Teacher’s Day Special – Things that teachers must know about their students to make them cyber safe

A good teacher is not just someone who is good with academics. They are more of a role model and mentor, who can share the right knowledge with their students, to help them choose and perceive between the good and bad of the society they live in.

Given the increasing intrusion of internet in the lives of students as young as 10 to 12 years old, it has become a necessity for teachers to inculcate the right cyber security etiquettes and ethics in the vulnerable minds of students.

Several modern day educators feel that internet has created a huge gap and disconnect between teachers and students. Thus, to bridge in this gap, it is important for teachers to keep up to date with the evolving digital world and ask their pupil the right questions, to protect them from becoming innocent victims of cyber-crimes.

However, before teachers can come up with the right questions, here are few things that teachers today should know about their students:

• Homework has been a collaborative activity for ages but the collaboration was mostly restricted to contacting classmates, for cross checking answers or asking references. However, off lately, this activity has shifted to online chat rooms using various free, unmonitored and risky chatting apps.
• Access to the internet and its content has literally become a child’s play and just in case you try to restrict it, students are bound to find their way out.
• School libraries have become a thing of past, as students have come to see Wikipedia as their new source of information.
• The meaning of discipline has surprisingly changed, as students have fallen in the habit of breaking rules like data stealing, privacy breach or bullying, which otherwise they wouldn’t have dared to do in the physical environment of school.
• Introduction of websites like “ratemyteachers” where students can rate their school and teachers, have completely taken respect out of a student – teacher relationship.

So, while the internet has brought along several good things like easy access to information for the growing minds, it has also impacted the way students today look up to their teachers and mentors.

Thus, in order to maintain the essence and dignity of a student – teacher relationship, it is extremely important that teachers keep in line with what their students do, to ensure that they are cyber safe. Well as goes the saying…

Great teachers teach children HOW to think not WHAT to think