(Originally posted on the Symantec Corporate Responsibility Blog)

Since 2015, Symantec has been supporting Mouse, a national youth development organization that uses technology as a catalyst to engage, empower, and inspire underserved youth. Our 2015 grant helped Mouse create and launch a Security, Identity & Privacy addition to the organization's Web Literacy curriculum. The curriculum was piloted in schools, available via Mouse's online platform and offered as an open resource via Mozilla Foundation's web literacy platform.

Our additional grant in 2016 will expand and deepen the number of engaged students and educators participating by developing new lesson-based media that engages learners in difficult concepts. This includes seven new activities that use active, engaging lessons to teach key technology safety lessons such as creating strong passwords, reading Terms of Service agreements, and avoiding phishing scams.

Today we thank Mouse Senior Director, Learning Design, Marc Lesser for joining us to provide a look into the importance and impact of these programs. 

Privacy and security are topics that have endured decades of heated concern and debate by parents and educators that, in the end, have mostly yielded results that perpetuate a familiar fear narrative, where “stranger danger” lurks behind every new chat window.

Enculturating a sense of danger has been the prominent education strategy deployed to address privacy and security in technology for learners at almost every level.  Even as youth spend evermore time online and we prepare them to harness the same information and tools to face the very dynamic problems of their time.

On the one hand we create a landscape of fear, and on the other hand, we aim to foster a culture of exploration and empowerment. There are a number of problems with this approach. At Mouse we believe a central one is that fear typically keeps us from learning how things work, not the other way around.

That being said, the challenge of doing things in a new way is big. Questions loom:

• How do we fulfill learning outcomes that include privacy and security but strike young people as practical and not preachy?
• How do we balance our encouragement of youth to “participate” in an information-rich culture with cautions about the risks that might be part of their experience?
• How do we make any of it engaging to 12-17 year olds, most of whom haven’t thought much about any of it, if at all?

Almost two years ago, philanthropic support from Symantec helped learning designers from our team at Mouse create and launch a Security, Identity & Privacy addition to our Web Literacy curriculum.

In the fall of 2015, we began testing new learning experiences with middle and high school students in New York City. We started by focusing on the internet, where students in the United States are all living at least part of their lives. We looked for ways that privacy and security fit into a larger group of competencies that support students as citizens of an information web that is more ubiquitous than ever. And we carried over principles from our experience in Positive Youth Development that starts every brainstorm with the potential of each young person, not the problem or dangers they face.

In a game called Ring ToS, learners experience the casual fun of carnival games while contemplating serious issues, like the privacy they surrender in website Terms of Service agreements.

A lesson called Phish Market aims at helping students to understand how easily scams are created in order to build their understanding about what to look out for.
Another example, Ad Battle, gets groups to role play the inner-workings of advertising servers to build technical literacy about how ads work on the internet, and how private information can and can’t be used by advertisers.

With Mouse, students learn how to make the most of technology in creative and innovative ways, while balancing the need for privacy and protection.
As a result of Mouse’s preliminary pilot, educators involved report that students have increased web literacy competencies in key ways including:

• 100% improved competencies in managing and maintaining account security 
• 83% increased knowledge in how unsolicited third parties can track users across the web
• 83% view debating privacy as a value and right in a networked world

Mouse is grateful to continue this work in the coming year with renewed support from Symantec. We’ll work with new educators to disseminate learning content, and turn our focus to graphics and video that can support learners in visualizing difficult concepts.

To learn more and follow our progress, find us at https://mouse.org/.

About Marc: As the Senior Director, Learning Design at Mouse, Marc engages and inspires students to be leaders, innovators, creators, makers and thinkers, and is recognized as a visionary leader within the ed tech community. Specifically, he directs the design and development of web-based and live learning environments for Mouse.

He holds a Master’s degree from NYU’s Educational Communication & Technology program, is co-founder of Emoti-Con! the NYC Youth Digital Media and Technology Festival and, in 2012, was named a National School Boards Association “20-to-Watch” among national leaders in education and technology.