CBSE to bring out cyber safety handbook for students

The Central Board of Secondary Education will soon come up with a cybersafety handbook to inculcate safe and healthy digital habits in the students.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is planning to launch a cybersafety handbook to ensure safe and healthy digital habits among students. The Board said that it is wrong to assume that students are aware of the digital platforms because they are comfortable with the technology.

The new module will cover topics in cyber safety, such as cyberbullying, including social exclusion, intimidation, defamation, and emotional harassment, online sexual abuse, cyber radicalization, online attack and fraus, and online enticement. It will also introduce the nine elements of digital citizenship — digital access, literacy, communication, etiquette, health and wellbeing, rights, freedom and responsibility, security, and law.

Apart from giving the lessons to the students, the manual will also conduct the activities to assess the knowledge of students on the topics covered. The manual, to be launched in collaboration with the Cyber Peace Foundation, is meant for secondary and senior secondary level students.

“Many young people are confident in using a wide range of technologies and often turn to the internet for information,” the Board stated, “but the confidence with digital technology can also be misleading.”

“Many of them 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. They may not understand how search terms work or of the powerful commercial forces that can result in a particular company being top of the search engine’s list. They may not be aware of the lurking risks and threats and the fact that some of their actions can invite them trouble,” the Board said.

Recently, the CBSE board had announced to adopt different forms of teaching and learning for students studying in classes 1 to 10.  Several topics will be taught through different modes of art to students. Students will be given projects as well for hands-on learning.