Empowering Digital Citizenship through Media Literacy and Critical Thinking Erasmus Project

Project Title

Empowering Digital Citizenship through Media Literacy and Critical Thinking

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 : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

BACKGROUND/CONTEXT
The EMPOWER partnership has worked hard to significantly improve young people’s ability to critically assess the online and social media content they consume and create, empowering them to become responsible, confident digital citizens.

ACHIEVEMENT OF OBJECTIVES
As set out in the original project intent, EMPOWER has delivered on the following objectives:-

1. Encourages knowledge sharing and peer learning among education and youth sector stakeholders to develop a Good Practice Catalogue (IO1) of leading and innovative approaches to teaching media literacy and critical thinking as linked to healthy online behaviour and active citizenship http://www.empowerme-project.eu/learning-portal/good-practice-catalogue/
IO1 Catalogue was published in 4 languages and to date has been downloaded 881 times – English 260 downloads, Swedish 191, Spanish 189, and Romanian 221.

2 Created and promoted Digital Citizenship Education Toolkit (IO2) comprising open, online resources that Teachers and Educators can use with young people to explore the topic and strengthen their own skills. The Toolkit document has received very strong traction with 551 downloads to date – English download 161 times, Swedish 148 times Spanish 105, Romania 137. In addition, 675 participants have accessed the Digital Tools Showcase is a powerful IO2 resource showcasing and providing learning on digital tools in 10 unique categories which classify each tool by their best use http://www.empowerme-project.eu/empower-digital-tools-showcase/. Hence the target of 600 downloads has been significantly surpassed with 1,226 downloads.

3 Developed and widely disseminated a Teachers’ Guide to Digital Pedagogy (IO3) as a user-friendly, interactive online resource to support teaching staff in developing their own digital competences and mainstreaming digital literacy skills in their teaching and youthwork activities. It was downloaded 1,237 times so far, broken down as 328 English, 312 Swedish, 308 Spanish 289 Romanian. Again this significantly surpasses the target of target 600 downloads
The Teacher’s Guide is also supported by a Digital Pedagogy Course classroom resource, developed as 5 modules in a multilingual curriculum and learning materials aimed at staff in different roles in VET institutions to help them drive organizational change towards. In all these, resources have been accessed across the 4 languages 3,850 times.

NUMBER AND PROFILE OF PARTICANTS
– 1,287 educators and youth workers engaged in IO3
– All the outcomes have been tested in Pilot tested with teachers and students in Spain, Romania, Ireland and Sweden. The results have been evaluated and published in reports.
– 14,324 individuals have engaged with our outputs and digital materials via interactive website (latest web stats) – hits of website 529,339.
– 317 representatives of stakeholder organizations participated in 5 multiplier events. 5 multiplier event were held and documented in Sweden, Romania, Ireland, Belgium and Spain in the form of 4 national showcases and 1 international showcase.

EMPOWER has benefitted from a strong and consistent dissemination activity from the outset. The project logo and brand manual were created at the beginning of the project, as well as a dissemination strategy. A dissemination diary has been completed by each partner as a way of logging all dissemination activities, including their dissemination activities on their own website and social media channels, project newsletters, presentations and meetings. In total, this comes to 320 recorded dissemination actions over the 2 years reaching many thousands of targets.

A sustainability strategy was developed to support the sustainability of project activities after the end of the project
Quality Management and Evaluation: 8 Internal evaluator reports guided the project in terms of
Partner meetings – 4 transnational partner meetings, regular Skype meetings, as well as regular progress reports

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 243156 Eur

Project Coordinator

FOLKUNIVERSITETET STIFTELSEN VID LUNDS UNIVERSITET & Country: SE

Project Partners

• MOMENTUM MARKETING SERVICES LIMITED
• CANICE CONSULTING LIMITED
• CEBANC
• Orizont Cultural T
• EUROPEAN FORUM OF TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING