How do we perceive our cyber world? Erasmus Project

Project Title

How do we perceive our cyber world?

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: Gender equality / equal opportunities; Health and wellbeing; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

The cyber world is slowly taking over the real world. Especially among the youngsters, who seem to be constantly online: they participate actively on social networks, they like to follow the influencers, they like to share viral news … and often they are the victims of cyber bullying, mainly because of their naivety and their lack of knowledge on how to use and surf the internet safely and responsibly.
Europe has been facing challenges regarding multiculturalism, technology, fast-paced modern communication, rise of extremism, hate speech, fake news and digital addiction, which in a certain way can produce disturbances in the European society and tend to exclude certain vulnerable groups of people from the social dialogue: immigrants, women, youngsters among others. If we want to live in a European society that is open, inclusive, tolerant and responsible, we must focus on educating the students on how to be a responsible, tolerant, inclusive and active European.

20 students from each school (I.gimnazija v Celju, Celje, Slovenia, IES Ordoño II, León, Spain and Filološka gimnazija Beograd, Beograd, Serbia) will actively participate in the project, (10 for each mobility in a foreign country). Since we come from three different countries: two being a part of EU and one being EU candidate, we will compare the differences in perception of the mass media production, the mechanisms that might already exist to make the citizens more aware of the possible media manipulation. We have concluded that our school systems do not offer any form of formal education on how to confront the mass media manipulation and how to conduct on social networks, which is very worrying considering the time that students spend online and are daily “bombed” with all kinds of information and considering the fact that they are producers of the information.

The students are very susceptible to the opinion of the people they consider to be influencers (e.
g.: their peers, celebrities, politicians…) and often not capable to distinct between fake and real, safe and dangerous, credible and false etc. Since the cyber world is a topic that can be approached from a variety of angles, we have chosen three major areas of focus in order to make students aware of the consequences that each individual carries while being an active internet user or member of a certain social network. By focusing on determining the difference between real and fake news, between free and hate speech, between humorous and offensive speech, on determining the impact on a personal and global level of stereotype media representations, and the impact of these stereotypes on person’s self-image, we aim to educate students to detect their behavior and, if necessary, to improve it.

For obtaining our objectives, we plan to organize different lectures (prepared by teachers and other professionals), interactive workshops and fieldwork (visiting different instituts, for example national TV). Debate techniques and statistical analysis of various data gathered through questionnaires will also be used. Our main motivation and desire, as well as the main objective and result is to educate a group of competent students that, after the completion of the project, will be able to educate their peers into becoming responsible, inclusive, tolerant, respectful internet users.

Participation in this project will enrich and widen our already implemented preventive activities with knowledge about the harmful effects of internet overuse on health and psychological well-being, especially self-image. Not only that, but also we will equip our students with tools to avoid the dangers of the world wide web. The preparation of the internal act about an acceptable internet use will also help our students on their way to becoming more responsible internet user.

We intend to make the results of our project known within our partnership by using the eTwinning platform and also through the reports each participating country will give at their own schools. We will publish the results of our project on our webpages, in order for our local community as well as the wider public can get familiar with them. Our journalist students will write an article about this project, which we will send out to different newspapers and magazines to publish. The main target group we want to share the results and conclusions with, are primarily adolescents, since they are the most vulnerable group. This includes the elementary school children, for whom we plan to prepare workshops after the project is finished.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 75403 Eur

Project Coordinator

I. gimnazija v Celju & Country: SI

Project Partners

• INSTITUTO DE EDUCACIÓN SECUNDARIA ORDOÑO II
• Filoloska gimnazija