Eighth-grade students from four Anoka-Hennepin School District middle schools won the National FBI Safe Online Surfing (FBI-SOS) award for schools with more than 100 participants. The eighth graders in Steven Burrill’s computer explorations classes at Jackson, Northdale, Oak View, and Roosevelt Middle Schools scored a composite score of 92.75 percent to win the December 2017 award.

Open to all public, private, and home schools nationwide, the FBI-SOS initiative is a free, age-appropriate, competitive, and fun online program that promotes cyber citizenship and teaches students in third through eighth grades how to recognize and respond to online dangers—like Internet predators and cyberbullying—and covers topics such as social networking and gaming safety. Every month during the school year, the FBI recognizes the top-scoring schools in each of its three size categories, based on the number of students participating from each school.

For the month of December 2017, a total of 96,718 students at 1,642 schools in 51 states and U.S. territories participated in the FBI-SOS Program. In December, when the 267 eighth graders at four Anoka-Hennepin middle schools posted their composite national-winning score, a total of 96,718 students took the exam nationwide to compete for the three awards.

FBI Minneapolis Acting Special Agent in Charge Robert C. Bone II will present a certificate to Mr. Burrill and some of his students during an “awards celebration” at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, March 26, 2018, at the start of the Anoka-Hennepin School Board meeting. The board meeting is open to the public and will be held at the Sandburg Education Center, 1902 Second Avenue, Anoka, Minnesota.

The FBI-SOS Internet Challenge was developed with the assistance of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and with the input of teachers and schools. Anyone—young or old, in the U.S. or worldwide—can complete the activities on the FBI-SOS website. The testing and competition, however, are only open to students in grades 3-8 at public, private, or home schools in the United States or its territories.