About Us
The NetSmartz Workshop is an interactive, educational safety resource from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children® (NCMEC) and Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) for children aged 5 to 17, parents, guardians, educators, and law enforcement that uses age-appropriate, 3-D activities to teach children how to stay safer on the Internet. Read an overview of NetSmartz age-appropriate materials for each age group.
What are our goals?
The goal of the NetSmartz Workshop is to extend the safety awareness of children to prevent victimization and increase self-confidence whenever they go online. These goals include how to:
- enhance the ability of children to recognize dangers on the Internet
- enhance the ability of children to understand that people they first "meet" on the Internet should never be considered their friend
- encourage children to report victimization to a trusted adult
- support and enhance community education efforts
- increase communication between adults and children about online safety
The NetSmartz Workshop teaches children three basic rules for online safety.
- I will tell an adult I trust if anything makes me feel scared, uncomfortable, or confused.
- I will ask my parents or guardian before sharing my personal information.
- I won't meet in person with anyone I have first "met" online.
History of NetSmartz
Since the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children was established in 1984, it has worked to make children safer. In 1994, long before this nation realized that the Internet might pose a threat to the safety of its youngest computer users, NCMEC published a brochure titled Child Safety on the Information Highway, providing families with a roadmap to stay safer in cyberspace. Later, when cases of online child enticement garnered front-page news nationwide, NCMEC's brochure, Teen Safety on the Information Highway, became the first publication of its kind to try to prepare teens for the risks they face online. Every year more and more children of all ages go online to study, have fun, and communicate with the world at large. Just as the numbers of kids online have grown, so have the dangers they face.
The NetSmartz Workshop was created to meet that growing need in an unprecedented way. The NetSmartz Workshop provides Boys & Girls Clubs of America with original, animated characters and age-appropriate, interactive lessons on CD-ROM that use the latest 3-D and web technologies to entertain while they educate. Boys & Girls Clubs leaders and children played vital roles in helping to refine the appearance of the characters and program content, helping to ensure that the NetSmartz messages were on target and characters appealed to the respective age groups. In September 2001 the NetSmartz Workshop content was pilot-tested and later released to all Clubs nationwide in August 2002.
Hewlett Packard (HP), a supporter of both BGCA and NCMEC, was active in helping establish an on-site studio at NCMEC. High-end, 3-D Compaq workstations power the NetSmartz Studio which speeds up the animation production process. Their involvement also helped in the creation of the NetSmartz Workshop web site. As part of their ongoing commitment to protecting children, in November 2001, Compaq Computer Corporation placed a NetSmartz Workshop icon on the desktops of their Presario PCs. HP has also placed the NetSmartz Workshop icon on their Compaq Presario and HP Pavilion desktop personal-computer lines.
The NetSmartz Workshop was made possible via a public-private partnership with the United States Congress, United States Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Sponsorship from private corporations enables the NetSmartz Workshop and its innovative content to be shared with children, parents, guardians, educators, and law enforcement globally via the Internet at www.NetSmartz.org.
