Recently, the very affluent community of Clayton, Missouri made national news when Clayton High Principal Louise Losos created a fictitious Facebook page and friended students and parents. After the page was discovered—and erupted into controversy—Principal Losos resigned.

I know this suburban St. Louis community very well.  When I was Commander of the Missouri ICAC Task Force, my office was located in Clayton. And if this could happen there, it could happen anywhere.

According to various media reports, Losos created a phony Facebook profile using the name “Suzy Harriston” and friended more than 300 people, many of which were students and district parents.  The most obvious issue with this situation is the ethics of the allegation; a person of authority creating a fake site to spy on those whom they are entrusted to lead.

The idea of using social media to spy on youth isn’t a new idea. Principal Losos may have justified her actions by thinking, “I’m just checking to see what my students are doing and because they friended me, they chose to give up their privacy.”

Once we post things online, we do give up ownership of our work product and that must be part of this “teachable moment” message.

However, did the students and parents give Losos permission to see the posts of their other friends—those individuals who didn’t choose to be connected with Suzy?  I don’t think people realize the “6 degrees of separation” aspect of social media that allows viewers to delve beyond the individual connections created and see information posted by friends of friends of friends, etc.

The news reports focused on the terrible decision for a principal to spy on students and parents through social media.  What also needs to be discussed is that more than 300 people became online friends with someone that didn’t even exist.

What has happened to the internet safety message about not becoming friends with strangers? Unfortunately, it seems that many of us willingly give up personal information because it is more important for us to belong to something than to stay private.

I remember a video from a neighboring St. Louis area high school about students’ Facebook use.  A student was asked about her privacy settings and said, “I don’t know, whatever is the standard.”  She was saying, she relied upon Facebook to do the right thing and set the privacy settings.  Unfortunately, social media platforms want their users sharing in an open forum, and sites such as Facebook set the privacy default as open access.

I was surprised and disappointed to hear the news from this highly respected school and community, but let’s learn from both sides of the situation.  This should be a strong reminder to those in authority to use social media responsibly and ethically.  The other lesson points to users’ responsibilities.  We must take charge of our connectivity and take time to learn the system’s privacy settings.

Educators, parents and youth everywhere should discuss this incident.  We need to learn from all aspects of what took place and remember the importance of making good choices about our friends and what we share.

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Former Missouri ICAC Commander Lt. Joe Laramie (retired) provides strategies and solutions for law enforcement and schools to address policy and training on a variety of technology and child exploitation issues. Image credit: Stoneysteiner via Flickr.

For years, we’ve been warning kids to be careful about what they post on Facebook or My Space, in part because prospective employers, college admission officers, and others were looking.  Your Facebook might enhance your reputation and get you that job or it might raise alarms and prevent you from attending the college of your choice.

In those cases, companies and universities were looking at public information, where your privacy settings were wide open.  If your settings were restrictive, then only your friends (or friends of friends) could see your comments, photos, activities.

Recently, some employers have been demanding employees surrender their social networking passwords so the company could see what the worker had on their Facebook or MySpace.  In Maryland, the Department of Corrections required job seekers to provide access to their social networking site.  After one applicant was rejected because of something on his Facebook, the story generated a lot of attention and Maryland became the first state in the nation to prohibit employers from asking their workers or job applicants to provide log in information to their private and personal social networking sites.  Other states are considering similar legislation and, in California, a bill unanimously passed the state assembly.  The Social Networking Online Protection Act has also been introduced in the US Congress.

There are plenty of other reasons to be cautious and thoughtful about what you do online, of course.  And even if employers are eventually barred from requiring access to your social networking activities, it still makes sense to build a really good digital reputation.  Even with the most restrictive privacy settings, it’s still possible for photos and comments to be copied and spread by friends.  Nothing is truly private in the digital world.

As these bills are introduced and debated, they provide a great opportunity to have a conversation with children about whether their social networking activity truly displays the content of their character.

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Frank Gallagher is Executive Director of Cable in the Classroom (CIC), the education foundation of the cable telecommunications industry. He is a specialist in media and information literacy, internet safety, digital citizenship, and the impact of media on children and is a former middle school math teacher. Image Credit: Microsoft Office clip art collection.

Understanding how to manage your online reputation or “digital footprint” is tricky business, even for those of us who have been using the internet for a long time.

