking, flagging, etc.).

During the second day of the training the fifth-graders are preparing to carry out the three roles of the cyber scout: 1) to serve as an example for responsible behavior both online and offline; 2) to advise their peers when they have problems on the Internet, and 3) to share their knowledge on online safety with their peers and parents using planned activities carried out by themselves, while working in teams.

After the training, certified cyberscouts get organized in cyberscout squads and continue to work on carrying out missions for sharing knowledge on online safety.

More information on the program can be found here.