With the third phase of e-Jagratha, an ambitious internet awareness programme for high school students, nearing completion, the district administration proposes to expand the ambit of the programme to cover primary students in the next phase.
The brainchild of District Collector K. Mohammed Y. Safirulla, the programme aims to promote cyber safety and internet awareness among students in association with Information Technology giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
It has covered more than 270 government and aided schools in the district so far.
“We now plan to expand the programme to primary students, starting from the age of 12, to make them digitally empowered and responsible citizens,” Mr. Safirulla said. The programme is designed in such a way that it starts from basic orientation to school-level awareness and further empowerment of schools as a whole. More than 100 schools in the district have completed the third phase of training at TCS labs, and the final level of training is scheduled for the second week of November. TCS has distributed 100 computers to schools, besides setting up computer labs in 10 schools.
The next level of training will cover topics including white hat hacking, cloud computing, robotics / data analytics and team activity, Android development, and internet banking.
Digital transactions
The module for the third phase has been designed as a cyber security hygiene package with thrust on cyber security awareness and empowerment of students in safe digital transactions. The objective is to make them digitally empowered citizens without compromising on confidential information.
“We also plan to open bank accounts with a deposit of ₹1,000 in the name of the top three best performers in schools with the support of the State Bank of India. The idea is to make them digitally active and empowered citizens. The details of the students have already been sent to the bank,” said Mr. Safirulla.
Review
He added that the third phase would be followed by a review of the project, collecting feedback from the Education Department, students, and Tata Consultancy Services consultants.
The programme, Mr. Safirulla said, was replicable across the State or at least in the neighbouring districts of Thiruvananthapuram and Ernakulam considering the presence of large number of IT companies in those districts.