Almost everyone at one time or another has been guilty of sharing too much information or posting a photo that later makes us cringe. To complicate matters further, it’s not just our own online actions we need to worry about—what others say and post about us also contributes to our digital footprint.

In his new book, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online (2012), Howard Rheingold writes, “… whether or not we do anything about it, the webbed world is full of information about us that is provided by other people, including their opinions about us—the fact of life we know as reputation.”

While reputation management remains challenging for adults, imagine how difficult it is for a child to understand how the digital decisions they make today will stay with them, and the rest of cyberspace, forever.

Colleges and universities are increasingly relying on digital data when deciding who gets letters of acceptance, using sites like Zinch that lets students post profiles and links about themselves. Employers are increasingly conducting digital background checks on applicants before entrusting them with jobs. Today our digital footprint is our new first impression, and it starts taking shape the minute we go online.

Fortunately the folks at Common Sense Media have developed a lesson about digital footprints that is part of their free online “Digital Literacy and Citizenship Classroom Curriculum.”

It’s simple really, they provide a blank template of a footprint that students fill out with illustrations and words depicting the digital impression they hope to make upon the world in the next ten years.

I tried out this lesson last year with a roomful of sixth graders at Journey School. Their aspirations ranged from winning the Nobel Peace Prize and the Heisman trophy to feeding the homeless and performing hundreds of pet rescues. They imagined becoming future presidents, professional soccer players, fashion stylists, scientists, musicians, and authors.

They wanted to find a cure for cancer and make the world’s first Horchata-flavored ice cream. (Can’t wait for that!)

Whether these digital dreams come true or not, I believe this lesson helps students understand that in today’s participatory culture, they have the power to both create and shape their online reputations. Hopefully the digital footprints these students created will become their blueprints, helping them design an online reputation that they can be proud of.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-Diana Graber is Co-Founder of CyberWise, a Digital Hub that helps busy adults understand and use digital tools to enhance learning. Diana also teachers CyberCivics at Journey School in Aliso Viejo, CA, and is the recent recipient of an M.A. in Media Psychology and Social Change from Fielding Graduate University. Image Credit: Digital Footprint by CommonSense Media.

Celebrities like Sandra Bullock, Megan Fox, Christian Bale, and Lady Gaga have more in common than just being famous—they were also all bullied growing up.

“I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point,” Lady Gaga said in an interview with the New York Times. “And I was a straight-A student, so there was a certain point in my high school years where I just couldn’t even focus on class because I was so embarrassed all the time. I was so ashamed of who I was.”

Determined to help those who may find themselves in a similar situation, Lady Gaga founded the Born This Way Foundation a few months ago.

The Foundation was announced at an event hosted by Harvard and attended by Oprah Winfrey and Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services.

Additionally, NYU Research Professor Danah Boyd and Harvard Law Professor John Palfrey lectured at the event, highlighting 20 important things to remember about bullying.

The first five are:

1. Bullying is a serious issue: Both victims and perpetrators face serious educational, social, and psychological challenges.

2. Bullying is not universal. It is harder to address bullying if it is approached as if bullying happens to everyone (it doesn’t). Socially marginalized youth, including LGBTQ-identified individuals and those with disabilities, are more likely to be bullied. Bullying also plays out differently across gender and age, ethnicity and race.

3. Not all aggression is bullying. Bullying refers to repeated psychological, social, and physical aggression propagated by those who are more physically or socially powerful. Bullying is on a continuum of aggressive and violent behavior, which also includes things like dating violence, peer aggression, gang violence, sexual violence, etc. All are bad, but not all are bullying.

4. “Bullies” aren’t the source of the problem; they’re often a symptom of the problem. Many bullies have problems at home or in school, and need help just as much as those who are targets of and bystanders to bullying.

5. Bullying is tightly entwined with a host of other related issues, including drama and teasing, social rivalry, physical and sexual violence, mental health issues and identity struggles. We cannot address one without the other. Furthermore, we must be careful choosing our terms because many adult-driven terms do not resonate with youth.

To read Boyd and Palfrey’s full remarks click here.

It is important to note that although the fourth point reminds us that bullies often have problems at home or in school, they may not necessarily suffer from low self-esteem.

