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Be Aware Online · Erasmus+

The BAO project

A European project to share good practice and identify together the best ways to address the safety of children and young people on the Internet.

Since 2020 United Kingdom · Sweden · France · Finland · Greece Coordinated by DRAREIC

1 Key points

The European BAO project — Be Aware Online — aims to share good practice and identify together the best ways to address the safety of children and young people on the Internet.

It comes in two complementary forms:

A cooperative board game

B@O, designed for children aged 6 and up: the players share responsibility for the well-being and safety of the characters.

Discover the board game

An online game

An easy-to-read and easy-to-understand serious game (Easy Read), designed especially for pupils with special educational needs, aged 8 and up.

Discover the online game

2 History

  1. 2020 · first team

    United Kingdom, Sweden and France

    The project was launched with teachers from these three countries. The aim: identify the most innovative practices in each of them and develop a shared tool to better raise pupils’ awareness, especially those with special educational needs.

    The team of the Hérault departmental service for inclusive education (SDEI), with its partners from Buckinghamshire and Gothenburg, built the Easy Read online game, available in French, English and Swedish.

  2. 2024 · new team

    Finland, Greece and France

    A new team, made up of Finnish and Greek teachers and French teachers, took over, still coordinated by DRAREIC.

    It designed B@O, the cooperative board game, with rules and label sheets in French, Finnish and Greek, and an English version of the rules.

  3. Today

    Free resources for the classroom

    A few copies were printed when the game came out, but the whole project can be downloaded and printed for educational use. Classroom spin-offs and a FabLab making project now accompany the game.

3 Why a cooperative game?

B@O is an educational, playful resource that puts cooperation at the heart of learning about digital issues. Through a shared adventure, participants face the realities of the digital world: cyberbullying, protection of personal data, online safety and critical handling of information.

Win or lose together

The game rules out any individual competition: victory and defeat are shared.

Talk it through

At each step, the players discuss, compare their points of view and choose the best strategies together.

Progress at your own pace

The game adapts its complexity to the players’ age and maturity thanks to three levels.

Beyond raising awareness of risks, this approach develops essential social and emotional skills:

  • listening to each other
  • arguing a point
  • democratic decision-making
  • critical thinking
  • helping one another

4 Partners

The project is led by the Académie de Montpellier (Occitanie academic region) as part of the European Erasmus+ programme, coordinated by DRAREIC — the regional directorate for European and international relations and cooperation.

  • France
  • United Kingdom (Buckinghamshire)
  • Sweden (Gothenburg)
  • Finland
  • Greece

On the French side, the online game was built by the team of the SDEI of Hérault (departmental service for inclusive education), then designed and developed by a professional team.

5 Classroom spin-offs

To bring the game to life in class, several complementary resources have been produced:

Teaching guide for the classroom

Play, understand, debate, create and pass on: a progression in 8 sessions, differentiated according to the game’s three levels.

Read the guide

FabLab project — cycle 3 (ages 9–11)

Béziers Ville school district: pupils make the game, play it up to expert level and lend it to families.

Discover the project

6 Credits for the B@O game

B@O — a cooperative game about Internet use — Erasmus+ project

Direction: Franck Le-Cars

Game design: Colas Didier, Harold Eucar, Maija Huhtinen, Jean-François Guerrero, Alexis Séverin, Henna Salmi, Katerina Tragouda, Evaggelia Tsilako

The game visuals shown on this site are reproduced with the agreement of the project team. Source: official project page on the Académie de Montpellier website (new tab) .

7 About this site

This site presents, shares and explains the BAO project, based on the official page of the Académie de Montpellier and the teaching documents produced around the game (rulebook, teaching guide, FabLab project, project sheet and presentation slideshow).

  • Accessibility: highly legible font (Atkinson Hyperlegible), enhanced contrast, keyboard navigation, dark theme and larger text (buttons at the top of the page).
  • Privacy: no cookies and no audience measurement tools. Fonts are hosted on the site; the YouTube video only loads after a click.
  • Hosting: La Forge des communs numériques éducatifs (GitLab Pages) — site repository (new tab) .