The main goals of the project are to develop an eSafety environment to enable ICT support in school (http://klimentvarna.net) and to offer a great variety of materials orientate towards a vast group of users – such as teachers, students and parents, and everyone, who uses the portal should be able to test one’s own knowledge and skills in relation to the theme of eSafety.
Target groups are teachers, pupils aged 7-9 and 15-17.
The main task of the students, who are constructing the portal, is to discuss the concepts and principles of the themes: the responsible use of modern technologies and the students’ safeness while they are online, without realizing these themes it is not possible to apply the project eSafety.
During the creation of the portal, students participated in lively discussions related to the promotion of the responsible use of modern technologies. Different methods of protection from spyware, spam and password theft are discussed and they are made by the students from senior classes during the construction of the portal. The students accepted at heart the idea through this medium, to present to their classmates different ways students are safe when they are online. While working on the project eSafety, the students also become motivated in construction of php application and instruments for realization of their ideas about eSafety Internet and environment. The senior students improve their skills and show their work to younger students, who in their turn are very pleased and they acquire and perform what they have learned from the senior students.
Led by Teachtoday, our team decided the logo of the environment NTEL to include “eSafety Environment”.
Due to the importance of the topic, we put in the main menu theme “eSafety”.
A few modules are realized in the portal for training on the theme “eSafety”.
Module 1: To create a lesson and tests in addition to that lesson.
Every parent, student or teacher could register and look at them. After you have filled the test, the result is added to the user profile and the teacher, who has created the eSafety course, can see how each one has cope with the tests. The teacher generalizes the results and makes statistics for the questions with the lowest percentage of right answers.
We have the following division of the teaching materials:
Interactive materials for the youngest children
The senior students present
For teachers and parents from teachers and parents
The environment allows a publication, a search, an interchange, and a multiple use of the learning objects to be carried out. The pupils have prepared presentations (some of them are interactive) on the following issues:
- the responsible use of modern technologies
- the students are safe when they are online
Module 2: Gallery
The students are assigned tasks to create collages on the theme “eSafety projects” and the best will appear in the gallery on the site.
One of the students involved in designing of the site proposed an icon for eSafety, which was placed in front of the articles.
Module 3: eSafety articles. With the help of Valentina Petrova the scholars will create their articles.
Module 4: Communications (blog and forum)
In the forum and blog, all users can express their views and suggestions for safe browsing in the Internet.
NTEL is used by The Department for Information and In-service Teacher Training in Varna in which most of the teachers from Bulgaria increased their qualification. Thus unite around more teachers and their students about the topic “eSafety projects”. A workshop for teachers from the whole country will be organized together with Department for Information and In-service Teacher Training. They will get acquainted with our ideas about the project, and will have the opportunity to add materials to the portal.
It is planned to have the site translated into English.
Anyone who sees the site has the opportunity to get acquainted with the work of our team on the topic.
It is foreseen to organize workshops on the theme “eSafety” with students and teachers from different countries in cooperation with the international camp in the village of Kranevo.
Owing to our contacts with teachers from different countries from all over the world we share our ideas and experiences on promoting the responsible use of digital technologies.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Valentina Petrova, Teacher in ICT, Varna, Bulgaria, vmb75bg@abv.bg