New research by Janna Juvonen, a UCLA professor of developmental psychology, shows that in reality, many bullies have extremely high levels of self-esteem. And perhaps even more surprisingly, teachers and their fellow classmates also perceive them as some of the most popular students at the school.

Students facing new situations (middle school is full of them!) are more likely to feel like they don’t fit in. And Juvonen suggests that this seems to evoke a “primal tendency to rely on dominance behaviors.” The bullies—often bigger and stronger than their peers—create a social hierarchy, gaining status that translates into a big-time ego boost.

Teachers and school administrators who understand this concept are better equipped to not just think empathetically towards bullies, but also to think more creatively. Juvonen recommends funneling their need for control and power in a different, healthier way.

Lastly, adults need to remember that often the victims need a friend more than anything else. Bullies typically pick on “uncool” students. The bully cycle is perpetuated as these victims associate the teasing with the idea that they are social misfits and all alone.

“We must remember to help students foster friendships,” iKeepSafe CEO and President Marsali Hancock said. “I agree with Professor Juvonen—students should be able to look forward to at least one friendly face at school.”
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Emily Ensign is a regular blogger for the Internet Keep Safe Coalition, an organization that gives parents, educators, and policymakers the information and tools that empower them to teach children the safe and healthy use of technology and the internet. Image Credit Chesi – Fotos via Flickr.

The mobile platform is revolutionizing the way social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Foursquare, etc. are accessed by their ever growing number of users – which range from several different age groups from children to adults. There are more and more people using these networks on their mobile devices, rather than on their personal laptops or desk-tops – like in past years.

Recently, some technology news headlines have read as follows: “Why Smartphones are the future of social networking,” “Smartphones, not computers, drive most Facebook use,” “Smartphones top computers for Facebook time,” and “Smartphones beat computers for Facebookers time on site”, highlighting an evident forward-moving increase in mobile social networking.

In addition, as time goes by, there are younger users engaging with these social networks to stay in touch with friends, browse the web, and connect with certain groups or networks, and even gaming.

It used to be that households had a family computer, which made it easier for parents to monitor their children’s activities while surfing the internet. However, nowadays families may have more than one computer, and other mobile devices – personal laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

With easier access come elevated levels of exposure and usage. As the engagement of younger social networking users grows, are parents keeping up with their children’s activities? With the possession of a mobile device, there is 24-hour access to these social networking sites. Several years ago, it was frowned upon to see a minor in the possession of a personal phone. However, now it has become a common quotidian sight.

The Identity Theft Resource Center recently launched the ITRC Social Media Survey 2012 in an effort to collect survey responses that will facilitate ITRC to develop informative material to educate consumers on the topic of children’s use of social media.

The survey allows parents to ask themselves the most commonly asked questions that should be raised when their children in the age groups of 6 to 17 have any social networking accounts. It is an easy opportunity not only to enter a drawing for one of five $100 prizes, but a brief moment to question whether the correct levels of security and diligence are being taken when it comes to children, the internet, and social networking.

To complete the survey, and enter to win $100.00, parents can just visit the ITRC website and click on the Do You Have Children Who Use Social Media? link or click here to take the survey directly.

The survey will run through May 31, 2012. Five $100 prize winners will be announced and contacted on June 1, 2012. The survey results will be released on the ITRC website shortly thereafter.

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Nikki Junker is Social Media Coordinator and Victim Advisor at The Identity Theft Resource Center. She specializes in Identity Theft on social networks and smartphones. She enjoys working one on one with victims of identity theft as well as researching and writing about preventative measures for consumers. Image Credit: Stephalee31 via Flickr.

“My child spends too much time on the computer!”

“I wish video games weren’t so addicting for my kids!”

“My kids are texting instead of practicing piano!”

I’m sure every parent has thought at least some variation of these battle cries, and likely has uttered them in frustrated moments.  We live in a technology-saturated world, where it has become literally impossible to read every worthy e-book, watch every poignant movie, or play every worthwhile video game in a lifetime, much less in one’s free time.

This creates quite the parenting dilemma.  It is easy to become paranoid that far stricter parents are making their children learn more and do more than our children, such that they will compete more favorably for seats at university and for jobs, but children can’t spend all their time studying.  They need some leisure time to be emotionally healthy.  But how should that time be broken up?  In my generation, the TV was my babysitter for the most part.  For today’s youth, it is largely video gaming.

