The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), on May 20, 2020, launched a ‘Cyber Security Handbook’ for students of class 9 to 12. The handbook has been launched with an aim to ensure safe and healthy digital habits among students.
The move was appreciated by the HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhariyal ‘Nishank’ who took to his twitter handle to inform about it. He said, “the handbook has been prepared to aware students from classes 9 to 12 about various aspects of cyber security.” The handbook comes in the wake of the novel coronavirus disease outbreak and the subsequent nationwide lockdown that has forced many schools to move their teaching to online mode. It is available on the CBSE official website cbse.nic.in.
The CBSE Board said that there is an “assumption that young people have superior skills with digital technology” although they are among the most vulnerable groups when it comes to cyber crime, the Indian Express reported.
“Many of them (students) frequently struggle when applying them to research tasks. They can find it difficult to work out whether information on an unfamiliar website is trustworthy, and rely on their chosen search engine’s rankings for their selection of material,” said the board in the handbook.
The handbook covers the topics pertaining to cyber safety, such as cyberbullying, including social exclusion, defamation, intimidation, and emotional harassment, online sexual abuse, cyber radicalization, online attack and fraus, and online enticement.
It also introduces the nine elements of digital citizenship, that are, communication, digital access, etiquette, literacy, health and wellbeing, rights, freedom and responsibility, security, and law. In addition, the handbook contains useful contacts for students to report bullying, harassment, and unlawful activities online. Apart from the lessons, the manual also comprises of some activities to assess the knowledge of students on the topics covered.
For classes 1 to 10, CBSE has recently announced to adopt a different form of teaching and learning. According to this method, several topics will be taught through different modes of art to the students. Then, they will be given projects as well for hands-on learning. One project for each class will include ‘Ek Bharat, Shrestha Bharat’ (United India, Supreme India) programme by the government.
