The project idea originates from everyday school life in each of the four participating schools: The digitalization of schools is on the political and school agenda in all European countries, as a reaction to the change the world is facing through digital technologies. Students grow up as "digital natives" and are often ahead of their teachers when it comes to modern technologies, but on the other hand they are not yet able to sufficiently reflect the side-effects of these technologies, such as reward and conditioning mechanisms on which social media are based, or they have a limited impulse control. In addition, many adolescents still do not have an overview of the "digital footprint" they leave behind when using the Internet. A particular problem of the Internet is its abundance of information: One of the greatest challenges for children and adolescents is to assess whether or not texts, images or videos they come across are true and authentic. Schools must react to these challenges for their pupils at all costs - this has also been recognised by German politicians, who recently made 5 billion euros available for equipping schools with the appropriate technology as the so-called Digital Pact. But digital education is much more than that: It includes, above all, systematic guidance for pupils, turning them into autonomous users of digital technologies, exploiting the opportunities offered by these technologies and minimising the risks involved. Only the Finnish school already teaches digital education according to a curriculum and still does not yet know how to solve the challenges described above satisfactorily. The present project therefore intends to take a critical look at central aspects of their digital environment together with the pupils and, on this basis, to develop the basic features of digital education for schools in the form of a digital curriculum. The following four aspects are to be particularly focused on for one school semester. 1. Digital Information and critical reading (fake news, news competence) 2. Computer Games (potential for addiction, exploration of school applications) 3. Big Data (Alexa, Siri; influence on our lives) 4. Social Media (friendship/bullying, influencer marketing) These aspects will be addressed in a European dimension (international similarities and differences in the use of digital technology) during the two-year project period. Depending on their specific competences, each school will be in charge of one of the aspects, will prepare key questions on which all pupils will work during the six-month period, will organize on-site training and a learning mobility during the corresponding six-month period and is responsible for the completion of the curriculum on the respective topic. The project will be staffed with teachers from various subjects (computer science, English, art, philosophy) and will cooperate with external institutions such as universities and institutions dealing with digital education for young people. This will ensure that the project will deal with a wide range of facets, including current developments (e.g. serious games for computer, apps for checking facts, etc.). The results of this project will be a curriculum on digital education (including image film) developed together with the students, which will be implemented and published in the participating schools, as well as short films on how to deal with social media, and a training unit on how to deal with digital technologies for primary school students. In order to make the results usable in the future, pupils will also be trained as "Digital Experts", who will support teachers in using the developed teaching unit and carry out the training procedure primary schools even beyond the duration of the project. The participants in all participating schools are groups of about 24 students of the eighth and ninth grades, because the students at this age are experienced users of digital technologies and already have an appropriate level of reflection, which raises the students’ awareness of possible risks so that they can jointly develop principles for their use in school. Due to the different forms of school organisation, the project will be carried out in Finland and Germany in regular classes, while in the Netherlands and Great Britain the school structure will only allow implementation outside regular classes in form of extracurricular classes. The groups of pupils benefiting from the project are considerably larger due to its implementation in the individual school curriculum and the training units used in primary schools.
The project idea originates from everyday school life in each of the four participating schools: The digitalization of schools is on the political and school agenda in all European countries, as a reaction to the change the world is facing through digital technologies. Students grow up as "digital natives" and are often ahead of their teachers when it comes to modern technologies, but on the other hand they are not yet able to sufficiently reflect the side-effects of these technologies, such as reward and conditioning mechanisms on which social media are based, or they have a limited impulse control. In addition, many adolescents still do not have an overview of the "digital footprint" they leave behind when using the Internet. A particular problem of the Internet is its abundance of information: One of the greatest challenges for children and adolescents is to assess whether or not texts, images or videos they come across are true and authentic. It is imperative that schools respond to these challenges - this has also been recognised by German politicians, who recently made 5 billion euros available for the technical equipment of schools with the adoption of the Digital Pact. Digital education, however, is much more: it includes, above all, the systematic instruction of pupils to turn them into autonomous users of digital technologies, who use the opportunities of these technologies and minimise the risks. The various project partners have already made varying degrees of progress in this direction; the technical equipment in particular has been improved in recent years; only the Finnish school already teaches according to a digital education curriculum, which, however, is not yet able to satisfactorily solve the challenges described. In all participating schools, the participants are groups of about 24 pupils in the eighth to tenth grades, because the pupils at this age are experienced users of digital technologies and already have a corresponding level of reflection that allows them to raise the problem horizon of these technologies and jointly develop principles for their use in school. The present project therefore took a critical look at central aspects of their digital lifeworld together with the pupils and focused on the following aspects, each of which was or is under the leadership of one of the participating schools and was to include an AUL and, pandemically, extended over a period of three school years instead of the usual two: 1. digital information and critical reading (fake news, news literacy) - Finland / AUL 2. computer games (addictive potential, exploring school uses) - England (withdrawal from project early 2021; no AUL due to covid; virtual meetings) 3. big data (Alexa, Siri; influence on our lives) - Netherlands / AUL 4. social media (friendships/bullying, influencer marketing) - Germany (no AUL due to covid; virtual meetings) During the project, the groups of pupils initially worked in regular lessons (Finland+Germany) or clubs (Netherlands+UK) on guiding questions defined by the respective partner school, the results of which were evaluated and concretised in joint meetings. For example, presentations on Fake News and Big Data were developed; short films were made and own games were programmed. In the course of the project, it became apparent that the development of a common curriculum was not as sensible as it seemed at the beginning due to the different educational and school structures. Curricula have been developed for the sub-areas of fake news, big data and social media (Games/Apps missing due to the drop out of the British partner after Brexit), but these can be used in a modular way and adapted to the needs of the individual schools. Therefore, the focus was placed on the training of the "Digital Experts", who developed an educational and training unit for fellow pupils in primary to lower middle school and carried it out in suitable classes in order to achieve a broad impact and sustainability of what was learned. The flyers that were also developed in this context represent a collection of "Dos and Don'ts" as well as "Nettiquette" that younger pupils can use as a guide and gain confidence in dealing with smartphones, social media and the internet in general. The results of the cooperation are also available online so that the general school public (e.g. parents) can also benefit from them.