We believe there is an urgent need to improve digital literacy in primary schools, providing children with a benchmark of key skills. Digital literacy is not just about the level of digital competency or ability to google, it relates to the ability to find, use, and disseminate information. No longer it is enough to be literate in reading and writing, children are now expected to be literate online. Some define digital literacy by the practical software skills pupils need to learn. Others focus on ‘soft skills’ such as how to stay safe online. True digital literacy incorporates both, blending practical knowledge with critical thinking, to help children access, understand and create digital content. This project is focused on showing to our pupils how to use internet mindfully. We appreciate the necessity of learning our pupils to evaluate online content and contact, and recognise how the content they are exposed to and the people they interact with can affect their own behaviour, emotions and beliefs. We want to develop their resilience to many varied pressures and risks online, to internet addiction, to influence of propaganda and fake news even extremist content. They should know the basic rules how to behave online to stay safe. It is necessary to use computers these days but how to treat them in the right healthy way - that is the most important thing we have to teach our pupils. It is important to create methodology, materials and brochures that we could use after the end of the project, as we want to maintain the digital education at our schools in subjects like Media Education, English, Citizenship and ICT. Next objective we would like to achieve, is to improve our pupils' lifelong learning skills, such as team work, leadership skills, sense of responsibility, time keeping, compromising, flexibility, entrepreneurship, critical and analytical thinking skills, solving problems and independent work. We are sure this project will be an opportunity for improving their self-confidence, communication and social skills. All these will be supported by the interaction of the participants attending the short-term exchanges of groups of pupils and teachers. These short-term exchanges will take place in each country during the two years of this project. There are six partner schools participating in the project. The participants are mainly pupils around the age of 11 to 15 years old including some with fewer opportunities, that means mainly with economic or social obstacles and educational difficulties. All the project activities relate to digital skills, using PC programs such as photoshop, applications for creating comics and mind maps or powerpoint presentations, e-safety, cyber bullying and abuse, using social networks and identifying fake news and dezinformations. There is a wide range of activities done during the project like watching movies, debates, worksheets, creating boards, booklets, handbook, comics and posters, doing a survey, preparing a magazine or dramatizations of different situations. Pupils are encouraged to write about their experience and express their ideas and opinions politely in public with the use of blog, facebook and chat room. To do the activities, we will use inovative methods like the project method and team work through the activities done in groups of participants. We will focus on collaboration with not only pupils but teachers as well and also their ability to solve problems, when they come across complications they need to clarify. The outcomes will be presented to the public. All the results and products of the project activities will be displayed and will be available to the whole community. We expect to use the outcomes and methodology after the end of the project too. There will be an online survey about behaviour of young people online created, powerpoint presentations about partner countries, videos about partner schools, booklet with stories about using social networks, comics about cyber bullying, posters with the rules of e-safety, a magazine with fake news and leaflets and stickers with slogans. The general expected results are maintaining close ties between cultures, sharing and exchanging innovative methods and tools, learning how to communicate, discovering European culture, respecting the cultural, geographical diversity among European countries, improving success and motivation of pupils especially from disadvantaged backgrounds and gaining the ability to understand and explain opinions in oral and written language. This project should be funded because it reflects the current problems of today's life and helps to educate our children to be the critical thinking citizens of our society.
We believe there is an urgent need to improve digital literacy in primary schools, providing children with a benchmark of key skills. Digital literacy is not just about the level of digital competency or ability to google, it relates to the ability to find, use, and disseminate information. No longer it is enough to be literate in reading and writing, children are now expected to be literate online. Some define digital literacy by the practical software skills pupils need to learn. Others focus on ‘soft skills’ such as how to stay safe online. True digital literacy incorporates both, blending practical knowledge with critical thinking, to help children access, understand and create digital content. This project was focused on showing to our pupils how to use internet mindfully. We appreciate the necessity of learning our pupils to evaluate online content and contact, and recognise how the content they are exposed to and the people they interact with can affect their own behaviour, emotions and beliefs. We wanted to develop their resilience to many varied pressures and risks online, to internet addiction, to influence of propaganda and fake news and even extremist content. They should know the basic rules how to behave online to stay safe. It is necessary to use computers these days but how to treat them in the right healthy way - that is the most important thing we have to teach our pupils. It was important to create methodology, materials and brochures that we could use after the end of the project, as we want to maintain the digital education at our schools in subjects like Media Education, English, Citizenship and ICT. Next objective we tried to achieve, was to improve our pupils' lifelong learning skills, such as team work, leadership skills, sense of responsibility, time keeping, compromising, flexibility, entrepreneurship, critical and analytical thinking skills, solving problems and independent work. This project was an opportunity for improving their self-confidence, communication and social skills. All these was supported by the interaction of the participants attending the short-term exchanges of groups of pupils and teachers. These short-term exchanges took place in five project countries during the two years of this project. The sixth short-term exchange was organized online due to Covid crisis. There were six partner schools participating in the project. The participants were mainly pupils around the age of 11 to 15 years old including some with fewer opportunities, that means mainly with economic or social obstacles and educational difficulties. All the project activities related to digital skills, using PC programs such as photoshop, applications for creating comics and mind maps or powerpoint presentations, e-safety, cyber bullying and abuse, using social networks and identifying fake news and dezinformations. There was a wide range of activities done during the project like watching movies, debates, worksheets, creating boards, booklets, handbook, comics and posters, doing a survey, preparing a magazine or dramatizations of different situations. Pupils were encouraged to write about their experience and express their ideas and opinions politely in public with the use of blog, preparing magazine and chat room. We used inovative methods like the project method and team work through the activities done in groups of participants. We focused on collaboration with not only pupils but teachers as well and also their ability to solve problems, when they came across complications they needed to clarify. All the outcomes and products of the project activities were displayed and are available to the whole community. We expect to use the outcomes and methodology after the end of the project too. There was an online survey about behaviour of young people online created, powerpoint presentations about partner countries, videos about partner schools, booklet with stories about using social networks, comics about cyber bullying, posters with the rules of e-safety, a magazine with fake news and leaflets and stickers with slogans. All the material is available on e-Twinning website and EPRP platform. We added it also on schools websites. The general results of the project were maintaining close ties between cultures, sharing and exchanging innovative methods and tools, learning how to communicate, discovering European culture, respecting the cultural, geographical diversity among European countries, improving success and motivation of pupils especially from disadvantaged backgrounds and gaining the ability to understand and explain opinions in oral and written language. Achievement of these results was supported by the fact, that pupils were hosted by local families and they spent most of the time in short-term exchanges with their foreign friends. This project reflected the current problems of today's life and helped to educate our children to be the critical thinking citizens of our society.