And now Web Rangers is back for a second year, in conjunction with our partners at NetSafe and Sticks ‘n Stones. We’ve also brought on board two of New Zealand’s social media stars - Liam WaveRider with his 2 million Instagram followers, and Caito Potatoe who has 30,000 YouTube subscribers - to help inspire teens about why online safety and digital citizenship are such important topics.
So what exactly is Web Rangers all about? It’s a programme designed to help teenagers create campaigns to encourage other teens to stay safe online. This covers a wide range of online issues including giving away too much information, being wary of privacy concerns, and staying safe from cyber bullies.
Participants will kick off the development of their campaigns at special Web Rangers workshops. Three workshops will be held around New Zealand, so more than 300 teenagers will be able to participate in person. Caito Potatoe and Liam Waverider will attend the workshops, which will be led by Billy T. winner and Best Bits star, Rhys Mathewson. The workshops will also involve training from experts in marketing, social media and online safety.
The Web Rangers will then be given six weeks to produce their campaigns, which can take any form including YouTube videos or other social media content, billboards, and in-school events. Our judging panel will then decide which top two internet safety campaigns will fly to Sydney to present their campaign to Google executives.
Last year’s Web Rangers set the bar high with social experiments on Auckland’s Queen Street, animated videos set to song, and an online compliment generator taking out the top prizes. Auckland’s winning video by Hayley Smith was viewed over 120,000 times on YouTube.
We’re encouraging as many 14 to 17 year olds to take part as we can, so if you know anyone interested, send them to http://www.netsafe.org.nz/webrangers.