Cyber safety awareness on the rise
NELSON Mandela Bay teachers are being taught to deal with cyber bullying – a major concern in an increasingly technological society.
The teachers attended a lecture at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) yesterday where they were given a free curriculum with 24 lesson plans addressing cyber safety, associated discussion questions and assessment worksheets.
The curriculum aims to empower teachers to educate pupils between 10 and 14 on basic cyber safety principles relevant to their typical cyberspace activity. NMMU Professor Rossouw von Solms said cyber safety education and awareness was common in many other countries.
"Cyberspace has brought many advantages to all of us and most of us, pupils teachers and parents have grown almost totally dependent on cyberspace for our everyday recreation, social networking and communication," Von Solms said.
"The proposed curriculum makes it easy for teachers to present, discuss and assess various aspects of cyber safety with their pupils in class or in an IT laboratory. Teachers and pupils can learn together about the risks associated with online activities. Typical topics that are catered for include cyber bullying, sexting, safe social networking, privacy settings on Facebook and sharing sensitive information."
Pupils will then be given a chance to showcase their artistic side at the annual cyber safety poster competition where they will design posters depicting a cyber-safety message.
Winners of this competition will be announced next month and winning posters will be used in further cyber safety campaigns. Cape Recife High School teacher Bardine Huebsch said the curriculum was a necessity in this advanced technological era.
"These lesson plans will be a great way for us as teachers to educate pupils.
"Cyber bullying is a major problem and kids do not necessarily realise the consequences of giving out personal information, so we do hope that through these lessons they would become more safety conscious," she said. - Chanice Koopman
