Support to development of online course on digital literacy and online safety of children in Kazakhstan

Project Background

Today children from a young age have to develop online safety due to daily exposure to the Internet. Digital access provides these children with many benefits and opportunities, as well as many risks and harms, including access to harmful content, sexual exploitation and abuse, cyberbullying and misuse of their personal data. It is very important that the online space where they study, or work is safe. Adults can restrict access to an illegal content, but it is especially important to teach children the right behaviour. And it is obvious that the efforts of the state, and normative acts are not enough. That is why it is important that society and businesses take an active position and understand their role and responsibility. It is first of all related to parents and teachers at school.

The IITU / UNICEF program will develop a platform for parents and teachers to increase digital literacy and security online. Under this program 6,000 parents and teachers and from 7 regions of Kazakhstan (Nur-Sultan, Almaty, Almaty region, Shymkent, Kyzylorda, Turkestan region, Zhambyl region) will be trained. The goal is that thousands of children will have qualified parents and teachers who can help them to stay safe in the digital space. In addition, teachers, administrators, parents and children receive developmentally appropriate support on digital safety and digital literacy, enabling them to make learning environment safe for everyone in school.

Project Objective

To feed into this online course, ISDC is conducting a desk review of global policies, practices, and standards on child safety and digital space. Additionally, we are developing tools for pre-course and post-course knowledge assessment of the online course used by the target audience, thereby leading on quality assurance of the course development, its structure, and content.