February 2016, No 2

REDiC Newsletter

First Training Event in Xanthi,Greece

The second meeting of the program took place inXanthi, Greece, 11–15 January, 2016. This wasthe first training event for pupils and the onlytraining event for teachers. There were 4 train-ing sessions, during the first four days while thelast day was devoted to exchange of ideas and dis-cussions. Pupils where introduced to the basics of

Internet technology by Mrs. Ioanna Yakati on Monday, 11 January. The next day Mrs.Kyriaki Athanassiadou discussed the various aspects of social media. On the 13th ofJanuary, Mrs. Eftichia Ampelidou discussed a bit cyber-security and then pupils had thechance to watch a few interesting videos. Mr. Theodoros Karayannis disucssed cyber-bullying the next day and after his presentation pupils had the chance to watch aninteresting movie about cyber-bullying. The last day, all teachers and pupils discussedwhat they have learned, took some interviews, etc.At the same time, teachers attended a series oflectures on related subjects. On Monday Mrs. PopiChalkia presented the history of the Internet as wellas various internet-based technologies and services.On Tuesday, I gave an overview of social mediawhile on Wednesday I talked by cyber-security (thepresentation was a joint work with Dr. Sotiris Kon-togiannis, who teaches at the University of WesternMacedonia, but unfortunately he could not makehere). On Thursday. Dr. Ioannis Dimakos, whoteaches at the University of Patras, gave an in-teresting talk about cyber-bullying thru Skype. OnFriday, teachers had the chance to discuss things they had learned and planned a bit thenext meeting which will take place in Coimbra, Portugal, 18–22 April, 2016.All presentations as well as footage from the training events are available from theProject’s Web site.

— Apostolos Syropoulos

REDiC NewsletterNo 2, February 2016 Page 1

How we use the internet?by Renate Wachter

As everyone in our first meeting in Greece could witness with his own eyes, the topic INTERNET is of highinterest, both for students and for teachers. This is a perfect basis for a successful project. As the project stretchesout over 2 years it is of high relevance to feel certain about the motivation and interest of all participants.

Thanks to the great organization of the Greek team, we had the chance to listen to presentations hold by experts.They visited us in Xanthi or talked to us via skype. So we learnt a lot about the history of Internet, the current useand also the risks associated with its use and its misuse. The students got different presentations more appropriatefor their age. In my opinion, the training sessions were comprehensible, even for people with a limited background.In addition, our interaction was an excellent chance to brush up our English while improving our social skills andour knowledge of the Internet!

It is of paramount importance of this project to learnthings so to be able to teach our pupils how to be re-sponsible users of the Internet. It is of equal importanceto teach pupils that the Internet is a medium of commu-nication and so one should not avoid its use just becausethere are people who might want to abuse it. This is whyour pupils had been asked to describe “how they use theinternet” and perform a number of simple tasks relatedto the use of the Internet (e.g., they made some videos,etc.).

The upcoming meeting in Portugal will take place18th until 22nd of April 2016. The meeting’s main topicwill be “online defamation”. In the meantime, all par-ticipating schools will organize various educational hap-penings regaring defamation. In the end, the pupils willcreate some sort of presentation that will be shown atthe meeting. As most of our pupils have a Facebook account, it is easy for them to get in touch with each other,improve their friends, be aware of defamation and practice every day how to use the internet responsible. We arelooking forward to our next interesting meeting in Portugal and to continue our work on this project.

“Extra-curricular” activities of the Second Meetingby Aylin Kirişçi Sarıkaya

The second meeting of our Erasmus+ K2 project “Responsible European Digital Citizens” was held in Xanthi,Greece between Jan. 11–15, 2016. The meeting was important, as participating teachers and pupils attended classesabout the history of internet, social media, cyber-bullying and some education friendly online platforms which canbe used at schools.

Apart from these planned classes, the meeting was full of “extra-curricular” activities. As we all know, extra-curricular activities are very helpful in fostering students’ teamwork, responsibility, commitment, motivation, self-esteem, social skills, curiosity, and critical thinking skills.

On Jan. 11, Monday afternoon, the project team visited theTown Hall, which was a good opportunity to spread the idea ofthe project to other authorities and gaining their support. Later theteam did a tour around the old town of Xanthi. Xanthi is a townwhich has been home to different cultures in history. As it is in-dicated in Encyclopedia Britannica, “the city grew up beneath theByzantine fortress of Xanthea, later became a summer colony ofthe Turks known as Eskije. With the arrival of the Thessaloniki-Adrianople railway in the 1890s, it replaced the nearby Turkishtobacco-trading centre of Yenije in importance. After the BalkanWars (1912–13) the city passed to Bulgaria and then to Greece af-ter World War I”. The old town tour, the monuments and historic

REDiC NewsletterNo 2, February 2016 Page 2

buildings around made us feel the mixture of cultures and historicalsignificance and richness of the town.

