eUropean Fellowship for Digital Citizenship

Context/Background of project:The project European Fellowship for Digital Citizenship (e.F.4.D.C.) is being launched from a school in Rapallo, in Northern Italy in the province of Genova. Over the last few years this school has set up, in the journalism field, the very first National information blog organised by students for students (sharing school). This blog has received various awards and this has led to the creation of a first-year class in our Grammar School dedicated to Journalism, Media and Communication. PROJECT SUMMARYObjectives of project:There are three project objectives:1)Following the example of the Italian blog, other national blogs will be created on the same platform in the language of the host schools while at the same time an International page will be created entirely in English; 2)Participants will learn how to create digital contents which are not merely informative, but which will focus on the experience of a blog company for social activities, learning how to distinguish between the different contents produced, indexing them, distributing them and targeting them in the same way as would happen within an information supply chain; 3) Participants will acquire full digital citizenship, both from a technical point of view – being able to produce and organise contents according to SEO and SEM rules – but also from a critical point of view, thanks to the ability to recognise and distinguish between true and fake news, promoting a cultural awareness able to strengthen democracies and social cohesion on an international level. The number and profile of participantsBesides the project coordinator, the “Da Vigo-Nicoloso” High School in Rapallo, there are five other participating schools, the 1° GENIKO LYKIO EDESSAS “NIKOLAOS OIKONOMIDIS” from Edessa, Greece; the Ozel Esayan Ermeni Lisesi from Istanbul, Turkey ; the Liceul cu Program Sportiv from Suceava in Romania ; the Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Adama Mickiewicza from Sulecin in Poland and IES Augustóbriga, from Navalmoral de la Mata, in Spain. For each of these schools 2 teachers and 5 students will participate in each exchange. As there will be 6 exchanges each school can allow from 2 to 12 teachers to take part and between 5 and 30 students. The choice will be at the discretion of each individual school. The students must all be between 15 and 18, while there are no prerequisites for the teachers. The common language for the project will be English. Description of activitiesOur project consists of the creation of a digital editorial team which deals not only with the production of textual and visual contents, but also with all aspects related to digital experience, from digital security, content indexing (SEO; SEM), responsible digital citizenship, a dossier for in-depth study to project dissemination to the editorial office. All this will be done through the creation of five international digital teams which belong to the partners involved. On this basis we will organize six short exchanges in the involved countries.In each exchange we foresee three type of activities:a) A training course – led by established professionals in the sector - focalized on one of the five themes of our project work;b)A series of laboratories – led by the teachers who will accompany the participants - one for each theme of project work – in which pupils will work together, learning the different skills (working groups, social inclusion of differences and disabilities, mediation…); laboratories and training will take place simultaneously;c)A final event that disseminates the results of the training course to the population of the host school.Between the short exchanges pupils and teachers will work and produce materials or digital contents through the eTwinning dedicated project twinspace.Methodology to be used in carrying out the project:The project is based on learning by doing, thanks to which the students will learn in different situations and in an active and public working context where they will continually be faced with the results of their performance , and of task based learning in which the attribution of specific tasks will help to stimulate personal analysis in order to acquire new skills and abilities. Finally, besides BYOD, peer and mentoring education will be essential and represent the real strength of a project which not by chance has as its focal point sharing.Results and impact:For the participating schools the activities proposed are in actual fact just a starting point: 1)All the participating schools will develop hard skills in the digital field and soft skills in team work which will be useful both in the world of work and for the digital citizenship training of their peers when the project has concluded; 2)The project has the obvious requisites to be feasible and repeatable in a national and international context.