Socius is a non-profit organisation for socio-cultural adult work.

The venue is situated on the 4^th floor with a nice view of the north side of Brussels.

The target groups for the multiplier event were Face2Face workshop participants, external experts, teachers, youth workers and trainers from formal, non-formal and informal educational field. The core of the event was to present the Brights project and the policy recommendations that came out of the project. Around 20 people took part in the event.

During the Brights multiplier event Jochem Devens, Multimedia animator at Maks vzw and national BRIGHTS tutor for Belgium, presented the BRIGHTS project and the policy recommendations.

The event started with a PowerPoint presentation and 3 Digital Stories from the project.

• OKAN Sint-Guido Instituut – Saïd
• Kevin Malnar – It is all the same to me
• Wannes Hendrik – Wannes

One of the participants, Ann De Martelaer, who also followed the MOOC and the Face2Face-workshops, had a surprise for us: She made Digital Stories with adults with disabilities who are looking for real, paid jobs. Even though the story is not eligible for the Brights project because the maker of the story is already 25 years old, it was very valuable to show this story because it shows the power of Digital Storytelling. Anneleen, a woman with Down Syndrom dreams about working as a fashion model.

Here’s a link to the beautiful story:

For the second part after the presentation and videos, a discussion about the project and its policy recommendations was held.

Printouts of the recommendations were laid out in front of the participants to start the discussions.

How can Digital Storytelling be used for an audience of youngsters who are not very motivated to be in formal or non-formal education and for whom GCE is very abstract? How can the project reach more secondary schools, teachers, staff, policy makers?

School teachers should be able to follow the MOOC and F2F workshops during their hours of in-service training. It could be offered through the education networks to make it more available.

The project fits into the pedagogic future where not only ICT skills, digital infrastructure are important but also another way of teaching is crucial: the teacher as a coach, working in groups, independent researching by students, peer-to-peer method, …

As the Flemish government is in the process of adopting the Paris Declaration from 2015 and implementing Global Citizenship Education, the BRIGHTS-project can be a best practice to work with in many more schools in Brussels and Flanders.

For sure, to be continued…

Zagorka Prce Veseli presented the BRIGHTS project and the results which were accomplished during the project on National and European level. In more detail she described the methodology of education of youth workers and teachers, methodology of digital storytelling, the specifics of working with youngsters on Global Citizenship topics and the importance of development and application of digital knowledge and skills. After the presentation, there was a discussion about the possibilities for application of already developed methodology in order to teach children and youth about other topics besides GC and about what other digital and technical skills could be used for educating youth for Global Citizenship.

After the discussion, Olivera Stanić presented the project’s conclusions about the needs of educators in the field of Global Citizenship Education on National level and the recommendations about how to approach to the decision makers in order to reach needed impact for further development of GCE. After the presentation, participants have agreed with the conclusions and discussed about the ways they could act together towards the decision makers. In addition, everyone agreed that they will discuss the possibility of disseminating project results within their associations by using the developed methodology, but also by developing other digital methods of Global Citizenship Education.

In the end, Olivera Stanić presented the Unite-IT platform. All of the participants have welcomed the existence of such a platform and stated that they see a great value in the platform for the networking and learning from other individuals and organizations.

The event was full of digital stories, sound and laughter, as several young digital story creators, from 10 to 19 years old, were present to receive their certificates of excellence for their innovative and GCE-oriented stories. Their teachers, from formal and non-formal education, were there as well to celebrate with them and share the challenges they faced as they trained their students about Global Citizenship Education Values and Digital Storytelling Methodology.

During the event, Mr. Faldamis, welcomed the participants and wished even more projects like BRIGHTS to be implemented in Greece. Then, the two National Tutors, Mr. Patselis and Mrs. Skoulaki presented the results of the  BRIGHTS Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) “Addressing Global Citizenship Education through Digital Storytelling”, as well as the BRIGHTS Training Programme to trainers and students. Following their presentation, Mrs. Aspioti, highlighted dissemination and exploitation activities and presented ways of promoting the BRIGHTS project results after its completion.

During the second part, the lights went off, and the four finalist digital stories were presented to the public. Participants were fascinated by the depths of the imagination of the young learners and were moved by their stories’ topics. There were themes about War, about Adoption by Same Gender Couples, about Gender Equality and about Refugees; all given by a more gentle and innocent aspect, the one of a child’s.

As soon as the presentation was over, the silence from retrospect was filled by the voice of the teachers, who were responsible to engage their students into creating digital stories regarding Global Citizenship Education principles. The teachers talked about their challenges and their concerns during the training. However, they all talked about how the children became from passive to active, how even the most “difficult” children became involved and cooperated with their classmates.

But why did this happen? It was because the students were able to express their inner voice and to talked about sensitive subjects using pictures, drawings or even play-doh.

