Pedagogical storytelling material for children regarding online safety: pilot study in kindergartens

The Portuguese Ministry of Education developed a collection of three stories for supporting kindergarten teachers in exploring the theme of online safety with preschoolers. These stories were created in book and digital animation formats. The authors took these three stories to three kindergartens to test their efficacy in scaffolding learning and acquisition of digital skills. This exploratory pilot case study revealed several insights worth pursuing in further research: 1) kindergarten teachers acknowledge that children are digitally immersed at home and consider that exploring the theme of online safety with young children is imperative; 2) in spite of enjoying digital media very much, children were more attentive and retained more information when they were told the stories using the books than when they watched the digital animations, claiming that they “connected” more easily with the storyteller. In the future, the research will provide guidelines for the development of more pedagogical materials on online safety and test them in kindergartens on a national scale.