Webonauts Internet Academy is an free online educational game to teach web safety to kids. This website basically teaches kids how to interact in digital world and how to tackle different issues of internet.
We all know that internet is vast like a vast ocean where one has to encounter all sort of things. Some of them are good while some of them are bad, and even dangerous. For a kid, its not easy to distinguish between good or bad, as most of the activities are done behind a virtual and false identity.
This website teaches teaches safe internet practices to kids via an interactive game called Webonauts. This game is a part of PBSKids website which is a quite popular for kid education related stuff (we reviewed another PBSKids game here). This game consists of different objectives, with each of the objective having a specific lesson for your kid to learn. All the levels are well designed and they help your kids in learning the things faster and easily, so that they can also implement them in real world of internet. The website also has separate section for Parents and Teachers so that they can learn tips for teaching their kids more effectively.
Gameplay of this Online Educational Game To Teach Web Safety to Kids:
To play the game, you are only required to open the URL and nothing else. You can choose to sign-up with the game but it is required only for using the Save Game feature.
The gameplay of Webonauts is very simple. In this game, your kid (an astronaut) has got admission to Webonauts Internet Academy for the training purpose. As a part of his training, your kid is sent to a planet Bambu to save the people residing there from their enemy The Great Static. He is an ex-student of Webonauts Internet Academy who wants to steal special cookie recipe from Bambu planet citizens. The Bambu planet citizens are the best cookie makers in Universe and you have to save their recipe from The Great Static.
Your kids will start with customizing his uniform by selecting personally preferred spacesuit and helmet.
After this, your kid has to complete objectives as an when they are provided to him. Each of the objective will teach your kid something new and important. For example, in the screenshot below The Great Static is asking for Password to Cookie Factory from the citizens of Bambu planet.
Now, your kid has two options: Tell the password or Don’t tell the Password. He can only choose one.
As the correct answer in this case is “Don’t tell the Password”, so this objective teaches your kid to not tell passwords to anyone. In the similar manner, there are different objectives to complete.
Apart from web safety, your kid will also learn basic etiquettes, like helping others, talking politely, not making fun of others etc..
On completing each objective, your kid will receive gifts from citizens of Bambu.
At the end of the game, your kid will receive a virtual diploma which you can choose to print. You can see the virtual convocation ceremony shown in screenshot below.
Final Verdict:
Webonauts Internet Academy is an awesome educational game to teach web safety to kids, and that too in a fun and easy manner. I really liked the fact that they don’t ask for any personal information, there are no third party ads or popups, etc.. This makes it a safe and easy to use website for your kids.
