A European review concerning digital competences published in 2013 showed that indicators and measurement of digital competence were to a large extent lacking. 30 % of Europeans are computer-illiterate and younger Europeans, who were born and raised in the era of Internet and having digital devices as an integral part of their everyday life, on the one hand may well have different views of and approaches to the disclosure of personal information; on the other hand, they appear to be unaware of privacy issues or prefer the short-term gains from providing personal data. Therefore, this project will focus on increasing digital literacy as one of the basic skills recognized by European Parliament and European Council.This project will be carried out at two vocational colleges having similar backgrounds, being however located in different countries. Both colleges have IT departments which will cooperate in this project. The objective of the project is to enhance students’ digital literacy. In addition, the project focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to learning and teaching foreign languages making use of the method of Content and language integrated learning. In view of these primary objectives, this project will raise students’ employability. Students will work on different intercultural and IT-related project units in an international environment, thus enabling them to acquire comprehensive skills in the fields of data security, privacy issues, project and time management in international teams as well as social and language skills. As this project will be supported by German and Estonian IT and English language teachers, students’ and teachers’ general and IT-related language skills will be improved. We will primarily involve IT students in this project as they will use their IT knowledge to create study material for those students who are not familiar with IT. By doing so, our IT students will serve as ambassadors of data security and privacy issues and they will become more socially responsible IT-experts.Blended mobility will be an integral part of the project as we will use different online tools to prepare short-term exchanges. Students will have the possibility to share study material using joint workspaces such as Etwinning, social networks, Skype etc. Moreover, cooperation between teachers will be strengthened as they have to prepare assignments together and exchange teaching material. We will use short-term exchanges to present project results, engage in peer-to-peer teaching sessions, involve external experts, agree on further milestones and evaluate the progress of the project including time and project management, quality of the results and skills gained so far including social and language skills.Students will work on project units: - intercultural studies- internet-crime- personal rights and social networks- identity protection in a digital environment- digital awarenessAs a result of these units, they will produce different materials such as presentations, online tutorials, interactive web-pages, etc. which will be used to create study materials on digital literacy and data security.This project will leave a great impact on all stakeholders. Students and teachers who will be directly involved in the project activities will learn to study and teach in an international environment, coping with the difficulties of such cooperation and appreciating its benefits. Students will become more sensible computer experts, taking into account privacy and digital identity issues in private and business life. They will learn that working in an international environment will enable them to gain social and intercultural skills that helps them manage better in our fast changing society which has a direct influence on their future careers and in the long-term improves their employability. Students who are not directly participating in this project will also learn more about digital identity and data protection issues. They will benefit as they will be a major target group of the study material created in the project. This project will also have a great effect on the local, national and also on the European level. Project activities contribute to the development of up-to-date curricula, new teaching and learning methods and the promotion of employability of students. Project activities in the long-term will influence the content and attractiveness of education in all participating countries and on a European level: By developing and enhancing digital skills, all EU citizens, including youngsters, will be able to participate on a more equal footing in the digital economy.
This project aimed at enhancing students’ digital literacy and intercultural competences. In addition, the project focused on an interdisciplinary approach to learning and teaching foreign languages making use of the method of Content and language integrated learning. In view of these primary objectives, this project contributed to raising students’ employability and flexibility on the international labour market. This project was carried out at 2 vocational schools (Germany/Estonia). Primarily IT-students were involved in project activities because due to their expertise they served as ambassadors of data security and privacy issues and they became more socially responsible IT-experts. Students collaborated on several intercultural and IT-related project units in an international environment (incl. the following results): 1.Intercultural studies: Students created different videos of their home towns and home countries, prepared presentations and gained intercultural experiences when visiting the countries involved in the project. 2. Internet crime: Students familiarized themselves with the topics “internet crime” and “security measures” by recording video tutorials and programming a computer-based training programme. 3. Personal rights and social networks: The Estonian group decided to prepare infographics and the German group decided to programme an internal webpage. Student teams compared Facebook and Twitter, assessed similarities and differences between the 2 social networks and prepared Power Point Presentations. 4. Identity protection in a digital environment: Students drew up study material such as an interactive webpage (incl. video tutorials and a password check). 5. Digital awareness: Students prepared presentations on several topics (e.g. “The impact of digital footprints“, „Social and ethical responsibility of IT-experts). Infographics about all topics were printed and presented to students at both schools. Blended mobility was an integral part of the project as we used various online tools to prepare short-term exchanges and students worked in international teams. Students had the possibility to share study material using joint workspaces such as Freedcamp, social networks, Skype, etc. Moreover, cooperation between teachers was strengthened as they had to prepare assignments together and exchanged teaching material. A project-oriented approach was implemented both for organizing the entire project and for organizing students’ work on project units. We used 4 short-term exchanges to present project results, engage in peer-to-peer teaching sessions, involve external experts, agree on/ set further milestones and evaluate the progress of the project concerning time and project management, quality of the results and skills gained (incl. social and language skills). This project left a great impact on all stakeholders due to highly efficient dissemination activities. Students and teachers who were directly involved in project activities learned to study and teach in an international environment while coping with the difficulties of such a cooperation and appreciating its benefits. Students have become more sensible computer experts, taking into account privacy and digital identity issues in private and business life. They learned that working in an international environment will enable them to acquire social and intercultural skills that help them get along in our fast changing society which has a direct influence on their future careers and - in the long-term - improves their employability. Students who did not directly participate in this project also learned more about digital identity and data protection issues. They profited as they were the main target group of the study material created in the project. This project had a great effect at local, national and European level. Project activities contributed to the development of up-to-date curricula, new teaching and learning methods / materials and the promotion of mobility and employability of students. Project activities in the long-term influenced the content and attractiveness of education in all participating countries at a European level. By developing and enhancing digital skills, all European citizens, including youngsters, will be able to participate in the digital society and economy on a more equal footing. For more information, please refer to: 1. Schools’ webpages: - http://berufskolleg.schule/erasmus/projekt/ - https://www.rak.ee/digital-literacy-for-data-security-and-digital-identity/ 2. E-Twinning: - https://twinspace.etwinning.net/26730/pages/page/224214 3. Project webpage: - http://projektav14.esy.es/ 4. Awards: - https://publikationen.kmk-pad.org/tipps-fur-die-presse-und-offentlichkeitsarbeit/59540137/36 - https://www.kmk-pad.org/aktuelles/artikelansicht/projekt-des-monats-maerz-botschafter-fuer-it-sicherheit-an-schulen.html