2 classes from HAK Ybbs received prizes for their participation in the "24 Hour Challenge without Mobile/Internet". Class 2AK had the highest percentage of students handing in their mobiles, 1BK provided the most and by far best feedbacks. Overall, the participation in this challenge was unexpectedly high; awareness concerning our addictions on mobiles and internet has definitely been increased!

SID - Safer Internet Day at the Fridagymnasiet college in Vänersborg, Sweden, part 2

The Swedish Media Council (Statens medieråd in Swedish) has published a pedagogical material to be used in schools during the MILweek -(Media- och InformationsKunnighet) 9-13 February. The work consist of four parts, training, knowledge about the role of Media in our society, How to search for, analyse and critically value information, as well as communicate and create using the internet and media.

The Media Council also provides information and training material for IST for teachers about how to work with Media and Information on the internet. The material is used to educate the individual teacher as well as the teacher teams and prepare everyone better for teaching and working with the students on the theme. A link to the material can be found here.  Classroom tasks can be found here.

The material "Vilja veta!" or in English "Want to know!" , is used during a lesson of 60 minutes and provides teachers with a tool on how to discuss the media use of young people. The interactive part is a competition in groups where you get 27 different taks where you either reply to questions, search for an answer or fulfill tasks to test your knowledge about media in general and how skillful you are when it comes to using it in a good and efficient way, scrutinizing posts and reflecting upon the authenticity of content, pictures etc. in particular. For the competition, the groups use a computer or preferably a smart phone and you need about 30 minutes to work it through.

To view the competition (all questions are in Swedish)

SID - Safer Internet Day at the Fridagymnasiet college in Vänersborg, Sweden

Since the Fridagymnasiet college has an outspoken ICT profile and both students and teachers save and share most of their work on-line, addressing safety issues is an ongoing process that goes on all year round and not only on SID. However, the special day made it even more important to focus on how to use the Internet in a safe way. One example of the activities:

Year one students at the college have been working on a long term project with workshops on the theme: Hidden dangers of the Internet. 

There is extensive pedagogical material for teachers as well as videos as the basis for discussions and workshops on www.mucf.se - The Swedish Agency for Youth and Civil Society - a government agency that works to ensure that young people have access to influence and welfare. The agency also supports the government in issues relating to civil society policy. The students have used several occasions of their class hour (which they have three times per week) to work on the material ”Ses offline?” - ”See you offline?”. The final workshops took place on SID - Safer Internet Day, 10 February 2015. 

• The ”See you offline?” course material focus on different situations such as what happens: 
• when someone takes a picture of you and then shares it online, 
• when you meet and talk to someone online, maybe flirt and then don’t know how to say no to a meeting in real life
• if you are stuck playing an online game, need money to continue playing and someone offers you money in return for a picture of yourself.
• Some of the videos to be used as the basis for discussions are:
• See you offline? Lesson 1 film 1 - English subtitles
• See you offline? Lesson 1 film 2 - English subtitles
• See you offline? Lesson 2 - English subtitles
• See you offline? Lesson 3 film 1 - English subtitles
• See you offline? Lesson 3 film 2 - English subtitles

Safe Internet Day 2015
“24 hour challenge without Internet and/or mobile phone”

On Tuesday, 9^th February 2015, students from the commercial college in Ybbs on the Danube took part in the 24 hour challenge. This meant that the participants avoided the Internet for 24 hours, half of them handed in their mobile phones which were then locked away.
Those who did not hand in their mobiles had to document the number and quality of all the messages they got during these 24 hours (text, mail, WhatsApp); those who had given away their phones wrote a short report about their experiences. Six classes took part, representing at around 150 students; half of them handed in their mobiles voluntarily.

This is extracts from the reports they provided:

“Personally, I would say not having my phone with me 24/7 didn’t change anything. “

“I was very bored without my phone and constantly thought about getting it back the next day.”

“Not having my phone with me all the time got me thinking on how many times a day I actually use my phone.”

“I get to socialize more.”

“I constantly had the feeling of missing something.”

“It is quite satisfying that nobody can ask stupid questions via message.”

“I felt like something was missing.”

“No distraction when you try to be productive.”

“I never knew what time it was because I usually look at my phone to check the time.”

“More focus on the important things.”

The group of students not handing in their phones received an average of 33 messages per day, of which they classified 23% as important and 77% as unimportant. .

The challenge was carried out in connection with the European Erasmus+ K1 project “Safe Internet For All”, www.sifaplus.eu