maija katkovska [elearning papers] 2012_discovering the digital world together, safely and...

7/31/2019 Maija Katkovska [Elearning Papers] 2012_discovering the Digital World Together, Safely and Critically

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eLearnin

Papers28

www.elea

rningpape

rs.eu

eLearning Papers ISSN: 1887-1542 www.elearningpapers.eu

n. 28 April 2012

1

From the feld

critical digital literacy,

media education, national

curriculum, policy

recommendations

Tags

Author

Maija Katkovska, Project

Manager

Latvian Internet Association,

Safer Internet Centre

[email protected]

Discovering the Digital World Together, Safely and

CriticallyWithin the framework of the Safer Internet Program, Latvia organized a Safer Internet

Day to bring parents, teachers and young people together to discover the digital world

safely. According to current ndings, safely means crically, because digital literacy

skills are strongly linked to the ability to perform a crical evaluaon of online content,

which is automacally related to personal safety online.

Research conducted by EU Kids Online in 2010 showed that only 54% of children and

young people say they are able and do compare informaon from dierent online

sources before accepng it as true and trusul. To check this assumpon, the Latvian

Safer Internet Centre, together with Latvian social networking site Draugiem.lv, set upan experiment to test young peoples cauon when providing personal informaon.

The ndings point to a need for greater measures that address and enhance young

peoples crical digital l iteracy.

The slogan and theme of this years Safer Internet Day was focusing on bringing parents,

teachers and young people together to discover the digital world together and safely. Ac-

cording to current researches and nding safely also means crically, because digital literacy

skills are strongly linked to crical evaluaon of online content which automacally is linked

to personal safety online.

Research conducted by EU kids online in 20101 showed that only 54% of children and young

people say they are able and do compare informaon from dierent online sources before

accepng it as true and trusul informaon or source. To check this assumpon in real life,

we Latvian Safer Internet Centre together with Latvian social networking site Draugiem.lv set

up an experiment.

The experiment was organised as a fake campaign by Safer Internet Centre, promising to win

an iPad2, just by registering and providing personal informaon. The banner was available

for Draugiem.lv users aged 10 20 in a form of a typical fake banner (Like: You have won!

Click here to claim!). When clicking the banner a registraon form opened inving the per-

son to provide with their name, age and contact informaon. The eld contact informaonwas intenonally le just as contact informaon to see how much personal informaon

children and young people would disclose. Aer nishing the registraon form and submit-

ng the form, informaon, that this is a fake campaign organised by Safer Internet Centre,

was displayed. Tips and link to Safer Internet Centres web site were provided inving the

person to be more careful when displaying the informaon online.

1 EU Kids Online Research is accessible here: hp://www2.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EUKidsOnline/Home.

aspx
mailto:maija%40drossinternets.lv?subject=http://www2.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EUKidsOnline/Home.aspxhttp://www2.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EUKidsOnline/Home.aspxhttp://www2.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EUKidsOnline/Home.aspxhttp://www2.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EUKidsOnline/Home.aspxmailto:maija%40drossinternets.lv?subject=


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eLearnin

Papers28

www.elea

rningpape

rs.eu

eLearning Papers ISSN: 1887-1542 www.elearningpapers.eu

n. 28 April 2012

2

From the feld

During the campaign the banner was clicked by 2281 children

and young people, out of those 1211 registered and provided

personal informaon, most of them e-mail addresses and

phone numbers, but 36, as their contact informaon, providedtheir home address. The banner included informaon that the

campaign is organised by Safer Internet Centre, and if the site

of Safer Internet Centre was entered the informaon could be

found that a fake campaign is being organised and one should

not register.

As predicted, the results of this experiment proved that crical

digital literacy skills are not the best developed skills amongst

children and young people.

This is also proved by results of a study conducted by the Lat -

vian Language Agency of the Ministry of Educaon and Science

in Latvia on Media Competence of Schoolchildren and Teachers

in 20112, focusing on forms, frequency, aims and ways of media

used by both teachers and schoolchildren in the process of

educaon.

