Common Sense Digital Passport - what's changed?!

Common Sense Education's Digital Passport has been around since 2012 now, and covers a wide range of internet safety/digital citizen themes that works well with Year 4 children where I teach.

This academic year sees a number of changes to Digital Passport.  It's still a useful site to use with children but  I thought I would run through and outline some of the potential pitfalls that exist to trap the unwary teacher:

1. Lack of a centralised teacher area to track pupil's scores. This was a great feature of the old Digital Passport. It's  a shame it no longer exists. Instead I get my pupils to download their certificates as they collect them and store them on a colour-coded Google Slides presentation (access a copy here).

2. Having to log in for each activity can be annoying, especially when the process seems a bit buggy. At least certainly on our desktop machines. (We are running the latest edition Chrome browser so this shouldn't make a difference?) Anyway sometimes 'Start New Game' has to be used when the child clearly has an account but the "Resume Game' option is refusing to let them log in.  Perseverance is key, for both teacher and student...
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3. A large number of children (more every year in my experience) are arriving with less proficient motor skills for accurate keyboard dexterity. So a game such as Share Jumper often doesn't reveal an accurate result when they're falling off onto the wrong answer every few seconds! I developed a Quizizz that strips away this element, based on all 30 Share Jumper questions, allowing a more accurate assessment of their online safety knowledge to be judged. 

4.  Choosing a username can be often tricky for those not experienced in such matters.  I structure it for them before they begin on Digital Passport to choose a <colour>, <animal>, <2 digit number>. I am usually redpanda76 in this format.  Also a 12 character limit for usernames in Digital Passport makes red and blue popular colour choices...

5.  Not a criticism of the site as such, but the number of children who are confronted with the screen above, and fail to type PASSWORD into the box as instructed, is a LOT!  So, OK, maybe it's slightly ambiguous for an 8 year old...

6. The final Mix 'n' Mash activity looks to be showing its age now. Digital Passport started in 2012, so light years ago technology-wise, and I get the sentiments behind crediting where credit's due, but really this area in particular could do with a revamp.  Not sure how, but maybe linking to a project or presentation they would actually do themselves?  

Do you have any experiences using Digital Passport with a class? Feel free to comment below with your thoughts!