The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in collaboration with Facebook have decided to launch a training course for educators and students on ‘digital safety and online well-being’ and ‘Augmented Reality (AR)’. The course targets the secondary school students.
Each program trains around 10,000 teachers. The registration portal will be opened from July 6 to July 20. As per the official notice, the augmented reality program will begin from August 10 while the digital safety program will begin from August 6.
The educational institutes will nominate the students and teachers for the course. The program also issues an e-certificate upon completion. It is mentioned that this is only the first phase of training. The subsequent training will aim to provide course for 30,000 students in each category.
The circular mentioned that “Growing internet access and usage, online abuse, bullying, misinformation, fake news, internet addiction etc are increasingly becoming important issues to deal with”. It further added, “The ability to navigate through these challenges and situations has become more vital than ever. Considering this, CBSE has partnered with Facebook India to launch free and comprehensive training programmes.”
The Facebook India mentioned that “As more and more young users get online, it becomes important to educate young adults, and students on making well-informed choices online and also help them develop skills they need to safely navigate the internet. The curriculum on digital safety and online well-being covers aspects such as safety, privacy, mental health, and Instagram’s Guide for Building Healthy Digital Habits. The module has been designed to guide students to become responsible digital users, identify and report threats and harassment as well as report misinformation. At least 10,000 students will be covered in the training which will be imparted by the Centre for Social Research (CSR).”
Prior to this course, the CBSE has launched a handbook on cybersecurity for classes 9 to 12. The covered the aspects of cyber-bullying, social exclusion, intimidation, defamation, and emotional harassment, online sexual abuse, cyber radicalization, online attack and frauds, and online enticement. It also consisted the nine elements of digital citizenship — digital access, literacy, communication, etiquette, health and wellbeing, rights, freedom and responsibility, security, and law.