Agorá

On a rainy day in Tortona, a small town in northern Italy, 130 students from 11 to 17 years old learned by playing how they should act when being online. Using Non-Formal Education methodologies, these young people were engaged in a “learning through gaming” process that gave them a deeper view on how our acts online affect our personal lives offline.
Through several actions, participants have built an online space with their peers and discussed which are the responsibilities they have and how they should act when visiting the Internet. At the same time, as an unexpected consequence, children tackled the issues of rights and attitudes of users, thus bringing the digital world into a real, tangible dimension. Some of the most interesting topics addressed were cyberbullying, fake identities, good and what can be deemed as a bad behaviour online.
But middle and high schoolers were not the only ones reached by WYRED.
As a matter of fact, 60 among youth workers in the field of intercultural dialogue and Civil Service volunteers and coming from all around Europe took part in a series of workshops organised within the WYRED framework. The ultimate objective was that of increasing their engagement in the process of Social Dialogue in Digital Society and also raise their awareness on a series of topics while trying to identify challenges and opportunities.
Since some of the participants where part of the 1st Cycle of WYRED, they also had the chance to present their research and provide the facilitators with new ideas and feedback on how to empower more young people and how to make WYRED even more inclusive.
We are happy to see WYRED growing. Why don’t you join our community?

A shot from a workshop with the Civil Service volunteers

The post Never too young to know how to act online… appeared first on netWorked Youth Research for Empowerment in the Digital society.

The first Irish school to join as research partners is St. Paul’s CBS, North Brunswick Street. With a migrant student population of over 35%, it is hoped that the students will benefit greatly from participation in this European study.  Teachers, Ms. Valerie Roe and Mr. Ciaran Geraghty are looking forward to engaging with the ten students who will work together over the coming weeks.

Dr. Bernadette Sweetman and Prof. Joe O’Hara of EQI DCU presenting on the E-Evalinto project at the Educational Studies Association of Ireland 2018 conference.

The ESAI (Education Studies Association of Ireland) 41^st Annual Conference took place at UCD from 5^th – 7^th April 2018.  The theme of this year’s conference was Values and Purpose in Education, a theme that is highly significant in the current research of the Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection of Dublin (EQI).

EQI, partner of the E-EVALINTO project, were well presented with researchers from the Centre presenting seven papers at the conference as well as chairing some sessions. One of the presentations was devoted to our project topic: “Tackling early school leaving in migrant populations through peer mentoring”. An overview of the curriculum and online educational resources developed inside the project has been presented and a summary of the engagement in schools by the project participants has been outlined.

The Conference Book of Abstracts is available at http://esai.ie/conference-2018-book-of-abstracts/

On occasion of the Teacher Training Session held on the 8^th March of 2018 at ITIS “Galileo Galilei” of Arezzo, Industrial and Technical School, we had the chance to see the implementation of activities of the Mentoring project. This school has experienced Oxfam Intercultural Mentoring Project since three years and it has been successful in the engagement of young students, both as mentors and mentees. The mentees comes from different parts of the world: from Africa to Asia passing through Eastern Europe. The students are at this point able to conduct their tasks with minimum supervision and there is a great trust between them and the two coordinators. All the students involved in the program demonstrated a good interest towards the new activities proposed from E-EVALINTO assignments. [Youngsters already find some “free” moments inside the normal homework timetable to interact between them about their different cultural backgrounds: we spotted a nice scene where a Chinese boy was teaching to his Italian mentor how to eat with chopstick, using two pencils and a rubber for the demonstration! A possible challenge will be there when these young people are invited to reflect on their differences in a more structured way and then to put the results into written words and finally to assess each other performances.]

In the need assessment phase, in fact, it emerged from the students a strong request for an increase in intercultural events and activities inside the school circuit. Keeping in mind the priority school needs of the students, E-EVALINTO might represents a positive chance to go deeper in the process of interculturalism and integration.  After many years concentrating in homework and after-school sessions and in addressing the academic weakness of the mentees involved, these new ludic and playful activities are a mean to even out the school differences and to bring the tutor-mentee relationship to a more personal level. E-EVALINTO activities are an enriching chance for the whole program that is already a best practice in intercultural mentoring experiences. Actually, creating stronger personal relationships between students with different backgrounds is a powerful way to prevent school drop-outs and to nourish broader intercultural sensitivity.

It is also an opportunity for teachers and trainers to learn the importance of a pre-structured evaluation mechanism, as envisaged in the project. In fact, there is a low awareness about the importance of peer assessment and self-assessment as a different way to promote personal growth. Furthermore, EVALCOMIX offers the chance to teachers and students to receive a training on the use of the digital platforms (school funds allocated to computer technology are very poor). On the side of migrant students, EVALCOMIX represents a stable mean to stay updated on the progresses of the activities even when they are abroad or busy somewhere else. In fact, it is typical for some young foreign people (for instance among the Chinese community) to go back to their Country of origin during special occasions, or to have a part-time job that sometimes make them skip afterschool activities.