SOS 4 Kids — Course Inventory & Findings (Master)

A review of every course file handed over, and what it means for the questions raised on the 28 July call.

What was handed over

Six modules. Each is a self-contained e-learning package built in Articulate Storyline.

#	Module	Screens	Size	Videos	Audio	Built with	Runs today?
1	Street Smarts	14	34 MB	1	70	Storyline 3.7	No
2	People Safety	12	83 MB	2	74	Storyline 3.7	No
3	At Home Safety	26	80 MB	6	133	Storyline 3.7	No
4	Online Safety	9	59 MB	5	86	Storyline 3.7	No
5	Fire Safety	17	20 MB	0	47	Storyline 3.7	No
6	Missing	—	—	—	—	—	—
7	Accident Prevention	8	18 MB	0	33	Storyline 3.39	Yes

Module 6 was not included. Module 7 awards badge 7 and displays a set of seven badges, so the course is designed as seven modules. Module 6 exists somewhere and needs to be requested.

The three findings that matter most

1. Five of the six modules will not run in a browser today

Modules 1 through 5 were built in 2017 with a version of Storyline that depends on Adobe Flash. Flash was discontinued at the end of 2020 and removed from every major browser. Those modules contain between 102 and 240 Flash files each.

The still pictures survive, because the software also exported picture backups. What does not survive is everything interactive — and in these modules, the interactive parts are the teaching. The Trust Meter scenarios, the click-the-hazard activities, the chat simulation, the quiz buttons.

2. Module 7 is the exception, and that is the most useful thing in the set

Module 7 was built with a far newer version of the same software and contains zero Flash files. It runs in a modern browser as-is.

Somebody, at some point, rebuilt or re-exported at least one module on current software. That matters more than it might sound. It suggests the original editable source files may still exist. Re-exporting a course from its source file is a routine operation measured in hours. Rebuilding one from scratch is measured in weeks.

This is the single most valuable question to put to Velma: who produced Module 7, when, and do the original Storyline source files (.story files) still exist for the other six? The answer changes the cost of this project by an order of magnitude.

The filename contains “BIZT”, which may be a clue to who did that work.

3. Almost none of the course text is actually text

Across all six modules, most on-screen wording is drawn into the artwork rather than stored as text. The six safety rules in Module 2, the safety messages in Module 1, the guidelines in Module 4 — all pictures of words.

Consequences:

It cannot be searched, translated, or resized.
It cannot be read aloud by screen readers, so children with visual impairments or reading difficulties are locked out.
It cannot be edited without redrawing the graphic.
Recovering it required reading the pictures by machine, which is why some passages in these documents are marked uncertain.

The exceptions are the quizzes in Modules 3, 4 and 5, which are real text. That is why those modules documented most cleanly.

Content defects found

These are worth fixing regardless of what happens to the platform.

Module 5 — the fire safety quiz was never finished. The screen contains a developer’s note reading “Needs feedback to be programmed.” Six fire-safety questions were written and never wired up to tell a child whether they answered correctly. A child who answers “run through the smoke” or “go back for the laptop” is told nothing. This is the most serious defect found and it sits in the module where a wrong answer carries the worst consequence.

Module 2 — a quiz question teaches the wrong lesson. Question 2 asks whether to accept a ride from a neighbor after texting dad for permission. Both the right-answer and wrong-answer responses say the same thing: that it is fine to go. The wrong-answer message literally opens “Nice try, but…” and then agrees with the child.

Two modules are missing quiz questions. Module 2 runs Q1, Q2, Q3, Q5 — there is no Q4. Module 4 runs Q1 to Q4, then Q6 — there is no Q5. In both cases the question was never in the package. Planned teaching points are simply absent.

Module 3 shipped with template placeholder text. The first quiz screen still contains QUESTION?, Answer 1 and Answer 2 alongside the real content.

Module 7 has a screen titled “Untitled Slide.”

Visible spelling errors. “Guidlines” appears on screen in Module 4. The handout in Module 1 reads “EVERY TiME”. File names include “vacum”, “Ingury”, and “Tricky People Draft 3.mp4” — a draft filename in a shipped course.

No captions or transcripts anywhere. 443 audio files and 14 videos across the six modules, none with a text version. For Module 4, where four of the five guidelines are delivered by video, this means most of the teaching has no text equivalent at all. Deaf and hard-of-hearing children cannot access it.

What is genuinely good here

It would be a mistake to read the above as “the course is bad.” The instructional design is strong. The problems are technical and editorial, not conceptual.

