The teachers hosting online classes should be imparted training in handling computers to avoid unwanted sites, say IT experts in the city. They made the above remark to Free Press on the heels of an incident in which a porn clip appeared on the mobile screens of students who were attending online classes at Sheopur on Monday.
An IT expert Yashdeep Chaturvedi says students have no control; they just attend the class. It is the host who controls the online classes or programmes and s/he is responsible for any kind of content whether it is porn or normal.
According to IT Act 2000, to publish porn or obscene materials in the electronic world is a crime whether it is done deliberately or otherwise, he says. So to avoid such situations, hosts who start the programme should be more careful. They should run the programmes themselves and check that there is no unwanted or obscene or objectionable contents in the laptops or mobiles or computers which are being used to host the classes. There is no place for porn sites and obscene words in live training or e-learning programmes, Chaturvedi says. “Training should be imparted to the hosts," he says.
Similarly, Vijay Panse , a computer science faculty in the Delhi Public School, says everything depends on the teachers who are hosting the online classes. They have to decide that what they have to show to the students. They should only allow only the students who are in the school list to attend the classes. If we want to avoid ads or unwanted materials, we just clean it from history of the browser which we are using,” he says adding that all in all the control is in the hands of the host.
A teacher and in-charge of online classes at Government Subhash Excellence Higher Secondary Schools says they are taking the classes on Microsoft Teams app to avoid such situations. Teachers take live classes using the app and the videos of their lectures are uploaded on it. “We don’t source any video from YouTube. So, there is no chance of such a situation,” she says.
A teacher of a prestigious private school in the city says on the condition of anonymity that she has been taking online classes for four months and many times ads of porn sites started blinking on laptops during classes. “I am not tech savy so I don't know how to handle it. Sometimes, I fear what students will think,” she says adding that porn sites should be banned.
Principal of Bal Bhawan School, Rajesh Kumar Sharma says they use Zoom app for online classes and all the commands are in the hand of teachers, so such a situation cannot arise. Teachers give entry to students in online class by their names and they don’t share screens with students.
