With a firm vision on the importance of digital education and online safety, Adfaber Association announces the continuation of the "Internet Heroes" program for the next three years. This announcement comes alongside the launch of the registration for the new edition of trainings dedicated to teachers and parents.
Be Internet Awesome it is a free educational program for children's online safety, organized by Adfaber, in partnership with Romanian Police and the Ministry of Education and sponsored by Google.org. The aim of this program is to provide relevant resources and information for kids, parents and teachers so that they can safely navigate the ever-evolving digital world.
Over 1 million students in Romania have benefited from a lesson on online safety.
This year, the "Heroes of the Internet" program celebrated 3 years since its launch in Romania and counts over 27,000 teachers who participated in the training and provided an online safety lesson to at least 1 million students from over 3,000 educational institutions across Romania.
In 2022, the Romanian Police, through the Institute for Research and Crime Prevention, joined as a partner of the Adfaber Association and promotes online safety and the Internet Heroes program in schools. In 2023 the involvement of the Romanian Police specialists resulted in 1167 preventive activities in educational establishments, whose beneficiaries were 49,615 underage students and 10,701 adults.
In total, through the interventions of the Romanian Police, visits from the Adfaber Association, and lessons taught in the classroom by teachers enrolled in the program, over 1 million children have learned how to navigate the internet safely.
Additionally, every year we organize the "Heroes of the Internet" National Competition, in which approximately 300 teachers and 2,100 students participate annually. Through their campaigns, they manage to spread online safety information to at least 150,000 other students, teachers, and parents each year. The competition is included in the national competition calendar approved by the Ministry of Education.
How teachers and parents can get involved in the Internet Heroes program
Over the course of three online sessions, teachers will become familiar with the "Heroes of the Internet" curriculum. At the end of each session, they will receive a certificate confirming that they have completed the training, making them ready to teach essential online safety concepts to students in grades 0-VIII.
Teachers can register and participate in the training until December 15, 2023 by clicking on the link: adfaber.org/profesori.
In addition, teachers can take part in the "Internet Heroes" competition with their students, with the chance to win prizes that will help modernize classrooms and schools. The competition challenges people to learn through play. The kids, the little heroes of the internet, engage in the exciting task of creating awareness campaigns around the key themes of online safety: share with care, Don't fall for fake, secure your secrets, it's cool to be kind, when in doubt, talk it out. At the end, they enthusiastically share what they have learned with other students and teachers in their school.
The program also introduces an innovation for parents through a dedicated webinar, which will help them better understand the risks their children may be exposed to and how to assist them in becoming responsible digital citizens. The "Heroes of the Internet" guide for families and Interland online game reinforces this learning, making it fun and interactive.
Parents are invited to register and attend the free webinar by clicking on the link: adfaber.org/parinti.
We invite you to see how an activity on online safety in the classroom works and what teachers and students who have already benefited from the Internet Heroes program think:
"The Internet Heroes program has been a very pleasant surprise, in that it is a topic that targets, interests and activates kids. It effectively puts them on their guard and activates them because there are a lot of questions that they didn't have the answers to until now." – Chirilă Cristina, părinte și profesor Eroii Internetului
Internet heroes continue their mission for the next 3 years
This week, Adfaber Association participated in the event organized by Google - "Cybersecurity: innovation and education", held on the occasion of the European Cyber Security Month. During this event, we discussed the joint efforts made through the "Internet Heroes" program at the panel "Online safety: education for kids and families".
"We are happy and honored to officially announce that we have received a new grant to continue the project for another 3 years in Romania. So far, the program has had a tremendous uptake, both among teachers, but especially among kids, and one challenge we would like to address in the next 3 years is the participation of parents, motivating them to get involved side by side with teachers and students in this endeavor", said Alin Chiriac, founder of Adfaber.
"There are two directions in which the Ministry of Education will act in the following: on the formal side, we will devote an important chapter to cyber security education, and on the non-formal side Adfaber with the Ministry of Education has a much broader partnership that is not limited to the Internet Heroes, a program that I consider successful and we have participated with pleasure whenever we were asked to do so", said Sorin Ion, State Secretary in the Ministry of Education.
We encourage teachers and parents to sign up for trainings and become ambassadors for online safety among students. More details, resources and valuable advice from Internet Heroes can be found on the website: adfaber.org/eroii-internetului/
About ADFABER, the program organizer:
ADFABER.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the digital skills of students and teachers in public schools. Every year, they organize initiatives that promote the integration of technology into the educational process, playing a significant role in shaping the future IT talents.
