SikkerhetsLøypa - Knowledge Toward Sustainable and Secure Paths of Creative and Critical Digital Skills

Abstract

Children spend numerous hours on the Internet daily. While online, they meet a great number of opportunities as well as risks. Of these risks, cyber bullying and privacy violations are of major concern, in addition to exploitation and child pornography. Our hypothesis is that the solution is not to keep children and teens away from the Internet, but to ensure that young citizens are empowered with the necessary knowledge and skill set to become critical consumers and creators of new secure and sustainable digital services and products. Our objective is to develop a knowledge and skill set base and offer learning through playful solutions for empowering children and young people with creative and critical digital skills, in an engaging and motivating way. The aim is to build on the method and lessons learns of Kodeløypa, one of the scientific offerings for children at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and the related scientific efforts made to empower a new generation of online users to avoid risks in the modern digital society. The project, SikkerhetsLøypa, is highly inter-disciplinary and spans across the fields of information security, user experience, software engineering, and computer science education. The scientific results of this project aims at strengthen education methods and practices in secure and privacy-aware behavior in the digital world.