Game and Site Teach Kids Cyber Smarts Worldwide

International competition honors The MySecureCyberspace Game

The MySecureCyberspace Game and Carnegie Cyber Academy companion Web site (www.carnegiecyberacademy.com) have earned finalist status in a prestigious contest for educational media. The Japan Prize, held annually in October, serves to encourage higher standards for educational audio-visual content around the world. Winners will be selected October 26 in Tokyo, from a pool of 324 international entries from 196 organizations.

"We're extremely excited and honored to have made it to the final round in this international competition," said Ames Kraemer, creative lead on the team of game developers at the Information Networking Institute (INI) at Carnegie Mellon.

The game and companion Web site were designed to teach Internet safety and computer security to children. Created by the INI and Carnegie Mellon CyLab, the interactive materials teach children the strategies they need to keep themselves and their computers safe and secure when online.

This is the Cyber Forensics Lab, where we examine and archive evidence from cyber crimes and track down cyber criminals, says "Officer Ward," a game character who keeps watch over the locked-up cyber criminals. After giving players a brief tour that includes a "Wall of Shame" showcasing the Academy's most notorious villains, he imparts a warning: I sincerely hope that you never do anything to earn a spot on this wall, young Cadet.

In the game, the players join the Cyber Defense training program as cadets at the Carnegie Cyber Academy, where training missions teach players key skills. The first three missions of the game cover the skills of identifying spam, keeping personal information private, and dealing with Web dangers, such as pop-up windows, forms and pages with adult content. A new mission that launches in October—in time for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month—teaches children about cyberbullying.

For example, here are some instructions that character "Betty" gives for the mission on cyberbullying: The bully is going to keep trying to catch you with your guard down and make you upset. You can't give it what it wants by getting upset or fighting back. The only way to beat this bully is to 'kill them with kindness,' as they say. You can deflect the bully's attacks, say, by turning an insult into a joke and getting a good laugh out of it, then its attacks can't hurt you anymore.

The Carnegie Cyber Academy companion Web site is both an educational site and a support site for the game. It provides the public with the game as a free download. Teachers and parents can also download a set of 12 lesson plans that go along with the game.

The companion Web site allows players to peer into the virtual world of the game. Players can get an overview of each mission of the game and download hint sheets about each mission. The hint sheets serve the dual purpose of cybersafety posters that can be printed and posted next to the computer as a safety reminder. On the Academy Library webpage, a "cyberpedia" defines many common Internet and computer terms. Players can follow the storyline of the game by reading the Academy News section, or by following any one of the blogs by the game's characters.

The game and companion Web site officially launched in October 2007 with the endorsement of Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett. Since then, schools around the world have downloaded it for use in the classroom. It is also used by libraries, community centers, and parents with their children at home.

Finalists for the Japan Prize are invited to present their entries in Tokyo on October 23. As a graduate student in the INI's information technology-information security program in Kobe, Japan, Sally Yanagihara was selected to attend and give the presentation to an international audience of media professionals and educators.

"From the very beginning, we based the game on the idea that cybersecurity is a global issue," said Dena Haritos Tsamitis, Director of the INI and Director of Education, Training and Outreach at CyLab. "This is an important opportunity to raise awareness internationally."