This is not all bad.  Video gaming is a more active process than watching movies. Unfortunately, there are so many video game choices out there that there is a competition amongst game developers to attract and keep players, and this competition often forces companies to sacrifice the well-being of their users in favor of their bottom lines.  Many of these sacrifices generally can be rolled up into one major category:  Time Wasters.

Some might say that all video games fall under the category of Time Wasters, and that may be true of many.  However, I would suggest that there are three major divisions of Time Wasters that are insidious for children.  While these are usually cleverly hidden inside of an otherwise acceptable game, they are easy to spot when you know what you’re looking for:

o    Time Waster #1:  Skill-less repetitive tasks
o    Time Waster #2:  Gambling
o    Time Waster #3:  Part-time jobs

The common thread between these three Time Wasters is that they do not have any intrinsic value, and do not serve any altruistic purpose.  Allow me to use some examples to illustrate what these entail.  In deference to my fellow developers I won’t use any names or titles, although most savvy gamers will recognize them immediately.

Time Waster #1:  Skill-less time-intensive tasks
There are many games that people might debate as being skill-less.  “How does playing on a fake plastic guitar do you any good?”  Certainly playing a plastic instrument does not translate directly to playing a real instrument.  But I would argue that it does develop a skill, improving rhythm at the very least, and many of the upcoming generation will likely cite these games as a reason they got interested in learning how to play music for real.  In moderation, even many twitchy arcade-style games can be a boon to cognitive development and eye-hand coordination.

What I mean by skill-less time-intensive tasks are the games/tasks that are inflated in time for no other reason than to use more time, and have absolutely no real-world benefit.  There is a suite of very popular “games” on a major social network that perfectly embodies this concept.  It is very difficult to explain why it is necessary to click to water crops individually on a farm when no actual farmer does it this way (many homes have timed sprinkler systems to avoid even having to think about watering their lawns), but millions of people do it.

There is no skill to this kind of virtual plant care, nor do any of the lessons in the game actually carry over to real life except the knowledge that plants grow when they’re planted and watered.  I might suggest that it’s just only slightly harder to learn that particular lesson by actually growing a plant, and possibly even less time intensive than nurturing a virtual farm.

I can see exactly why the developers of these games create these kinds of tasks.  The more time you put into a game, the more invested you are into finishing it and the more likely you are to open your wallet to purchase something that will speed the process, although in many cases there IS no end.  It makes perfect economic sense despite its questionable morality.  The true end is the one honest feeling that people have after they finally quit these games: regret over lost time.

Time Waster #2:  Meaningless gambling
One feature that makes me sad when visiting kids virtual worlds in particular is gambling halls.  I don’t personally have anything against gambling for adults, but I vehemently oppose gambling for children.  I don’t mean playing poker with one’s family for beans or pennies, but specifically gambling with currency or goods on the line, whether real or virtual.

Part of this relates to Time Waster #1, where such activities are at best a waste of time.  I recently purchased downloadable content for a popular role playing game, and was quite disappointed to find that after several hours of slot machines and card games, it was over with just a single (albeit cool) prize to show for it.  The only reason I managed to come out of it so quickly is that I could save and load my game at will, such that I just bet the maximum amount every time and reloaded whenever it didn’t go my way.  In a persistent virtual world and in the real world, that is not possible.

During my last trip to Las Vegas, I was amazed that I could see someone playing the slots when I went to lunch, and after filling up on mounds of food, I’d come out to find the same person slinging the machine arm, albeit with fewer coins in the bucket.  Again, I don’t have an issue with adults spending their time this way, but for children, that amount of time doing something that has a good chance of sending you home with less than you started with is not a good proposition.  Understanding the contradiction between “There’s no such thing as something for nothing” amidst the glitter of lottery winners and high rollers is difficult and takes maturity.

To be fair, I learned never to gamble in real life by indulging in non-persistent gambling games as a child, and proved very quickly that my bad luck far outweighs any skill I might have.  But for every child like me, there is another who will end up wasting significant time and money in the future because real gambling was introduced before he/she was able to make a rational decision about it.  There’s a reason why real gambling requires you to be over 18 in the United States!

