From the field

Discovering the Digital World Together, Safely and Critically

Author
Maija Katkovska, Project Manager Latvian Internet Association, Safer Internet Centre maija@drossinternets.lv Within 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 findings, safely means critically, because digital literacy skills are strongly linked to the ability to perform a critical evaluation of online content, which is automatically 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 information from different online sources before accepting it as true and trustful. To check this assumption, the Latvian Safer Internet Centre, together with Latvian social networking site Draugiem.lv, set up an experiment to test young peoples caution when providing personal information. The findings point to a need for greater measures that address and enhance young peoples critical digital literacy.

Tags
critical digital literacy, media education, national curriculum, policy recommendations

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. According to current researches and finding safely also means critically, because digital literacy skills are strongly linked to critical evaluation of online content which automatically 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 information from different online sources before accepting it as true and trustful information or source. To check this assumption 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 information. 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 registration form opened inviting the person to provide with their name, age and contact information. The field contact information was intentionally left just as contact information to see how much personal information children and young people would disclose. After finishing the registration form and submitting the form, information, that this is a fake campaign organised by Safer Internet Centre, was displayed. Tips and link to Safer Internet Centres web site were provided inviting the person to be more careful when displaying the information online.

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

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eLearning Papers ISSN: 1887-1542 www.elearningpapers.eu n. 28 April 2012

From the field

During the campaign the banner was clicked by 2281 children and young people, out of those 1211 registered and provided personal information, most of them e-mail addresses and phone numbers, but 36, as their contact information, provided their home address. The banner included information that the campaign is organised by Safer Internet Centre, and if the site of Safer Internet Centre was entered the information could be found that a fake campaign is being organised and one should not register. As predicted, the results of this experiment proved that critical 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 Latvian Language Agency of the Ministry of Education 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 education. Main conclusions showed that different types of media (internet, TV, radio, printed press) are used daily and the most important media used, to no ones surprise, is internet 91% of teachers and 86% of children use it daily. The difference 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 medium for searching information and work while for children it is a medium for interaction and communication. This leads to the second big difference in significance of media in the process of education perception 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 affect their performance at school. This shows the situation in schools in Latvia if it is not written 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 attitude about the media usage
2 Study of Latvian Language Agency is accessuble here (in Latvian): http://www. bilingvals.lv/uploads_docs/BISS_Mediju_komptence_2011_1323249632. pdf

in the process of education and the actual usage. As main reasons 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 use media critically and safely are more significant. 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. Teachers acknowledge that critical digital literacy skills are needed and that school is the place to provide children with this knowledge, meantime results show that 51% of teachers acknowledge that it is difficult or very difficult to show and teach children how to evaluate media content critically and check if the information is true or false and the source is trustful. From our visits to schools, when organising seminars, we see that knowledge about basic internet safety issues from the personnel in schools is often missing the content filters in schools are used rarely, teachers, when giving assignments on information search, are not using safe search options and internet browsing history is not being deleted after every user. If teachers had their own experience and knowledge of what kind of information children just might come across and what threats to encounter online, lack of above mentioned basic safety issues would not be there. We see that the problem is there and to try to find a possible solution and come up with actual suggestions on how to integrate critical digital literacy skills in the system of education in Latvia as a part of Safer Internet Day Celebration in Latvia we organised a Conference Discovering the digital world together... safely! It brought together youngsters, parents, teachers and experts from industry and universities to discuss the lack of usage of modern technologies in the educational process in Latvian schools and discuss the absence of critical 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 Education in Latvia needs to be changed. Media education and development of critical digital literacy skills should become a part of the educational process as we are living in the society driven by technologies and information. Some of the conclusions coming from the Conference experts include:

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eLearning Papers ISSN: 1887-1542 www.elearningpapers.eu n. 28 April 2012

From the field

Educational personnel need to be provided with information and training developing media competences and allowing seeing its pedagogical potential. The use of media should become an integral part of every stage of education from pre-school to high-school. The focus on the values and ethical aspects of the ways media and sources are used should be present in media education. When teaching about media, the focus on technical aspects of just how to use the technology or a program should be as important as the focus on the smart usage of the technology for study purposes and ones benefit. The focus of possible threats of the use of technology should be substituted by development of skills to choose media rationally, critically and creatively. At the moment together with the experts Net-Safe Latvia Safer Internet Centre is working to develop practical advice on how to integrate media education and development of critical digital literacy skills in the process of education in Latvia. To conclude this we feel that Latvia definitely is not the only country in Europe or the World where a change in the Educational System is needed. We would like to invite other Safer Internet Centres to approach relevant partners and organisations to point to them how important it is to develop critical digital literacy skills and ensure that media education becomes an integral part of the educational programs. We Safer Internet Centres can only warn that there are risks out there and one should be careful, but as long as there isnt media education in place our work is not as effective as it could be.

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eLearning Papers ISSN: 1887-1542 www.elearningpapers.eu n. 28 April 2012