Main conclusions showed that dierent types of media (inter-

net, TV, radio, printed press) are used daily and the most im -

portant media used, to no ones surprise, is internet 91% of

teachers and 86% of children use it daily. The dierence starts

with aims while teachers claim that in cases when more than

3 hours are spent online it is for work/ professional purposes

and for personal usage internet is not being used more than an

hour a day; children for study purposes mostly spend no more

than 1 hour a day, and if longer period is spent online it is for

personal interests. This shows that for teachers internet is a me-

dium for searching informaon and work while for children it is

a medium for interacon and communicaon.

This leads to the second big dierence in signicance of media

in the process of educaon percepon of how important it is

to use media to perform well at school. Only 15% of teachers

say that use of media is not needed to perform well while 58%

of children think that usage of media will not aect their perfor-

mance at school. This shows the situaon in schools in Latvia if

it is not wrien in the study book, it will not be asked in the test

or exam, so I do not need to know it! These results also show

the gap between the teachers atude about the media usage

2 Study of Latvian Language Agency is accessuble here (in Latvian):hp://www.

bilingvals.lv/uploads_docs/BISS_Mediju_komptence_2011_1323249632.

pdf

in the process of educaon and the actual usage. As main rea-

sons lack of technical equipment in classrooms and at childrens

living places are named, however we would like suggest that

such factors as lack of methodological guidance on how to usemedia crically and safely are more signicant.

Fortunately only 10% of teachers think that media usage is not

appropriate or possible in the subject they teach and hopefully

future researches will only show decrease in this number. Teach-

ers acknowledge that crical digital literacy skills are needed and

that school is the place to provide children with this knowledge,

meanme results show that 51% of teachers acknowledge that

it is dicult or very dicult to show and teach children how to

evaluate media content crically and check if the informaon is

true or false and the source is trusul.

From our visits to schools, when organising seminars, we see

that knowledge about basic internet safety issues from the per-

sonnel in schools is oen missing the content lters in schools

are used rarely, teachers, when giving assignments on infor-

maon search, are not using safe search opons and internet

browsing history is not being deleted aer every user. If teach-

ers had their own experience and knowledge of what kind of

informaon children just might come across and what threats to

encounter online, lack of above menoned basic safety issues

would not be there.

We see that the problem is there and to try to nd a possible

soluon and come up with actual suggesons on how to inte-

grate crical digital literacy skills in the system of educaon in

Latvia as a part of Safer Internet Day Celebraon in Latvia we

organised a Conference Discovering the digital world togeth-

er... safely! It brought together youngsters, parents, teachers

and experts from industry and universies to discuss the lack

of usage of modern technologies in the educaonal process in

Latvian schools and discuss the absence of crical digital literacy

and media competence skills amongst children and teachers.

The main conclusion of the discussions of the conference was

that in the current system of Educaon in Latvia needs to be

changed. Media educaon and development of crical digital

literacy skills should become a part of the educaonal process

as we are living in the society driven by technologies and infor-

maon.

Some of the conclusions coming from the Conference experts

include:
http://www.bilingvals.lv/uploads_docs/BISS_Mediju_komptence_2011_1323249632.pdfhttp://www.bilingvals.lv/uploads_docs/BISS_Mediju_komptence_2011_1323249632.pdfhttp://www.bilingvals.lv/uploads_docs/BISS_Mediju_komptence_2011_1323249632.pdfhttp://www.bilingvals.lv/uploads_docs/BISS_Mediju_komptence_2011_1323249632.pdfhttp://www.bilingvals.lv/uploads_docs/BISS_Mediju_komptence_2011_1323249632.pdfhttp://www.bilingvals.lv/uploads_docs/BISS_Mediju_komptence_2011_1323249632.pdfhttp://www.bilingvals.lv/uploads_docs/BISS_Mediju_komptence_2011_1323249632.pdf


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maija katkovska [elearning papers] 2012_discovering the digital world together, safely and...

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