youth4media Erasmus Project

Project Title

youth4media

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; Creativity and culture; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

There is no doubt: New media have an essential impact on young people, the “digital natives”, who grow up with social media platforms & messenger apps offering lots of possibilities to communicate and to interact. At the age of 10/11 years, most of the students have got their own smartphone, a very powerful instrument: “Big data” is considered the “gold of the 21st century”. The smartphone becomes quickly very important in terms of the management of teens’ personality and identity.The enormous use of digital media reflects their joy & their need to participate and to present themselves. But the open access to web services, their omnipresence and the interaction in the virtual world have got dark sides as well:The digital age has made it easy for anyone to create media. We don’t always know who created something and whether it’s credible.Therefore, media literacy is an essential skill in the digital age. It is the ability to identify different types of media & to understand them.Cyberbullying, hate speech,violent & pornographic videos, the misuse of copyrights, etc. – the new media do not stop at the gates of our schools.In order to realize the chances & the risks and to use them in a critical, responsible & creative way, a qualified accompaniment and support as well as media skills are needed. Within this project, we do important steps in promoting media literacy in schools all over Europe.We ensure that students are well informed about rights & obligations while using new media.

Our objective is to establish a “media competence passport” proving that secondary level students, once they leave school, are smart, responsible & respectful users of new media.Therefore, we create educational material related to relevant topics with the support of media experts.These “explainity clips”,produced in the animation technique, will be used in students’ trainings after the completion of the project: pupils at the age of 14-18 years will teach & coach younger students with the help of this material. This way of “peer-to-peer” education is considered in particular in the field of media education as the appropriate way: the “digital natives” stay amongst themselves to discuss their experiences & problems related to the use of media.The so-called “net pilots” operate in “peer tutoring” & “peer counseling”.Thus, the students will be the real actors in this project.

In all 5 partner schools,“ERASMUS+-councils” are established,consisting of 20-40 students. Delegations of each school will take part in the learning activities in which we create the educational material.The necessary tasks have got different levels of requirement.Hence,students with fewer opportunities can take part in the project. During the first learning activity, the teachers are taught by media experts how to produce “explainity clips”. The 5 students’ learning activities are dedicated to the creation of the animated “explainity clips”, a challenging practical experience.
In cooperation with the experts, the following topics have been determined:
1) “The smartphone-a real challenge for beginners” (Germany)
2) “Respect and empathy in social media” (Italy)
3) “(Online) video games” (Spain)
4) “Influencers-the pop idols of the 21st century” (Poland)
5) “Fake news-a critical approach” (Finland).

Each learning activity has got a preliminary phase in which teachers & students prepare for the meeting by doing research on the topic for the activity with the help of experts.The members in the “ERASMUS+”-council present their work status from time to time on eTwinning.The exchange about these topics on a regional, national & international scale will empower the students to feel responsible for the future.The working language is English which is challenging in particular for the younger students in the project.
The required steps for the realisation of an “explainity clip” in each learning activity are:
– summary of the most important information at the beginning of the activity
– writing of a storyboard in multinational groups
– creation of icons,figures etc.
– editorial by media experts
– translation in mother tongues
– filming & recording in the 6 different languages

All project activities & in particular the hands on trainings will have an enormous impact on the students’ skills: digital, professional & methodological (project management,problem solving), personal (creativity, self-empowerment), social (teamwork, colaboration), lingual (technical vocabulary,foreign languages).On the completion of the project, the students will have a better understanding of the influence of media & a more critical approach not only on a regional & national, but also on European/international level. They will feel more enabled to take part in social, political & democratic processes.There will be a longer term benefit on the 5 school communities due to the fact that the educational material will be used by the future “net pilots”.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 122819 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ursulinenschule Fritzlar & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Istituto Tecnico Statale CARLO CATTANEO
• Varppeen koulu
• IES VEGAS BAJAS
• Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace Siostr Urszulanek Unii Rzymskiej