Introduction to Activity Cards

NetSmartz activity cards provide educators, parents, guardians, youth organizations, community leaders, law enforcement, and others activities that can be shared with children to help them learn how to be safer while on the Internet.

Each activity card features

• an overview of the topic and activities for each stand-alone card
• the key safety message to be conveyed and educational goal
• a list of materials needed
• instructions for one or two activities
• an estimated time needed to complete each activity, ranges from 15 to 30 minutes
• discussion questions, dialogues, and suggested answers in italic type

The activity cards were designed to allow selection of those activities that best fit a presenter’s instructional style, time constraints, and educational goals. The activity cards include writing activities, role-plays, and projects that can be easily adapted to fulfill more than one educational requirement. The activity cards may be customized to meet individual needs, used in any sequence, and/or used independently.

For those who have access to computers and the Internet, the online activities can be used in a computer lab with one or two children per computer or by projecting the images from one computer onto a screen to allow everyone in the group to work on the activities at the same time. If this is not possible, many of the supplemental handouts, visual aids, games, and worksheets found in the activity cards may be used without a computer.