Award for Childnet Project 12 December 2002

Superhighway Patrol the exciting and innovative Internet project that brings together children in school learning about their community with the real people working in the community is a winner of the Junior Global Challenge. Mr Walter Veltroni, Mayor of Rome, presented the Award to David Casey at a ceremony in Rome City Hall on 12th December.

The Junior Global Challenge is an International Challenge to promote the opportunities that Information Technology provides.

Following a number of significant recent developments Superhighway Patrol, now called Net-Detectives continues to break new ground in the opportunities it gives to bring people together to learn. Net-Detectives has been developed and is managed by David Casey Project Manager at Childnet International. David said, “Net-Detectives provides a unique opportunity for children to learn about the issues that are important to them from the people who know. Among the people they work with are police officers, fire-fighters, health workers and many others, people that most children do not get an opportunity to learn from.”

Net-Detectives events are based on realistic scenarios that children find relevant, as the story unfolds they will receive a series of e-mail messages that will give them the clues to follow the story as well as other tasks to research. On-line they will be able to ask questions and make comments to the experts in the subject who can respond and answer the questions.

David Casey went on to say, “The range of subjects that we can undertake in this way is large, and to date over 20 events have taken place with many more planned.”

In October there was an activity that children worked through that addresses issues around Internet Safety. They had to investigate a series of events where a young girl might have put herself at risk, but following the events through and getting and giving the right advice they were able to keep her safe.

In November, in partnership with Cambridgeshire Education Authority the activity was centred on issues to do with alcohol and solvents. PC Phil Carpenter who wrote the activity with Advisory teacher on health issues Cathy Murphy said, “The children are able to look at the issues from an angle they do not usually see, and they are able to learn a great deal about subjects that they do not always see as being significant for them.”

Not only do schools in the UK take part many schools from all parts of Europe and much farther afield take part. If you would like to know more about Net-Detectives you can visit the web site at www.net-detectives.org.