On Tuesday afternoon, we did hiking to the mountains near Xanthi and visited a historic Monastery. We had achance to see the town from a higher point. On Wednesday, a representative teacher form each country participatedin a local radio program and talked about the aims, activities and products of the project. In the afternoon, visits tothe Archeological Museum of Abdera; the beach of Mirodato, Vistonis lagoon and the Monastery of Porto Lagos tookplace. On Thursday, we visited a modern museum “The House of Shadow” and the “Folklore Museum of Xanthi”.These museums were quite interesting locations where students got curious and filled with enthusiasm. On Friday, wevisited the archeological site of Phillipe, the city of Kavala, the Museum-Hotel Imaret and the house of MuhammadAli, founder of modern Egypt.

All the places that we have visited and seen are significant and influential examples of European cultural. Allteachers and pupils had a great time and gained insights about Greek culture, in particular, and the Europeanculture, in general. I think it is important to talk about the other informal learning opportunities that our projecthas provided to our pupils. During the visit, the students stayed in Greek homes, which was a great opportunityto learn and witness a different culture, language and habits. We value this practice, as we think that this can alsoimprove our pupils’ feelings of responsibility, self-esteem and social skills.

All in all, we together with our pupils spent 5 days full of activities and trainings in Xanthi. Our pupils andwe gained insights not only about the history, usage and effects of internet, but also historical heritages, geography,art, music, language and social skills. The benefits of “extra-curricular” activities cannot be denied. Hereby, I againthank our host, the Greek teachers, for the organization and the activities.

Some thoughts on the training sessionsby Esmeralda Monteiro

I think that the training sessions that took place in Greece were very positive. The first one was about the“History of Internet” and highlightened the chronological and geographical trajectory of the Internet and cleared upsome common misunderstandings about some facts. On the second session, “An overview of social media” which wasalso very interesting, we analysed some types of social media people use according to their interests and degree ofspecialization; the impact they had and the consequences involved. The session on “Information Systems Security: Anoverview” was important to disclose what is information system security, how it can be broken, some hackers whosenames are linked to serious attacks to some popular sites, and different types of hackers and viruses. There was asession presnted by a video conference system where we listened about situations of cyberstalking, cyberbullying, howwe could identify potential victims of cyberbullying, and what measures should be taken to prevent those situationsor what solutions are available. During the sessions we also talked about the project management, established linesof work for the next meeting.

Students’ Commentsby Theresa Kraft, Julia Schmid, and Sophie Suchna

REDiC NewsletterNo 2, February 2016 Page 3

In January, we participated in the Xanthi meeting of our Erasmus+ project. There we attended some lecturesabout the Internet. We learned about safety on the internet, cyber mobbing and our digital footprint. On our first daywe heard some general things about the internet and the history of the internet like when it was invented. There weresome interesting facts we didn’t know before and it was necessary to learn this general things to understand the nextthree lectures. The main focus of the second lecture was to give an overview of social media. Facebook, Whatsapp,Instagram—these are all social media platforms. Furthermore, we discussed about the internet as a communicationmedium. We found out that there are some really great advantages, but also some disadvantages and dangers.

The next thing we talked about was our digital Footprint. Some people don’t know what the leave on the internet.There is this sentence which should always be in our minds: The Internet never forgets. Every picture, status line,video or anything else you share or like will always be there. Sure you can delete it, but there are some ways torestore. In this lecture we also got a worksheet where we could try to find out how big our footprint is.

On the third day we learned about information systems security. We played games to learn how to surf in theinternet safely. Although the games were created for younger teenagers we had a lot of fun. The last lecture wasabout cyber bullying. The teacher first told us some important things about cyber bullying, then we watched amovie which is called “Cyberbully”. The movie was great because it was modern and it was created for teenagers.Furthermore, the movie showed that cyber bulling can happen to everybody very easily. Sometimes the person whois bullying somebody else doesn’t recognize it or believe that all is just a joke.

The Balance between “Old” and “New”by Mădălina-Elena Bîrloiu and Alexandrina-Ioana Păduraru

The second meeting of the Erasmus+ project “Responsible European Digital Citizens” took place in Xanthi,Greece. In this meeting we attended a series of lectures, where the Internet was the main theme. In addition, therewere cultural activities. In our opinion, a strong point of this meeting was a combination the “new” with the “old”,in a perfect balance. In this training event we learned many new things, and we consolidated the old knowledge. Thepresentation of cyber-bullying was done in a unique way. There was a classic presentation, and also a video conferencemade using Skype, with high professionalism. The presenters used an accessible language, so that we could retain allinformation, and, consequently, disseminate the knowledge to our schools (teachers, parents and pupils with specialeducational needs). In particular, we got a deeper understanding of the threats and the strength of using socialmedia, how we can protect ourselves and our pupils, and how to anticipate any unpleasant events.

Another wonderful aspect in those days of training was the involvement of Mr. Athanassiow Stavrianos, whomade a short presentation of the Edmondo Platform, getting us involved in an exercise on how to use it, what areits capabilities and how we could ease your work using this platform.

We spent five very beautiful days in Xanthi, we learned new things that completed the old knowledge’s, wediscovered another fascinating culture, and we visited places full of history. Many thanks to the Greek team, and wegladly expect the following meetings.

REDiC NewsletterNo 2, February 2016 Page 4