Actua’s Cyber Smart Education Project equips youth with the knowledge, skills and resources needed to be responsible digital citizens and digital creators.

This project enables youth to:

• Be empowered digital citizens
• Create positive, inclusive spaces both online and offline
• Make smart and informed decisions when using technology
• Encourage proactive and self-driven formation of online identities
• Leverage Cyber Smart strategies to solve challenges and mitigate risks faced online
• Identify media bias and misinformation
• Spot and avoid various cyber threats (phishing, malware, etc.) 
• Learn about exciting opportunities in cyber security careers.

For this project, we define Cyber Smart by combining cyber safety, cyber security and digital citizenship:

Framework

Actua’s Cyber Smart Framework was developed in collaboration with Cyber Security professionals, law enforcement leaders, educators, and other experts in the field.  

This Framework guides the approaches of Actua’s Cyber Smart Project and informs content development, while providing other educators (such as yourself!) with an overview of key concepts and learning outcomes for a cyber smart education. 

Handbook

The Cyber Smart Educator Handbook is designed to support you as a STEM outreach educator in your journey to bring Cyber Smart Education into your teaching settings. Our goal is to support you in fostering cyber smart mindsets by sharing insight from experts and providing curated background information to facilitate activities in the cyber smart series. The handbook was designed to help educators:

• Gain insight on big topics in cyber safety (e.g., online identities, digital citizenship, preventative strategies, cyber threats, etc.).
• Visualize how these elements are relevant to K-12 education and real-world contexts.
• Use a constructive approach and empowering language when teaching youth about cyber safety.
• Learn best practices to facilitate the activity series.
• Find additional resources at the end of this document to help you further build your knowledge-base of cyber safety, cyber security, and digital citizenship.

Activities

As part of this project, Actua has developed a suite of activities (with supporting resources like activity pages and slide decks) for students in Gr. 2-12. The activities can be delivered in any order, and range between 1-2 hours. Your network member program may also have developed activities that are relevant to this project!

The activities developed by Actua have been reviewed by subject matter experts. Some of the topics include:

• Digital Citizenship
• Digital Wellbeing
• Misinformation
• Coding
• Oversharing
• Cyber Security
• Gaming & Microtransactions

Note for Actua suite of activities: 

• Actua’s content is developed to foster positive discussion and incorporates hands-on learning opportunities and gamification.
• Each activity includes suggestions on how to deliver this content in virtual settings and settings with little/no access to devices or internet. 
• We welcome you to use all of the parts of the activities, recognizing that adaptations will be needed for your different teaching settings. These activities can also be a source of inspiration for developing your own content!

Articles & Posts

For improvement of cyber safety across Canada, it is important to share knowledge with adults as well. Our team shares content on social media and on our website to inform both youth and adults on relevant and timely content. These are some examples of posts developed to reach more audiences:

• Navigating Social Media: A Guide for Parents and Caregivers | Actua Blog Post
• Metaverse 101 with Ritesh Kotak | Actua Instagram Real
• From Passwords to Parental Controls: What You Need to Know About Online Privacy for Your Kids | Actua Blog Post 
• Top Tips for Parents & Caregivers on How to Navigate Emerging Technology | Actua Video

1. Choose one of the following topics and brainstorm how you might teach it to youth in your teaching setting. Using the chart below or one similar, add your notes.
   • Misinformation
   • Oversharing
   • Wellbeing
   • Cyber security

2. After doing your own brainstorming and research, explore Actua’s activity suite to get an idea of content we developed for this topic. You can find the appropriate topic under each activity title. Using the chart below or one similar, make notes on what you might take into your own programming from Actua’s developed activity.

   Topic: How would you teach this?	Actua’s Activity