Cogito ergo sum. Stereotypes, “fake news” and verbal violence as threats in education. Learning of conscious citizenship in Europe. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Cogito ergo sum. Stereotypes, “fake news” and verbal violence as threats in education. Learning of conscious citizenship in Europe.

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Social dialogue

Project Summary

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).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 197070 Eur

Project Coordinator

II Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Emilii Plater & Country: PL

Project Partners

• Comprehensive school “Kozma Trichkov”
• KAYA KARAKAYA ANADOLU LISESI
• BG/BRG Leibnitz
• ADEMINHO/Escola Profissional do Alto Minho Interior
• SEPUGS Vasil Antevski Dren