Office of Public Affairs 3
2010 Director’s Community Leadership Awards
| Office of Public Affairs | Nova Southeastern University FBI Safe Online Surfing |
| Daryl Hulce accepts the award from Director Mueller. |
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The FBI Safe Online Surfing Initiative (FBI-SOS) is a free Internet safety program designed to help students recognize potential dangers associated with using the Internet. Developed in 2005 by Nova Southeastern University in cooperation with the FBI Miami Division, FBI-SOS became a national initiative administered by the Cyber Division and Office of Public Affairs in 2009. The educational program delivers critical Internet safety information in a fun, competitive format to third through eighth graders. The goal of FBI-SOS is to provide students with knowledge about how to avoid dangerous situations online, specifically Internet predators. Topics include online safety and security, including privacy, protecting personal information, and creating and protecting passwords. The program also teaches students about cell phone, chat, IM, social networking, and gaming safety and how to detect and report illegal online behavior, including online predators. The second portion of the program touches on cyber ethics and etiquette, including cyber-bullying prevention, social and legal implications of "sexting,” and copyright issues (plagiarism, fair use, identifying reputable sites, citing sources). Designed to meet federal and state Internet safety mandates, students take web-based quizzes and complete an online scavenger hunt to learn important Internet safety and cyber citizenship concepts. At the end of each month, the FBI-SOS national trophy is awarded to those schools with the highest scoring students on the FBI-SOS post-quiz. To date, over 90,000 school students in 41 states have participated in the FBI-SOS Internet Challenge. |
