On Tuesday, 5 February 2019, the Safer Internet Day campaign turned 16 – and what a great day it was! Under the unifying slogan of "Together for a better internet", we called upon all stakeholders to join forces and bring their contribution to making the internet a safer and better place for all – especially for children and young people.

Young people from all over Europe are showing a growing appetite for coding activities, robotics and computational thinking, as the record participation in EU Code Week clearly reveals. The number of people taking part has grown from 10,000 to 2.7 million in just six years. The 2019 edition will take place from 5 to 20 October.

It's time for Safer Internet Day! As each year, the cornerstone of online safety events is set to take place in over 140 countries across the globe, on 5 February 2019, under the unifying slogan of "Together for a better internet".

The early school leaving phenomenon was examined in depth during the DIS-CODE project coming to an end in December. After two years of collaboration between teachers, students and organisations from Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Italy and Portugal, the policy recommendations are available for policy makers and other stakeholders. The project conducted research and workshops in order to define which innovative teaching methods would benefit students that face the risk of dropping out, or are in the need of assistance.

The DIS-CODE International Scratch Jam competition took place successfully on 7 December in the Future Classroom Lab of Brussels, where students from schools across Europe and beyond were awarded for their projects using Scratch.

The International Scratch Jam is a fun and engaging competition where students from Europe and beyond will have the chance to work in teams to create their own projects using Scratch. Learning how to code can empower students to be at the forefront of a digitally competent society, so do not miss this opportunity to participate in the DIS-CODE Scratch Jam competition!

Serious games, that is games with an educational purpose, have become a popular tool for knowledge transfer, perceptual or cognitive change, but are they an effective instrument for behavioural change? eConfidence aimed to answer this question through research pilot actions in schools that tested the use of two serious games as a tool for positively impacting young people's behavioural changes.

Computational Thinking (CT) marks a new focus on learning programming as a new thinking skill that develops crucial 21st century skills such as logical thinking, problem-solving skills, creativity and collaborative and social skills. Programming is also increasingly recognised as one of the new skills needed for students to succeed in our digital society. European Schoolnet conducted a first study visit in Norway and Sweden aiming to learn from the two country examples about the purpose of teaching CT/programming, strategies to implement it and how to assess it. The new report 'Strategies to Include Computational Thinking in School Curricula' highlights the results of this visit.

The experts' seminar ‘'Evidence-based development of serious games for the educational sector'' took place in Brussels on 12 September, and it was jointly organised by European Schoolnet, the eConfidence and the Scientix projects.