Older students worked with younger as their mentors and helped promoting a supportive network during the whole process. Other groups helped foreign students, who were unable to speak Greek, to read and participate to the story as well. So we believe that the project was successful. What a better way to learn about Global Citizenship Education than implementing its values through cooperation, respect, support, and encouragement to speak your own voice?

And a message from a young student…”this is the opportunity for all grown-ups to learn about Global Citizenship Education and see things differently, because so far they have only seen with their own eyes and their own interests”.

With this post I want to share our experiences, our mistakes, what we’ve learned from it and hopefully provide you with some tips and tricks that may help you when working with Digital Storytelling with youngsters.

Our event took place at the Cureghem cellars in Anderlecht. http://www.abattoir.be/en/cellars

An enchanting place, a huge cellar more than 100 years old. It was once used for growing mushrooms last century and has now become a popular venue for events.

The students came from two Flemish Dutch-speaking schools in Brussels: Anneessens Funck and GO for business De Toverfluit. 9^th and 10^th grade.

These are schools with a super diverse public: youngsters from all backgrounds, some of them born here, others just arrived two years ago. The Dutch language is one of the big challenges for these students, since it is rarely their mother language. It is their second, third or even fourth language. Formal classical education is a rough path for most of them and by the age of 16-17, motivation for going to school is on a low level. Instead of having 4 to 5 sessions of 4 hours, we made it very compact to get sooner to the concrete action, something we’ve noticed is necessary in previous workshops with our target group.

For this day, we decided to mix and divide all students into 6 different groups each with their own topic related to GCE: Family, friends, lifestyle, habitat, my future and my history. The idea was to start from the student and his environment and to make a link with GCE in a second phase.

After a quick introduction of the day, we started in our different groups. Trainers and teachers guided the youngsters through the day.

It started with a round of Dixit where all cards are on a table and everyone has to pick a card which he/she likes or can relate to. Afterwards everyone tells why he/she picked this particular card.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dixitgame.jpg

I’ll have to be honest: these youngsters 16-17 years old are not very eager to talk about themselves in a group. As a trainer, you constantly have to try and motivate them, ask questions, more questions and more questions.

Even though we tried to make GCE close to the student and the time framing very compact, lacking motivation was a huge challenge this day. How to motivate and involve the students into GCE and Digital Storytelling was really the key question of this day.

After our round of Dixit we went to the topic of each group.

We prepared some questions, each student had about half an hour to think about these questions and to answer them. This exercise was not about writing, spelling or grammar, it served merely as a starting point for our story circle afterwards.

Not only talking in group but also listening to each other is not easy. It demanded great effort from trainers and teachers and from students as well.

But almost all students had their short story and their storyboard ready before lunchbreak. Short personal stories, about half a minute till one minute long…

The afternoon started with a brief but excellent presentation from Jasper from Maks about iMovie and looking up pictures on internet. He’s also the star from the Brights Module 4 where he guides you through the technical aspects of making a Digital Story ( https://vimeo.com/manage/albums/4856060 )

After this, we went back to our different groups and each student received an iPad to start making their own digital story. This part of the process went easier, students could work individual on a tablet and a concrete result came out of it. They used their drawings and pictures from the internet for their stories, they recorded their voice and edited all on their iPad.

But it is the content they had to come up with during the morning session which can seem too abstract, that made it possible to create a digital story this fast.

You can find all the results on our Vimeo (only in Dutch):

Some things we’ve learned from this day:

• Provide a clear schedule of the day for the students (it took some time after breaks for some students to come back)
• Mixing students from different school is a challenge and can create conflicts which makes it harder to focus on the content
• It stays hard to get the attention of students for GCE.
• As a trainer you have to stay motivated all the time even if you receive little to no feedback at the beginning. Eventually interesting ideas and stories will come out.
• As a trainer, you have to keep looking for those ideas and keep believing something will come up
• It is not easy for the youngsters we worked with to share their opinion in a group.
• The location was not ideal: the huge cellars were a temptation for the youngsters to wonder around instead of focusing on their digital story.
• Working with specific themes within the frame of GCE works well. It makes it easier to focus. But one should keep the possibility open to open up the themes if the group wants this.
• Preparing questions in advance is very important. It’s the trainer’s guide for the story circle. Also make sure to have more questions in your head you can ask during the story circle. These questions will inspire others in the circle as well.
• Be prepared on the technical level. Our colleagues from the technical department went one day in advance to install extra Wi-Fi-routers. All iPads were charged, and every iPad had the proper logos and proper credits already installed.

And to come back to the beginning: did we reach our goal of having all students make their own digital story? Almost, but not completely. We, the students, teachers and trainers, did a very good job! But for a couple of students it did not work out.  Where this one-day workshop formula worked in many ways, it also has the disadvantage of not being able to make time for students who need extra attention or guidance. And anyone can have a bad day, not only youngsters. After all, we’re not only Global Citizens, we’re all humans in the first place.

