Cyber Safe Generation brings together young people, teachers and academics in order to develop an evidence-based digital educational programme to promote young peoples’ online citizenship in diverse European countries. The project will:A/ Map the country-specific and EU-wide challenges and opportunities facing children and young people in diverse European member states on their safe, healthy use of the Internet. B/ Create a culturally, linguistically and age appropriate open-access multimedia education programme which recognizes and draws on children and young people's assets, knowledge and experiences to support their healthy use of the Internet. C/ Develop open-access culturally and linguistically appropriate guidance and training to enable teachers to use the multimedia programme with children in primary and secondary schools in diverse European education settings. D/ Work with young people, their parents and teachers to co-design, evaluate and re-evaluate the multimedia programme within a range of school environments to ensure a user-centred, evidence -based system which supports children and young people’s online safety. E/ Develop and disseminate a model of participatory design which can be used by teachers and academics in schools and other settings to support children’s involvement and the presence of their voice and perspectives in design processes for educational and community-based digital projects. Led by experts in digital technologies, education and pedagogy, the project will work with teachers, children and parents in order to develop, implement and evaluate a collaborative educational programme aimed at enhancing the digital citizenship and wellbeing of children in Europe. The project is inspired by the European strategy for a Better Internet for Kids (BIK, 2012) framed around supporting children to make use of the Internet in order to enhance their learning and social connectivity while staying safe. By addressing this issue in schools, the project aims for additional outreach to parents, families and NGOs and addresses children's unequal digital participation and exposure to risk ( Livingstone et. al. 2014). Through the participatory and cyclic design approach, participants will be central to the project's activities and intellectual outputs: Children will influence the design of the online system; teachers will influence the educational format and participants will have the opportunity to engage with, and learn from each other. Working with children in this way has the potential to offer unique insights and genuine engagement, ensuring that the project will achieve lasting impacts for children, teachers and parents. In developing children's digital, social and emotional literacy in this way, the project, aims to support young people - in partnership with their schools, teachers and parents - to become active, responsible, open-minded members of society (Paris Declaration, 2015). The project consortium is led by the University of Northampton (UK) and has 3 partners: UC Limburg (BE), Dimotiko Sxoleio Kalamatas (GR) and Via University College (DK). The team will work with up to 120 children aged 8-14 directly and 2000 indirectly in four schools. The project fits with both European and national priorities, developing methods to support children to make use of the creative, connective and educational opportunities offered by the digital world and enhancing their skills to do so safely. The approach taken will also support development of 21st century skills pertaining to local and global citizenship, life skills, ethics and personal and social responsibility.
Informed by the European strategy for a Better Internet for Kids (BIK, 2012) the project (’CyGen’) engaged directly with children (aged 8-13), teachers & parents in four European countries (the United Kingdom, Belgium, Denmark & Greece) in order to: 1.Explore the digital opportunities and challenges for children; 2.Develop a novel participatory design methodology and methods in order to work collaboratively with children, & teachers & parents; 3.Co-design a culturally, linguistically and age appropriate open-access multimedia education programme with children in each of the participating countries;4.Produce online open-access guidance encompassing lesson plans and pedagogical resources to support teachers and educators in primary and secondary schools in diverse European education settings to support children’s online safety The project engaged directly with 276 children, 54 teachers & 46 parents as co-producers of the digital education programme & as participants at the ME events in each of the four participating countries. Children, teachers & parents were recruited from each of the four partner schools. Local education authorities, police & law enforcement agencies & academics in each country participated in our ME events & dissemination activities. Total stakeholder engagement to date directly through the co-designed project activities, ME events & face-to-face dissemination & indirectly through digital engagement (website visits, twitter) is 955,144. The primary contribution and impacts of the project are:-The development of a new participatory design methodology and tools for supporting children as co-designers of digital education in a field that is dominated by adult-led content;-The co-design, test and implementation of digital education resources that directly benefited the participating children, teachers and parents;-The transferability of the project; whereby making available the pedagogical resources, participatory design methodology and tools on the project website in order to benefit children, teachers and parents across the EU and beyond.The outputs created for this project can be found on the project website http://cygen.eu/ and are freely available to download.