In recent times the impact of 'fake news' on public understanding of the world has dramatically increased. Also such problems as hate speech and verbal violence has become common in media and Internet. Realising 'Cogito ergo sum. Stereotypes, fake news and verbal violence as threats in education. Learning conscious citizenship in Europe ' project we want to make partner schools from Austria, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Poland, Portugal and Turkey places, where students will gain vital international experience and learn to critically analyze information they get. The project is focused on training critical reception of information, which is a transnational and cross-cultural skill. It allows to develop social responsibility skills, conscious reception of information, searching for the source of data and counteracts manipulation, prescience, populism and demagogy. The project also allows teachers and students to contact their colleagues from remote countries, get to know better their culture, history and contemporary problems. We want to establish cooperation of partner schools in order to systematically develop skills and pro-active attitude in a non-standard form (study trips, courses at foreign institutions, eTwinning, art events such as happening or photo contest). It can positively influence the teams of teachers not only by leveling English skills, but also learning about their strengths, mutual inspiration about taking on challenges (such as projects) and supporting themselves to overcome barriers. The main objective of the project is convincing the participants of necessity for conscious critical acquiring knowledge and using it for good social development. Understanding the mechanisms of manipulation and ability of overcoming injurious stereotypes appear to be the conditions of conscious participation in democratic society. The same applies to the ability of expressing cultural awarness and respect for representatives of other ethnic, social and cultural groups in multicultural society. The goal is to rise the students’ awareness as citizens and co-creators of the European community. Another reason for realising the project is to enable students and teachers to develop their language competencies improving the level of their English skills. Teachers will also be motivated to share their good practices in particular through cooperation on educational platforms and using them with e-tools in their work. There will be 150 students and more than 20 teachers involved directly in the mobilities, but majority of students and teachers from partner schools will take part in particular actions. Among participants of the project there are teachers of literature, English, arts philosophy, IT teachers, pedagogical specialists. Students of participant schools are 15-19 years old. Schools they attend to are general education or vocational schools that prepare students to making autonomous decisions in their future university or professional carreer. Students come from diverse environments, but they struggle with similar problems, which are very often social barriers and political disorders, which accompanied by their inability to distinguish information from opinions based on generalizations makes students vulnerable to manipulation and hate speech. Project activities include Skype,TwinSpace Event meetings,Padlet,OneNote, Blogger, eTwinning, working with media, workshops with specialists, outdoor games etc. Long-term results are to increase the sense of responsibility for action and learning among students and teachers. Students will be more likely to involve as their work will turn into visible results (eg foreign trips, creating common solutions with partners, establishing contacts, leveling xenophobic, aggressive attitudes, ability to contact over divisions, abandoning hate speech). Thanks to such activities, partner schools will raise their status in the local environment, become more recognizable and will be sources of good practice for others. Teachers will inspire their students, will support them in the implementation of tasks, will change teaching methods (CLIL, inclusion of digital tools according to the SAMR model, task management according to Agile methodology), more willingly put in team activities, what will be a source of support and help. Knowledge of English opens up new opportunities for teachers not only to contact partner institutions, but also to gain inspiration, eg. through participation in an educational Twitter or Skype chats, reading blogs ran by teachers from abroad, watching educational vlogs. This favors self-education in the scope of methods and forms of training. Final products of projects, such as blog/TwinSpace/events, material and scripts database, a set of good practices, vlog and debate recordings will be used for further educational activities and projects (teacher's open source).
The project implementation went significantly beyond the plan in the grant application. The method of implementing the assumed activities has been modified due to external circumstances (i.e. COVID-19 and aggression against Ukraine). This concerned not only the need to reorganize the planned meetings with project members under the category "Learning, Teaching and Training Activities", but also the inclusion in the project tasks of current content related to the flood of fake news regarding the pandemic. We also strengthened activities related to the analysis of the currently observed propaganda mechanisms used in the armed conflict taking place at the border with the EU. The project planned to show various reasons for the emergence of manipulative content (historical, ecological, geopolitical, social, sociological), which was additionally equipped with the possibility of current comparative political phenomena (e.g. a list of methods of using stereotypes and applying populism, propaganda, demagogy and manipulation in conflicts in Syria and Ukraine) and expanded to include understanding of social phenomena based on content related to global education and the Sustainable Development Goals. The project was extended by a year in order to be able to carry out the planned trips abroad, as it was during them that we organized activities in mixed national teams with the students in order to consolidate the content discussed online and obtain as much feedback from the project participants as possible. The activities undertaken by us brought benefits to the participants, as evidenced by the results of the survey summarizing the project. Participants pointed out that their ability to communicate in English has significantly increased, their culture of contact with people of other nationalities has increased (including a sense of interdependence, acceptance, understanding the phenomenon of culture shock, curiosity about the sources of tradition and culture, a sense of common identity and general human experiences) and sensitivity to hate speech and verbal violence. In terms of social skills, the participants also showed an increase in their skills, including, in particular, the ability to critically receive information, sensitivity to manipulation, attention to control and selection of messages in the internet. Both the tutors and students had many opportunities to test their skills in practice (e.g. examining the impact of communication simplification on the readiness to take vaccinations against COVID-19), thanks to which they also became ambassadors of critical thinking in their schools during the project, and often the region. During the project, many tutors promoted methodological and didactic solutions at regional meetings of educators and in local media. Due to the pandemic between the first student meeting in December 2019 and the next one in October 2021, more time has passed than expected in the project plans. To maintain the continuity of tasks, remote activities were introduced, including Skype teleconferences, workshops on the Teams platform and tasks favoring the use of digital applications. In many cases, students who were also initiators of project activities and participated in the first online meetings and task planning in the fall of 2019, completed school during the project, but did not abandon the team and took on the role of youth mentors, often supporting a rejuvenated team composition by leading training courses, assistance in creating films, initiating interesting activities, or supporting teachers during the organization of partner meetings. An attractive project topic activated entire school communities (including local institutions and parents), which is why meetings often took the form of local celebrations (e.g. visits to television, participation in workshops conducted by experts) or joint games (field games, events breaking cultural taboos) . Thus, by promoting critical thinking, in the project, we supported the development of sensitivity to others, the attitude of respect for diversity, and emphasized how much we can have in common (e.g. we have illustrated the use of false history by demagogues, the use of fake news to distort attitudes or to pursue particular interests. e.g. in the field of nutrition or fashion, social incitement or stigmatization of a given group leading to its exclusion, as well as the operation of troll farms). We also promoted the sense of agency of young people - students were invited to organizational meetings, as some of the activities were prepared and conducted only by them as part of partnership arrangements of mixed groups. As a result of the project, permanent changes were made to school statutes, preventive and educational programs, and to everyday teaching practice. Schools were recognized as change leaders in the regions. Project products: Produkty projektu: https://padlet.com/jwaszkowska/r8liibbc76nz3c61