Mr. Taylor. A recurring character — a known, friendly neighbor who is not safe — appears across Modules 2, 3 and 4. He offers a gift with a secret attached, wants to be let in the house, and messages a child online. Teaching “tricky people” through one familiar figure across three contexts is genuinely good design and rare in children’s safety material.

The online chat simulation (Module 4). A predator opens with flattery about a shared interest, then asks three questions that each narrow down where the child physically is: which league, what night, where’s your next game. When the child hesitates, he mirrors their caution back to rebuild trust (“I get it, my parents tell me 2 b careful 2”). That is an accurate, well-observed depiction of grooming, pitched at a child’s reading level.

The Trust Meter (Module 2). A single mental tool — check your gut, and notice when you feel confused, uncomfortable, or scared — reused across scenarios in Modules 2 and 3. Portable, memorable, and age-appropriate.

The fire escape rules (Module 5). Complete, correct, and already in plain text.

The scenario-based quiz writing (Module 5). Questions are situations, not facts: “You open the door and the hallway is filled with smoke…” This is better pedagogy than the true/false statements used elsewhere.

This is 20 years of accumulated subject-matter expertise. It is worth preserving carefully.

Answering the questions raised on the call

Velma’s insurance concern about AI

This is the concern that most directly affects the work, and the findings help.

The insurer’s position, as relayed, is that content produced by AI would not be covered — it must be SOS 4 Kids’ original content.

The work documented here is not AI-generated content. It is a transcription of existing SOS 4 Kids material. Every safety rule, quiz question and scenario in these six documents was written by SOS 4 Kids and shipped in their 2017 courses. Reading it out of the files and typing it into a document does not change its authorship any more than retyping a paper manual would.

That distinction is worth making explicitly to the insurer, because it points at a workable path: rebuild the existing course as existing content, and treat genuinely new material as a separate question. The seven modules already written are original SOS 4 Kids IP. Modernising how they are delivered does not alter that.

The separate question — new courses on digital safety and AI that do not exist yet — is where the insurer’s concern actually applies, and it can be handled on its own terms with human authorship and review documented.

Worth noting: these documents are themselves evidence of authorship. They show what SOS 4 Kids wrote, in 2017, before any of this.

Velma’s point that program partner materials are too expensive

Velma said program partners can buy inferior materials from the Canada Safety Council at a third of the price of the $585 instructor package (binder, PowerPoint, 20 manuals).

The findings here bear on that. The $585 covers physical goods — printing, binding, shipping, and a PowerPoint. A digital delivery of the same course has no per-unit cost. That is not a small saving to pass on; it is the entire cost base.

But it depends on the content being in a form that can be delivered digitally, which currently it is not — the Flash problem and the text-in-pictures problem both block it.

Richard’s priority ordering

Richard set out: first the pure online courses with certification, second use what is learned to improve the in-person material and partnership packages.

The inventory supports that order, with one adjustment. Module 7 should be looked at first, before anything else is decided, because it answers whether source files exist. That single fact determines whether “modernise the existing seven modules” is a small job or a large one — and that in turn determines whether the in-person materials can be refreshed cheaply as a by-product.

The certification idea

Both Spencer and Richard landed on certification as the hook — a child earns a certificate, and the parent ties it to a privilege such as being home alone or having a phone.

The existing course already has the machinery for this. Every module awards a badge, there are seven badges, Module 7 shows the complete set and carries a “print certificate” step, and Rachel already uses withholding the certificate as a behavior lever in the in-person classes. The concept is not new to the business; it is already built and already works.

Files in this set

module-1-street-smarts-content.md
module-2-people-safety-content.md
module-3-at-home-safety-content.md
module-4-online-safety-content.md
module-5-fire-safety-content.md
module-7-accident-prevention-content.md

Each contains the recovered lesson text, quiz questions, answer keys, and a note on what could not be recovered from that module.

How this was recovered, and its limits

Each package was opened and read directly. Text stored as real text was extracted exactly and is reliable. Text drawn into artwork was read by machine and is marked where uncertain.

Three things are genuinely missing and cannot be recovered from these files:

All spoken narration. 443 audio files, no transcripts.
All video content. 14 videos, no captions.
Some artwork text, particularly the Trust Meter explanation in Module 2 and the worksheets in Module 3.

For Module 7 this gap is severe: the module is almost entirely pictures plus 33 audio clips, so what it actually teaches about each kitchen and living-room hazard exists nowhere in text.

Closing those gaps means someone playing the courses through and writing down what they say — or finding the original scripts.