Teachers attend media awareness programme

Dimapur, September 26 (MExN): A total of 124 teachers from Cambridge School, Eden Hr. Sec. School, King David School, Carewell School, Dimapur Mission Hr. Sec. School, Evershine School and Neingulie Memorial High School attended the media awareness programme organised by Don Bosco Institute for Development and Leadership (DBIDL), Dimapur from September 2 to 26.  

DBIDL director, Fr. CT Varghese, sdb, in his welcome address stressed on the urgent need for media awareness among the teachers to enable them to help students to use modern mass media intelligently.  

A press release stated that the resource person, Fr. Jonas Kerketta sdb, enlightened the participants on the concept of communication and various aspects of cyberspace. In the first session he dealt with the meaning of the term ‘communication’, elements and process of communication, communication barriers, types of human communication, etc.

He dwelt on the topic of cyber world – changing cyberspace and scenario, urgent need for cyber wisdom, some examples of online abuses and exploitations (online theft of identity, e-mail spoofing, the Nigerian scam, cyber morphing, cyber defamation, cyber hacking, cyber stalking, cyber pornography, cyber flirting, cyber bullying, etc.  

He also spoke on the dangers of cyber addiction with its harmful effects, and on ‘selfies’ which at times can turn out to be fatal and narcissistic. He dealt also with the current problem of the online game ‘Blue Whale Challenge’, reportedly invented by the Russian convict Philipp Budeikin and which has already claimed several young lives worldwide.  

The resource person expounded the two topics of communication and cyber world with inputs interspersed with real life examples, interesting video clippings as well as brief power-point presentations. He suggested some necessary steps for intelligent use of the internet.  

Moreover, he referred to some spiritual measures taken by some organizations to help users of the social media to face the onslaught of the cyber world especially on the gullible youth. In particular he mentioned Biblical efforts in this direction through its effective programme called ‘Reach for Life’ (R4L).