(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Around 142 teachers from 72 independent and international schools have been trained in the educational cyber safety programme Haseen at seven interactive workshops organised by the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology's (ictQATAR's) Digital Society Department.
In its first phase, Haseen has been delivered to 25% of schools in Qatar in co-operation with the Supreme
Education Council (SEC).
Three of the workshops were conducted for 26 international schools and attended by 54 teachers. The other four, conducted for 46 independent schools, were attended by 88 teachers.
Haseen is a new educational programme launched in February by ictQATAR in co-operation with the SEC to raise cyber safety and security awareness among students.
Featuring presentations and lectures, the workshops taught teachers on cyber safety topics that Haseen covers along with the best practices. It also helped them to better understand the programme, its vision and mission, and end goals as well as
how to use Haseen search engine.
The sessions also offered a platform for teachers to explore the content of the programme such as the learning resources and activities, and obtain hands-on experience on how to apply and fully utilise the system features.
The attendees were trained on how to guide school administrations on the process of registering new teachers onto the portal of the programme; a multi-feature, interactive platform with icons like rate, comment, share and bookmark that teachers will be using inside classrooms to raise their students' cyber safety awareness. Teachers who already attended these sessions will, in turn, teach their colleagues.
"It was great to conduct these training sessions that really offered a great platform for interaction and upfront discussions between teachers, headmasters and program developers all in one place where they honestly exchanged perspectives, opinions and recommendations around the programme," said Reem al-Mansoori, assistant undersecretary of Digital Society Development, ictQATAR.
Munira Alyafai, e-Learning projects specialist, Curriculum Standards Office at SEC, said they always seek to modernise the educational process by providing e-services based on technology to support the government efforts in improving the quality of education and learning toward achieving the Qatar National Vision 2030 regarding human development.
Jonathan Kingham, Haseen Champion from the Newton International School, Lagoon, said as an educator, and a parent, cyber safety is one of his main concerns for the youth today.
"Many children spend extended, and often unsupervised, periods of time on the Internet especially on social media. This ictQATAR and SEC initiative recognises the need for teachers in Qatar to have the tools necessary to educate our children about these dangers," he noted.
Warifa Sobh from the SEK International School Qatar echoed the statement of Kingham saying "we need to increase parental involvement in this issue and consider what kind of guidance and parental supervision are happening at home."
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