St. Louis School Wins Award for Internet Safety

St. Louis School Wins Award for Internet Safety from FBI’s Safe Online Surfing Program

A school located on the Hill is the first in eastern Missouri two win a national FBI internet safety challenge.

Dean C. Bryant, the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI St. Louis Division, presented the award to St. Ambrose School for winning the FBI Safe Online Surfing (FBI-SOS) Internet Challenge.

FBI-SOS is a free, web-based initiative designed to educate 3rd through 8th grade students about cyber safety. The students learn about how to protect personal information, password strength, cell phone safety, social networking, and online gaming safety. Then, they take an exam about what they learned.

St. Ambrose is the national winner for January 2013 in the Stingray category (51-100 participants).

The FBI’s Safe Online Surfing program has rules that include awards, games, and an exam.

The awards include the FBI-SOS Cyber Trophy. This goes to top scoring schools in each category. When possible, winning schoos receive a visit from a local FBI Special Agent to congratulate them on their victory.

Categories are determined by the amount of people participating from each school:
                        Starfish            1-50 participants
                        Stingray           1-100 participants
                        Shark               More than 100 participants

Schools wanting to get involved can access the SOS program any time during the year, but can only participate in the competition once per school year.

There are several games that the students can play to learn about internet safety and security. All of the games take place on Cyber Surf Island. Each grade level has different games to navigate while on the island. Once students have completed all of the numbered learning portals for their grade level, they can click on the exam balloon to take the exam.

There is no need to complete the program all at one sitting. However, the exam can only be taken once, so 

students should be careful not to click on the exam balloon until all of the learning portals have been completed.

 Online safety and security programs like this one by the FBI are giving elementary children an introduction to the potential problems with internet identity theives and hackers. 

Watch video of the award ceremony at St. Ambrose here:        
http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/368603/3/St-Louis-school-wins-internet-safety-award