Time Waster #3:  Part-time jobs
The particular member of the suite of games I mentioned in Time Waster #1 also embodies what I mean by part-time jobs.  In most jobs, there is a time that you to arrive and a time that you are able to leave.  If you don’t abide by those rules, there are penalties, including the possibility of being fired.  My humble opinion is that no game should be like that.  I have no problem with having a scheduled event or game that people can attend virtually, but there should never be a penalty attached to prioritizing your life over those things.

This is a much worse phenomenon for kids, because virtual things are much more vivid and real to them than they are to us adults.  I have seen children cry over the death of a virtual pet, who had been lost and neglected in the couch cushions for several months.  I have heard kids talk about role-playing game characters as if they were literally best friends.  By putting a scheduled time restraint on kids with threat of penalty (ie. your crops will die if you don’t water them today), it stops becoming a game and in a way enslaves them to face the same threat of penalties that a part-time job would entail, but without any actual benefit to go along with it.

It is extremely difficult to create a virtual world that can compete for the attention of kids in this media-saturated world without employing the common methods to attract and addict children, but as the CTO and lead developer of Woogi World from the start, I believe it is not only possible to do it right, but that we are leading the charge for the right reasons.  We are not content in being a babysitter; we strive to do every user good for every moment they are online with us.  In part 2 of this blog article, I will illustrate the design principles we’ve employed in making Woogi World the safest and best virtual world out there for kids, and we hope those principles will help you make more informed evaluations of the games your kids play outside of it.

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Jonathan Chan is the Chief Technical Officer of Woogi Inc, creator of Woogi World. Image Credit: Sean Dreilinger and Clover_1 via Flickr.

In fact, that is what happened to the parents of a 7-year-old boy in England. They were left to deal with the credit card company after their son unintentionally made a number of in-app purchases. I can relate because the same thing happened to me (my two children own an iPod Touch).

Jack Drager’s parents likely grimaced when they got their credit card bill. Over a 4-day period, their young son charged $2,084 as he was playing the popular, family-friendly game Tap Zoo. It’s a game that allows you to collect virtual animals.

Jack’s parents are better than most. They read the game’s terms and conditions before allowing their son to download. They approved the game because they thought it was free. The app didn’t indicate “there was any cost involved.”

Unfortunately, the free app did charge for exotic animals added to Jack’s zoo collection. Some cost up to $100 each.

Should the blame be placed on Apple for supplying a free app that allows charges to be made or on the parents for not monitoring what their children do? In fact, Apple normally doesn’t take responsibility. In this case, fortunately, Apple refunded the money charged and said it would begin requiring passwords to make purchases as a new policy.

“We are proud to have industry-leading parental controls,” Apple said. “Parents can easily use our parental control settings to restrict app downloading and turn-off in-app purchasing. In addition to a password being required to buy an app on the App Store a re-entry of your password is now required when making an in-app purchase.”

Needless to say, I have also activated these features on my children’s iPod Touches.

In this story, Jack’s parents set a good example. They were vigilant in monitoring. But their story also underscores the importance of follow-up. Had they just reviewed the game with their son, they might have noticed the charge options.

Remember, it’s a parents’ role to be diligent in monitoring what a child does on their mobile device. For a complete list of iPod Touch parental control options, visit NetNanny.com.

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Russ Warner is President & CEO of ContentWatch, maker of the top-rated desktop and mobile web filter Net Nanny (www.netnanny.com). He is used as an expert source in the national press on a regular basis and speaks regularly on the topic of Internet Safety. Warner was most recently asked to speak at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on what parents can do to help their children navigate the digital age. Under Warner’s leadership, ContentWatch leads an ongoing Internet safety campaign and has conducted seminars for the local Utah media, the Utah Coalition Against Pornography, and numerous schools.

iKeepSafe’s Director of Global Initiatives, Robyn Treyvaud, gave the keynote address at this year’s 21^st Century Learning Conference.

The conference, hosted in Hong Kong, attracts educators from around the globe to interact with ideas and experiences designed to make them better informed and enthused to bring out the best in the digital native learners they influence.

Robyn Treyvaud is an online safety educator and leader advising schools, communities, media, industry and government across Australia, the US and the Asia Pacific region.

Enjoy her speech below!

In 350 BC he wrote, “man is by nature a social animal,” and since then nothing much has changed except that a large portion of our social bonding now takes place online, and many of us find ourselves members of new and different communities.

What has changed, however, is that the consequences of being a thoughtless community member today can be dire.

