CyberSWAT (Safety While Accessing Technology)/Skyll is now being used as the primary tool to address digital citizenship for West Virginia’s students in grades 3-12. Senate Bill 466 was passed during the 2024 legislative session to be implemented during the 2025-2026 school year. The purpose of SB 466 is to provide education for students on various online safety topics, including recognizing and reporting suspicious communications, protecting personal information, digital relationships and understanding the risks of sharing explicit material. The Skyll platform is a simulation ‘game’ with a Choose Your Own Adventure type of scenarios for students to work through. The course being launched for grades 6-12 is titled Miss Informed and is composed of six episodes that include topics such as sharing personal information, cyberbullying, phishing scams, etc. Through these choice-driven stories, students practice empathy, self-regulation, and sound judgment in realistic social and digital scenarios. The course geared for students in grades 3-5 is still in development and will be released in 2026.
All students (K-12) must participate digital citizenship training annually. Parents may choose for their student to OPT out of participating in the CyberSWAT/Skyll course. An alternative digital citizenship curriculum (Common Sense Media) will be provided for students whose parents have submitted in writing to the student’s school principal for their student to OPT OUT. These must be received by January 15, 2026, for grades 6-12 and February 6, 2026, for grades 3-5. Our K-2 students will continue to use digital citizenship lessons from Common Sense Media.