(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Irfan Bukhari The Peninsula
DOHA: Under its Digital Literacy Curriculum (DLC) program, the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MOTC) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education will train 5,000 students on cyber safety in 2018.
MOTC in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE) launched the Digital Literacy Curriculum (DLC) aimed at training master trainers in Ministry of Education and Higher Education.
A recent report of MOTC regarding its cyber safety initiatives reveals that the DLC program consists of 16 courses that deliver a series of lectures, workshops and quizzes using a web browser to be conveniently accessed anytime, anyplace via safespace.qa.
The curriculum is offered to kindergarten to 12 educators, ICT teachers, and coordinators where they can further empower their community and deliver the cyber safety workshops to other teachers, students and parents.
'The Ministry of Transport and Communications and Ministry of Education and Higher Education will continue to develop their partnership efforts to further expand the adoption of the programme and aim to train over 5,000 students in 2018, the report said.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications has also said that it would impart cyber safety training to all teachers under another programme titled 'Haseen in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.
In February 2015, MOTC launched a cyber safety learning programme ‘Haseen', which is accessible to teachers via www.safespace.qa.
It is aimed at creating awareness and promoting an informed and healthy cyber safety culture by integrating learning moments into everyday classes. The number of active teachers on ‘Haseen' portal by the end of 2017 was 1909.
The programme consists of 300 learning activities (in English and Arabic) with over 100 learning resources (videos, quizzes, animations etc.) linked to the school curriculum that educates students on the safe and responsible use of ICT.
Teachers can choose the educational resources (animation, video, worksheets, audio clips, animated quizzes and interactive web programmes) that provide cyber safety content for activities that lead to the delivery of English and Arabic curriculum.
The teachers who received training will now act as Haseen ambassadors and impart the training to other staff within their schools in order to provide grade 1 to grade 12 students with cyber safety awareness in their English and Arabic lessons. 'Going forward, the MOTC and Ministry of Education and Higher Education plan to further roll out the training programme to cover all teachers from 2018 onwards, the report says.
The MOTC document further reveals Internet and social media usage trends in Qatar. It states that Qatar boasts a high Internet penetration, with 95% of individuals using the Internet, which has been increasing year on year (95% in 2017 against the 85% in 2013), while penetration of households with an Internet connection stands at 95.8%.
Out of several countries, Qatar has unique social media patterns. About 93% of people in Qatar use WhatsApp, about 70% use Instagram and 64% use Snapchat. The latter percentage represents perhaps the highest Snapchat penetration in the Arab world. Research has shown that Qataris on average spend around 45 hours per week on the Internet, almost twice that of other nationals.
‘Ammen Taslem' is another MOTC's cyber safety social media campaign, which is being run with #secure4safety hashtag. The campaign focuses on developing the awareness messages using various mechanisms such as videos, GIFs, infographics, articles and trigger discussions through social media influences and publishing them on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Since its launch in 2016, the campaign has published 117 posts covering all communities. The MOTC managed to receive more than 500,000 impressions, 3,000 engagements and 3,000 followers for its monthly posts, the document says.
MENAFN1002201800630000ID1096451917
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.