Batangas school starts good IT manners lesson

TANAUAN CITY—A girl, using her teacher’s identity, created a fraudulent account on Friendster and used it to send foul messages to her friends. Another, a college student, posted her nude photos online on the same account.

When asked why by school officials, both students, from different schools here, said it was just for fun.

Although the incidents did not involve their students, the trend of cyberbullying and possibly of cyberpornography alarmed officials of the First Asia Institute of Technology and Humanities (FAITH) here.

“They say we’re paranoid, but it’s better to be paranoid (than to take actions when it’s too late),” said FAITH vice president for institutional relations and public affairs attorney Gay Marie Francisco.

On Thursday, in time for the school’s 11th founding anniversary, FAITH launched GRIT or the Go for Responsible IT (information technology) campaign.

The institution, being a “technology-friendly” school and a champion in the field of robotics, called for the responsible use of technology and a responsible attitude in social media specially among the youth.

FAITH school officials have been counseling students, who claimed to have been bullied in cyberspace, most often on the networking site Facebook.

“We notice changes in the personality and attitude in class to the point that the student feels helpless about herself,” Francisco said.

She added, “you know how (negative) comments swarm Facebook. When a student is ‘ganged up’ on Facebook, she feels being ganged up too even in the real life in campus.”

Another “phenomenon,” Francisco said, is that students create hoax Facebook accounts under a schoolmate’s name and post nasty comments on it.

“When asked, they’d say it’s just for fun and that they don’t see anything wrong with it,” she said.

Students at FAITH are allowed to bring in cell phones and laptops in school, “as long as they don’t use them in cheating or for anything else,” Francisco said.

But with the launch of GRIT, she said students, teachers and school employees are reminded to be more responsible in technology use.

“With great powers come great responsibility,” said broadcast journalist Sandra Aguinaldo, quoting from the movie “Spiderman,” in a talk on social media during Thursday’s program here.

Aguinaldo introduced “Think Before You Click,” a campaign of GMA-7 on social media related with FAITH’s GRIT.

“While you have the freedom to express your belief, you have to respect others’ (too),” Aguinaldo said.

FAITH has included the responsible use of technology in its Values Education curriculum this school year and plans to launch the campaign to schools in Batangas in October.