If only it was as easy as Safety Town

The police officer who presided over Safety Town when my daughter was in preschool, is now conducting workshops on cyber safety.  I still remember Safety Town graduation day, standing room only with parents elbowing each other out of the way to capture it on video. There were tricycles, firetrucks the kids could climb into, stickers and snacks. Safety Town had everything a five year old needed to master the course content of bicycle, poison, fire, and traffic safeguards.  Fast-forward to middle school, and now the course content is cyber safety, and the safeguards are far more complex.  I suppose you can draw a parallel between the inquisitive minds of middle schoolers and the naive minds of preschoolers.  We don't assume that a five year old instinctively knows how to avoid eating something that is poisonous, so we teach them not to.  Likewise, we shouldn't assume that a tween understands the impact their shared pictures or online discussions could have on their college application, so we need to teach them what to avoid.  In order to teach them, we must first learn it ourselves.  Seek out a workshop on digital dangers and kids, I thought I was relatively internet savvy, but I still have a lot to learn.  The workshop I attended was from the Digital Innocence Recovery Group.