Role of Students, Teachers and Parents
Transcript
Eddah: In this video, we’re going to cover the roles of the teachers, students, parents, and guardians. Who then is responsible when it comes to the student’s online activities? We have three main key role players. That is the students, the teachers, the parents, and the guardians. We’ll begin by looking at the roles of the teachers.
Teachers should educate the students on online risks and safety. When it comes to the online risk, they should inform the students about the risks they can face when learning online. An example of an online risk is cyber bullying. A measure that a student can take to ensure that they’re safe online is; blocking the web camera when not in use. Teachers should get the parents and guardians involved in the student online activities. They should inform them of the danger students can face while online, especially without being monitored. They can further direct them to resources readily available with information on children online safety.
Another role is that, teachers should learn about organizations in charge of child online protection. These organizations provide a platform and channel that they can report cyber incidents faced by students. The teachers can also provide parents with an online guide or plan for online learning. This plan can have a comprehensive explanation on different roles and responsibilities of the students, teachers, parents, and guardians. It can also have an explanation on attendance guidelines, learning expectations, content and timing, assessment, and progress monitoring.
Lastly, it is the role of the teacher to set up rules and regulations for a virtual classroom. Just like the physical classroom, a virtual classroom should have rules to ensure that students are disciplined when learning. A school or an institution has a role to play when ensuring that students are safe online. One is by ensuring that the devices are secure.
School computers should be secured with strong passwords and locked when not in use. Software, such as antivirus and firewall should be installed to detect malicious activities that could harm their devices. Secondly, is filtering and monitoring. The school internet should be monitored and filtered to ensure students cannot access harmful or age restricted content. Downloaded content and links accessed by the students can be tracked and blocked.
Number three is school policy. The school should have an ICT policy that protects the use of technology in the institution. The policy should guide teachers on use of school devices and student images for educational purposes only.
Number four is online personality. The school staff should be aware that anything that they post online can affect the reputation of the school. They should therefore separate their personal life from their work life and be professional.
Number five is training. An institution should train all their staff on online risks and safety. The school can further appoint an online safety coordinator to conduct this training to students, parents, and also the school staff. This should include how to report cyber incidents crimes and channels to use. Lastly, is auditing the school system. The school should ensure that there are no loopholes in the school system that an attacker may use to hack the system.
We now look at the roles of the parents and the guardians. They should learn and understand the risks that students may face online. One way to do this is to familiarize with the cases that have occurred and the effect they’ve had on the students. Secondly, the parents should set reasonable guides and rules when it comes to computer use. This can be the time to use the computers. This will ensure that the students don’t spend too much time on the internet and will curb internet addiction.
Number three is to install parent control software, to monitor the activities of the students. This is so that it would prevent them from accessing harmful websites and also to learn and familiarize with the online platform the students use and monitor their activities by looking through the history, to see the sites they’ve accessed.
The next role is to communicate freely and honestly to the children about the online risks. Parents are responsible for introducing children to online safety and inform them of the do’s and the don’ts when learning online. An example is, a child should not give information about who they are or where they live to strangers online. Parents should take interest in the activities of the students while online. This will help them understand the kind of risks they’re exposed to. And parents should also ensure that the students are not accessing age restricted content or websites. They should further inform the students on child friendly search engines such as Kiddle that monitors and filters content to be accessed.
Lastly, parents should attend cyber awareness training. These trainings are normally conducted by the Ministry of ICT and other relevant institutions. This will help them understand the organizations in charge of child online protection and how they can report cyber incidents.
Lastly, it’s the role of students. They should report any cyber incidents that they’ve experienced to their parents or teachers. This will also include any uncomfortable activities they’ve experienced while online. Secondly, they should obey and follow rules and regulations set up by their parents and teachers while learning online. Thirdly, they should not share any personal information to strangers online. This can be their physical address or even their email addresses.
The next role is they should ensure that they don’t post or send videos of themselves to strangers online. And lastly, they should ask for permission from their parents or teachers about downloading any content while online.
This marks the end of this topic. We’ve seen that the key main role players are the students, parents, and guardians, and the teachers. As we all know, the internet never forgets. Therefore, we should be cautious on whatever we post online. We will now look at incorporating cyber security in the classroom. Thank you.
