Triple Zero Kids' Challenge

Hello and thank you for assisting us in educating children how to cope in an emergency and the appropriate use of Triple Zero, Australia’s emergency call service.

This game is designed for children of kindergarten and primary school age and consists of twelve safety scenarios. The estimated game-play time is one hour, but can be played in shorter intervals.

The Game has ‘closed captions’ for those players who do not have a sound card, cannot use their computer’s audio or who may have hearing difficulties. Just click on the icon in the top right-hand corner of each game scenario to activate closed captions.

The game relies on narrative and voice-prompts. As such, competing PC noise in a computer classroom can detract from the experience. If available, the use of earphones for each computer will assist. In the event that earphones are not available, using a projector and a central game-play with one computer, using the closed captions option in the game or greater separation of players are all viable alternatives.

On starting the game, the children will be asked to enter their postcode. You can assist by having this available to them. At the beginning of the game, children will see a scrolling ‘credit screen’ of logos of supporting emergency services and agencies. Please assure them that this is normal. You might challenge them to identify the ones applicable to their area.

Please encourage the children to play the game from home also. Those living in culturally and linguistically diverse households are good conduits for passing information back to their families. The game is also available to be played in a number of other languages including Hindi, Vietnamese, Chinese (Mandarin), Thai, Arabic and Sudanese (Dinka). This selection is made when entering the game through a menu at the top right hand corner of the screen.

We recommend that you use the full-screen feature to help minimise the chance of players unintentionally exiting the game.

There are a few topics that may arise during the playing of the game, where you may be required to provide assistance and guidance to the children. These include:

Stay Relevant. One of the scenarios talks about ‘staying relevant’. Please help younger children to understand what this means.

Prank Calls. Please explain the importance of the Triple Zero number to children, and reiterate that it should not be called, except in an emergency.

Escape Routes. Some of the scenarios discuss the need for having more than one escape route in your home in the event of a fire. If children express concern that they live in an apartment or other low-exit scenario, they should discuss escape routes with their parents.

Safe Meeting Place. In one of the scenarios, a safe meeting place is mentioned briefly. It may be helpful to discuss this concept with children with reference to a fire.

Is Someone Breathing? It would assist children if you could help them understand ways of telling whether someone is breathing or not.

We recommend that if you are Deaf, hearing impaired or speech impaired that you visit the National Relay Service (NRS) website for information on contacting emergency services using the NRS. The NRS provides three ways to contact emergency services – one by TTY, one by ordinary phone, and the third by internet relay. The url link is: http://www.relayservice.com.au/topics/2065.html

Thank you again for your assistance, and should you have any feedback, please email us at gamesupport@triplezero.gov.au

The Triple Zero Awareness Work Group

This resource is intended for teachers of students in Prep and Grade 1 and Grade 2. The resource has been designed to teach children the practical steps on how to identify, confidently react to and report legitimate emergencies by calling Triple Zero. The teaching and learning activities in the resource assist students to achieve outcomes in the Australian Curriculum for English, Technologies, Humanities and Social Sciences, Science, and Health and Physical Education.

Download Teacher’s Guide as PDF (7mb)

Download Resource Pack as PDF (9mb)

We have posters available that you may want to print and display.

For those wishing to locally install this game (to avoid network usage) – particularly schools with slow internet connections, a downloadable version is available.