Digital citizenship is an increasingly important knowledge domain for pupils, teachers, and parents/carers more widely, as online technologies play a growing role in the lives of children and young people. With new political priorities taking shape at European level, children rights in a digital world continue to figure prominently on the European Commission agenda.
The 2021-2027 Digital Education Action Plan highlights two strategic priorities and activity lines which fit directly into European Schoolnet's digital citizenship remit, in particular "the need to enhance digital skills and competences for the digital transformation", which requires:
- > Basic digital skills and competences from an early age,
- > Digital literacy, including fighting disinformation,
- > Good knowledge and understanding of data-intensive technologies, such as artificial intelligence,
- > Advanced digital skills which produce more digital specialists and ensure that girls and young women are equally represented in digital studies and careers.
The Commission's Communication 2030 Digital Compass: the European Way for the Digital Decade includes digital skills and digital citizenship among its core priorities, to ensure that the same rights that apply offline can be fully exercised online. To make this ambition more concrete, in May 2022, the Commission published its new strategy for a better internet for kids (BIK+), outlining its vision and action plan around three pillars: safe digital experiences (How to better protect children online?), digital empowerment (How to better empower children to make sound choices online?), and active participation (How to respect children's views?).
Meanwhile, we are increasingly seeing the impact of the Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA is a new set of European rules to make sure that all users, and especially children, young people and vulnerable users, are included and safe online. The DSA especially seeks to ensure that all organisations that provide online platforms and services protect the rights of all users, limit risks, and stop the spread of harmful or illegal content.
European Schoolnet is running a variety of public and private projects, with a vision for age-appropriate digital services, with every child in Europe protected, empowered and respected online, and no one left behind.
Better Internet for Kids (BIK)
BIK aims to create a safer and better Internet for children and young people. As part of this initiative, European Schoolnet coordinates the Insafe-INHOPE network of Safer Internet Centres (SICs) in Europe, each comprising a national awareness centre, a helpline, and a hotline. The project provides a coordination role to the European Network of Safer Internet Centres (SIC) and provides a secure online space within the core service platform to support their collaboration and knowledge sharing.
The Digital Skills and Jobs Platform
In today's world, digital transformation impacts the way we live, work and learn. This technological progress brings about undeniable benefits, but also makes it increasingly more difficult to keep up with the latest tech solutions. Consequently, our skills and knowledge become outdated at a faster pace, creating a growing gap between our capacities and the market needs. The Digital Skills and Jobs Platform therefore provides open access to a wide variety of high-quality information and resources for everyone interested in the broad topic of digital skills and jobs.
menABLE
The menABLE project's primary objective is to combat online gender-based violence by fostering mutual awareness, tolerance and respect. Recognising that the active involvement of men and boys is crucial to achieving the project's goals. The project aims to prevent online gender-based violence by tackling its roots causes, and by promoting means of prevention strategies primary, but not exclusively, targeting boys and young men.
Media Literacy Case for Educators
The Media Literacy Case for Educators project aims to enhance societal resilience by providing European teachers, trainers, and librarians with the skills, tools, and resources to be successful and innovative advocates and facilitators of media literacy.
Games in Schools
The Games in Schools project explores the opportunities and challenges offered by integrating games into teaching and learning.
In collaboration with the Institut français and ARTE, European Schoolnet launched and promoted the European Film Factory platform for film education in 2020. Available in nine languages (German, English, Croatian, Spanish, French, Greek, Italian, Polish and Romanian), the platform offers free access to European cinema to students, teachers, and cultural mediators. The European Film Factory aimed to promote heritage films via a global, multilingual and innovative digital offer across Europe and to develop a comprehensive film education pedagogy to respond to the need for access to European films and film education for every young European from the end of childhood to early adulthood.
The project developed teaching resources adapted to non-experts, easily accessible and flexible to fit the different systems in Europe. Interactive and collaborative tools were at the heart of the project to reach an active pan-European community through film education. As such, the project helped to:
- > Draw the attention of teachers, education decision makers and institutions to the importance of film education via organising events and webinars.
- > Reach as many pupils and young Europeans as possible and introduce them to European cinema thanks to film education.
- > Develop educational materials allowing teachers to learn more about film history and film literacy while offering hands-on practical lesson plans easy to implement in any classroom around Europe.
The project started on 1 January 2022 and ended on 31 December 2023, reaching 15 000 users from almost 40 countries and 6000 schools.
