Our teachers, Ms. Sukhmeen Cheema and Ms. Divya Mehta got a unique opportunity to attend an extremely informative workshop - Preventing Internet Abuse by children and child abuse online at Alliance Francaise on 12 July, 2013. Presided over by Mr. Jitin Chawla, eminent educationalist and career counsellor, the workshop covered the following areas.
- Understanding the abuse of the net by children.
- Inappropriate language online
- Inappropriate content online.
- Teen Sexting
- Cyber Bullying
- Internet Fraud
- Internet Addiction Disorder
- Fishing
- Cyber stalking
- Steps to prevent the above.
Mr. Chawla spoke at length on how children are exposed to a lot of content through the internet nowadays. It therefore becomes imperative to monitor their online activity and in this regard schools should take proactive steps.
The discussion started by the speaker questioning the audience about issues related to internet abuse that concern them in personal or school life.
Mr. Parekh Shah, another speaker threw light on the legal aspects of internet abuse. The Indian cyber law had Section 66 whereby school students could be booked for malicious online activities. He said that schools should propagate the benefits of internet like youtubeschools.com which has a lot of videos on several academic topics. He also gave the example of how a 17 year old girl had inserted widowed as her facebook status as she had broken up with her boyfriend! He stated that most teens wanted to capture and upload every moment of their lives online. Due to this they sometimes become victims of cyber- stalking or cyber- bullying. Since Mr. Shah is working closely with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), he implored teachers to inform children about the cyber cell in India which is situated in the Delhi Polices Economic Offences wing on Mandir Marg.
Mr. Jitin Chawla offered various steps for teachers, parents and students to prevent internet abuse.
He said parents suld be more proactive, set boundaries and participate with their children in online activities, to nurture the childs confidence in himself/herself.
Parents should watch out for signs like their wards keeping awake at odd hours in the night or receiving unaccounted cash/gifts; these can reveal that he/she is speaking to a stranger online.
He also highlighted through videos that children do not know who is sitting at the other end of the computer. It could be a 40 year old man posing as a 19 year old teen. Mr. Chawla also gave names of popular parental control softwares like
1. Qustodio
2. PGsurfer (Microsoft certified)
3. OnlineFamily.Norton
4. Net nanny 6.5 (Paid software)
5. Web watcher 7
6. Spytech Spy Agent 7.1
7. Spector Pro
He reiterated that schools/parents should tell children to remember the following while working on the internet:
In chat rooms, use a name that is not gender-specific Never give out personal information Do not meet in person with someone you met online. Do not give out your password to anyone In case of abuse, the victim can report on the portal http://www.cybercellindia.com. The complaint will be handled by High Tech Cyber Security Experts and the Rajasthan Police with the help of the Resource Centre for Cyber Forensics. One can also SMS on Cyber@542423
Teachers could use the website Thinkuknow.co.uk to download films, presentations, games, lesson plans and posters that they could use with young people to teach about using technology safely.
Take steps to stop cyber bullying
Report abuse. For example, click the report abuse link on the website. If the messages are threatening, the local police could help. Ignore bullying Behaviour. Its alright to tell the person who is bullying to stop, but dont respond aggressively.
Delete online messages (after saving a copy) so that others dont see the bullying. Dont forward text messages to others as they might forward them ahead too.
Compiled by Ms. Sukhmeen Cheema and Ms. Divya Mehta.
In the Press
Admissions