For example, take the UCLA student who made headlines last year for posting a video in which she complained about the Asian students in her school community. Backlash from the video, which immediately went viral, led to her eventual withdrawal from school. In addition, her very public actions as an insensitive member of her community will be memorialized in cyberspace forever.

I couldn’t help but think about this poor girl while teaching a lesson from Common Sense Media called “The Rings of Responsibility” to my 6th grade “Cyber Civics” class at Journey School.

This “digital citizenship” lesson asks students to think about the rights and responsibilities that come with being a member of a community. It teaches them that community members have responsibilities to three entities:

1. Themselves
2. Their friends and family
3. The larger community

The above holds true whether our community is online or offline. Responsibility and respect know no digital boundaries.

This lesson also asks students to think about the things that can cause a community to break down. My class came up with the following list: meanness, gossip, lies, exclusion, and pretending to be something/someone you aren’t. It was a good lesson (for me!), and I came home determined to be a kinder, more thoughtful member of all my communities.

In Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: A Synthesis from the Good Play Project (2008), James, et al, write about the vital role that mentors play “in teaching young people to view themselves as participants who do not simply use media, but shape it” (p, 42).

This is an important point. Adults often assume that because young people are so technically adept they must not need our help or guidance. But nothing could be farther from the truth. More than ever young people need adult support to learn how to be responsible citizens of all the new and different communities they belong (and will belong) to. Our mission at CyberWise is to help adults get up to speed on the digital world so that we can be the mentors that young people need.

What if the UCLA student had participated in a digital citizenship lesson like “The Rings of Responsibility” when she was in 6th grade? Would she have stopped to consider the responsibilities she had to her community (let alone herself) before posting the video?  Although we’ll never know what her fate may have been, perhaps with a little thoughtful guidance, we can help other young people avoid making similar mistakes in the future.

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Diana Graber is Co-Founder of CyberWise, a Digital Hub that helps busy adults understand and use digital tools to enhance learning. Diana also teachers CyberCivics at Journey School in Aliso Viejo, CA, and is the recent recipient of and M.A. in Media Psychology and Social Change from Fielding Graduate University. Photo Credit: Sujin Jetkasettakorn via Flickr and “Rings of Responsibility” from Common Sense Media.

Earth Day may be over, but our responsibility to a single, shared planet is an everyday endeavor.  Kids know this more than anyone.   While kids today benefit from a connected world where real-time news is available instantly, they also struggle to make sense of an information avalanche related to the fate of the polar bears and Arctic ice caps.  Simply said – kids worry.  However, if we can empower children to make the world better, they can be part of the solution in a way that positively impacts the whole world.

Global brands, such as KidZania, are using the internet to do just that.  KidZania, home to 9 role-playing theme parks in 7 countries (announcing its U.S. location this year), is rallying its nation of children to create a healthier, cleaner planet.  KidZania recently unveiled the KidZ for a Greener World Pledge created by kids, for kids.  The Pledge is a focal point of KidZania’s multi-month global campaign to amplify the importance of environmental stewardship and encourage kids to imagine, create, and unite for a Greener World.

The Greener World Pledge represents a collection of the most practical and achievable ideas culled from kids from around the world as shown in this video, including:  pick up stray trash, use both sides of the paper, turn off lights, and take shorter showers, among others.  Simple, doable, and impactful.  By signing the pledge, children are making a conscientious choice to protect the world around them.

KidZania believes that children around the world can make a positive impact on the Earth no matter their age or how small or big the deed.  In fact, it’s the everyday, practical choices that kids make as citizens and environmental stewards that ultimately, make the world a better place.  This, too, could be the first opportunity to make a child’s voice heard and counted via a safe online contribution that showcases how one small contribution can be part of something meaningful.

KidZ for a Greener World connects children via a unifying green theme that transcends geographic boundaries and cultures. To make it fun, KidZania has turned environmental stewardship into a global race.  Who will win?  Will Kuala Lumpur be dubbed the “greenest” or will Mexico drive toward the win?

KidZania is currently collecting signatures online from children around the globe and will announce the global tally and greenest nation on World Environment Day (June 5).

To join the Greener World conversation on Twitter, use the hashtag #KidZ4Green.  For more information about KidZania, visit www.KidZania.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/KidZaniaOfficial.