Safer Web

Parklands College Learner Creates “Safer Web” App to Provide Safer Internet Browsing for Children.

Stephan Cilliers, a Grade 11 Parklands College learner has developed an iPad app called “Safer Web” that provides a safer web browsing environment for children. He developed the app after the Preparatory Faculty staff raised concerns about what learners can encounter on the Internet at home when web filtering tools were not in place. The goal of the app is to provide a safe environment for younger children to explore the web while providing peace of mind for teachers and parents.

Safer Web is a free wrapper app that makes the online kid safe search engine, Kiddle, its home page. The app ensures safe browsing by blocking any web searches, websites or adverts that match any restricted keywords identified when following links that take out of Kiddle. Safer Web does not allow you to type a website address directly into it and you can only follow links deemed safe by the search engine and restricted keyword list.

Parklands College runs numerous programmes to develop entrepreneurial and real world skills in its learners. Our Mobile Application Development incubator (MAD) houses one of these programmes and teaches learners how to research and identify a need in a market, come up with ideas for an app to address the need, develop the app, release the app on the Apple app store and finally to market it.

This is part of a Parklands College and Christopher Robin Pre-Primary initiative to teach learners how to solve real world problems and challenges by developing relevant commercial and educational applications for communities.