Address: Cesta 4. maja 92, 1380 Cerknica

Country: Slovenia

 School website

Project: Let’s connect!

Working language during the project:

• Slovenian
   

Themes of the Council of Europe project “FREE to SPEAK, SAFE to LEARN - Democratic Schools for All” covered:

• Improving well-being at school
   

Competences from the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (CDC) addressed and where / how they were integrated:

• Knowledge and critical understanding of the self
  Parents meetings, articles on school website, regular lessons, projects
• Empathy
  Parents meetings, articles on school website, regular lessons, projects
   

Target group age range:

• 11 - 15
   

Level of education:

• Primary education
• Lower secondary education

Short description of the project:

The project focuses on increasing the self-awareness and development of empathy. We'd like to widen the awareness of these competences in every field of children's lives. It's nowadays especially important in the digital world where it's sometimes more difficult to keep up with the rules than in everyday life. Many examples of risky and less emphatic behaviour can be noticed (e.g. they post photos which aren't suitable for posting, they use offensive language, they share personal information with people they know nothing about etc.)

So, it's necessary to connect all sorts of digital activities with different aspects of well-being in the digital world. In our project the target group are children aged from 9 to 15 as well as their parents; the former are the ones who live their lives online practically every day and they create contents online. By educating responsible digital citizens we also deeply influence their private and family lives. The purpose of digital technology at school is mainly learning and educating, while its usage in their free time represents discovering a wide range of digital possibilities – parents are often not aware of the many risks in the digital environment. So, we try to focus on raising parents' awareness of online scams, violence, privacy and safety measures, excessive use of all kinds of digital devices. We also encourage them to search the topic themselves.

The project upgrades the digital citizenship project and includes different activities:

• Optional classes – ICT
  We work a lot on teaching how to use the internet wisely and safely. We'll inform them about different sorts of risks, especially when submitting personal data. We talk a lot about how reliable and trustworthy the information we found on different websites are. The comics will be made by the pupils.
• Class periods (classes 7 to 9)
  The materials will be provided by the project group and then presented at the class lessons by class teachers. The first lesson will focus on researching different types of digital footprints that children leave behind and the ways they present themselves in the digital world. The next lesson will deal with the appropriate ways of communication with the peers. The stress will be put on empathy.
• Working with parents – Raising awareness
  Presentations will be made and posted on school website – parents will learn about different applications and contents which are most frequently used by their children. We'll stress the riskiest behaviours: online violence, submitting personal photos, personal data … Information about using internet safely at home will be given.
   

Aims/objectives

Students:

• raise awareness about their digital image and evaluate it critically
•  develop their ability of being emphatic in digital relationships

Parents:

• learn about the applications that their children use and about different types of digital behaviour of young people
   

Expected results/outcomes

• students pay attention to the ways they present themselves in the digital world
• they pay attention to the ways they communicate appropriately considering the other people's feelings and emotions
• they focus more on how and when the internet is used and they discuss the topic in their families
• they set up the rules for being online
   

Changes

Some changes have been made since the project started. Due to limitations in the present situation with Covid-19 the information for parents will be presented online. The content has been added; we started with net ethics during the online learning period, now we want to continue with developing competences on raising self-awareness and empathy online.
 

Challenges you faced

The main challenge was closing the school and learning online during the epidemic. It was more difficult to carry on certain lessons where content had been planned.

Another challenge is establishing the links between generations. Children are often more capable of using new apps and devices and don't treat parents and teachers as competent enough to discuss the topic with them. As teenagers they are not aware enough of risks and consequences of their digital behaviour; in their adolescent egocentricity they don't feel that anything can happen to them. Very important factors are also the peers’ influence and pressure they put on each other.

So working with children demands innovative approaches and a wide range of teachers' competences (being familiar with new technologies, psychological aspects etc.)
 

Time-frame of the project:

School year 2020-21
 

Council of Europe materials on citizenship and human rights education used while preparing or implementing your practice:

• Compass
• Resources from the Digital Citizenship Education website