Virtual Worlds Loved By Elementary Kids- Woogi World

Woogi World first came to our attention when we realized the adolescents of our community was becoming addicted to the Internet. Everywhere we would go, there would be products for children to use on the Internet. I would see commercials all over the Internet and friends and I were talking about how our little sisters and brothers spend hours playing Webkinz and other online games.

As a school project, we were learning about digital citizenship. As I talked with my team, our biggest fear was the issue of young children playing on the internet and not understanding the security problems of the Internet. We chose the fourth grade class and took it as a mission to teach them about digital citizenship. They played a series of games and missions located on the web site. The kids were very excited. They had fun and learned how to be great digital citizens. My group members encouraged the children to stay interested in Woogi World and listen to the message and lesson out of the missions.

Addiction was another thing that came to our attention. (Last year some of the fourth graders admitted to text messaging over 400 text messages a day on their cell phones! That's crazy!) We really wanted to emphasize on that subject. Lucky for us, Woogi World had a mission based on balance. It taught the children to keep balance between family, Internet, and service. This was amazing! My group was overjoyed with the outcome of the project. We are glad the kids have found the correct ways to act on the Internet. Woogi World is great and I am very glad the children have found this.

A look into virtual World Teaching with Elementary Kids: Woogi World

As part of the Digiteen project, we had to select a group of students at our school to teach about Digital Citizenship. We found a website called Woogi World. We felt like Woogi World was the best website to choose because it stressed the important aspects of digital citizenship by playing games and having fun.

Using Woogi world we taught fourth grade children the importance of safety, balance, and respect on the internet. You can see some of the things we did on our Woogi World Blog. One of the things my group members and I liked most about Woogi World is it's simple to navigate and how the games were really fun and tought digital citizenship.

We chose to teach the elementary because we felt that children this age were getting on the computer a lot, but didn't know how to act or react on the internet. I think our Woogi World Project was a complete success! We accomplished more than we ever would have imagined. The kids loved Woogi World and had a blast learning about the internet. I think all of the schools need programs like this so the kids can learn early on what it means to be a Digital Citizen. If we teach them now later it will be second nature to them.

My favorite game on Woogi world was the Stranger Danger game. The instructions were for you to decide whether what the woogi was asking appropriate questions you could answer.

The woogi might have looked nice, but if he asked you an inapropriate question you would have to throw him in the trash pile! Some of the questions for the bad woogis would ask wer; "where do you live?", " what school do you go to?", "what is your phone number?", "what is your real name?", etc. If you happen to tell a stranger these things, it could be very dangerous. That is why Stranger Danger was my favorite game; not because it was fun but because it teaches a powerful message that ALL kids who get on the internet should know.

Here are some quotes from our team as we shared on our Digiteen post-project reflections:

"This website is completely safe and the kids enjoyed it." Kunjan

"My team and I choose this website because we thought that kids would like this website and we realized that kids are starting to use the internet at earlier ages than we did and most kids at this age do not know much about how to be safe online." Ethan

"The group was very effective." Tinsley