eSmart Interactive Games – Gotchas Galore and Detective Training Day

Online safety education moves faster than most teachers can follow. Many teachers lack confidence in teaching these topics, finding them technically complex and fast-evolving. Existing resources frequently lag behind what students actually experience online, and the subject matter resists the binary right-or-wrong approach that works for maths or science. Both games respond to the challenge of building durable, analytical capabilities in students rather than prescribing fixed rules about threats, giving young learners tools that stay useful as online environments change.

The team took an iterative, teacher-centred service design approach. Educational subject matter experts from the Alannah & Madeline Foundation shaped the learning objectives, and the games were tested with 48 students at Westgarth Primary School to calibrate difficulty and concept clarity. A second round of full classroom testing at Murrumbeena Primary School, involving four classes and approximately 120 students, validated the complete lesson service, including teacher-facing slide decks, facilitation guides, worksheets, and accessible fallbacks. The final service positions the games as one element within a cohesive, teacher-led lesson, ensuring educators feel supported without being overwhelmed.

Early in-school testing across 90 student responses demonstrated that 62 per cent of participants reported learning something new about online safety. The service is offered free to Australian schools through the federally funded eSmart program, removing cost as a barrier to access. By packaging interactive games within professionally designed teacher resources, the service raises educator confidence and increases meaningful engagement with online safety content. The longer-term ambition is a generation of more analytically capable, safety-aware digital citizens, and a stronger profile for the eSmart brand as a go-to resource for Australian schools.

The service is designed around a fundamental philosophy: the teacher, not the device, leads the learning. The lesson pack, which includes slide decks, facilitation guides and tiered worksheets, is structured so educators can deliver it confidently regardless of technical background. Materials are clearly signed for teacher and student use, ensuring nothing sits in a mental too-hard basket.The games give that structure its substance. In Detective Training Day, students act as digital detectives, using investigative tools to examine online content, question who made it and why, and identify misleading or persuasive techniques. In Gotchas Galore, students move through scenarios involving apps and games that collect personal data, learning to spot privacy risks buried in everyday sign-ups, permissions and in-game features.Both games are built with PixiJS engine and pre-load in browsers, making them resilient in low-bandwidth environments and shared-device classrooms. AI-assisted development using Claude Code and ElevenLabs for voiceover allowed the team to achieve visual fidelity and interactivity well beyond traditional e-learning at comparable cost.Accessibility is built in throughout, from a fully accessible worksheet version of each game to detailed teacher notes for inclusive delivery. The modular architecture means scenario libraries can be updated without rebuilding the underlying experience.