We continue to work with Digital Storytelling. We keep believing it is a very good way to reach youngsters, to inspire conversations, to have discussions, to share stories.

I am very curious to hear from other trainers and teachers from all over the world: what are your thoughts and experiences? What are do’s and don’ts ?

The BRIGHTS project is financially supported by the European Commission through the Erasmus + program. In the last two years the project was conducted in Belgium, Greece, Italy and Croatia with the aim of promoting Global Citizenship Education in formal and non-formal education through the method of digital storytelling. Teachers, professors, youth workers, and non-formal sector trainers have adopted a project methodology developed by an international partner consortium and then educated more than 1,000 students who have created digital stories. You can view their digital stories on the YouTube channel of the BRIGHTS project. s The public had a chance to view the stories of the Croatian students on the big screen at Art-kino Croatia.

Authors of the best digital stories and their mentors received awards. Fourteen-year-old Kevin Malnar is the author of the best Croatian story “It’s all the same to me…”, where he brings his own vision of life on the Croatian-Slovenian border, which has been divided by a barbed wire since the beginning of the refugee crisis. Kevin’s mentor is professor of Primary School “Petar Zrinski” Čabar Tanja Šebalj-Kocet. Kevin and Tanja together with the team of the Centre of Technical Culture Rijeka, the association that implemented the project in Croatia, participated in October as Croatian representatives at ALL DIGITAL summit, which this year was dedicated to the topic of digital storytelling.

KEVIN’s story:

BRIGHTS national tutors Hana Galogaža Lanča and Sanjin Smajlović from CTC Rijeka, who mentored Croatian educators in mastering the BRIGHTS methodology and practical work with youth, presented the BRIGHTS methodology. As the strongest quality of the BRIGHTS methodology, tutors emphasized the power to empower an individual who is telling his digital story as well as motivating viewers at the same. They also added that the strong power of this methodology is its ability to apply to different topics and contexts.

BRIGHTS methodology

The BRIGHTS international consortium has recognized digital storytelling as an excellent tool for dealing with topics in the area of education for global citizenship because of its simplicity and attractiveness among young people. A digital story is a short form of digital communication that not only allows individuals to exchange their everyday experiences, but also promotes understanding among people of different ethnic or religious backgrounds, beliefs, points out stereotypes, promotes intercultural dialogue and empowers critical thinking, as well as computer and media literacy.

In Croatia the BRIGHTS methodology was embraced by 169 representatives of the non-formal and formal education sector (professors, non-graduate school staff, NGO representatives, trainers …) and over 1200 across Europe. They learned the methodology through the massive online open course “Access to Education for Global Citizenship through Digital storytelling”. The MOOC was awarded in October as the best digital resource for educators in the pan-European network ALL DIGITAL.

Following the successful completion of the massive online open course, participants were given the opportunity to join the practical part of the project, which included a workshop for them and a workshop with young people from 13 to 19 years of age. In Croatia, 26 educators were included in the workshop, which transferred their knowledge to over 300 Croatian young people. Watch and share their digital stories here!

Educators Mirjana Jerković and Ivana Kovač, professors of Primary School “Tin Ujević” Osijek, shared their experience of participating in the BRIGHTS project and the practical application of the BRIGHT methodology with the young people. They emphasized that despite the poor equipment of the school and the end of the school year, they managed to hold workshops with students who had no problems embracing the methodology and making their digital stories. They are going to continue to use the methodology, and in this school year we can expect new digital stories from Osijek.

The methodology was praised by the employees of the Department of Education of the City of Rijeka, Lana Golob and Mirela Pašić, who stated that it can easily applied to the teaching methods of Civic Education. They presented the Rijeka model of civic education that is expanding over Croatia and once again emphasized that the themes and approaches that encourage tolerance, nonviolence, and understanding of diversity today are extremely needed for Croatian society.

The event “Students – Global citizens” was held as part of the Global Education Week (19^th-25^th November 2018). If you are interested in education for global citizenship, we invite you to join the first European community that brings together experts, practitioners and others interested in the topic on the Unite-IT platform, which was also developed through the BRIGHTS project.

This year the Summit had a particular focus on Global Citizenship Education and Digital Storytelling. Joe Lambert, founder of Story Center in the US, was invited to talk about the digital storytelling technique as well as Pip Hardy and Tony Sumner, co-founders of the Patient Voices Programme in UK.

BRIGHTS co-organised the event and its results were promoted and discussed throughout the 2-days conference.

On the first day of the conference, two workshops were devoted to the project:

• How to create a mini MOOC (based on the BRIGHTS project experience) which was held by Bill Vassiliadis from DAISSy Research Group of Hellenic Open University and project partner.
• How to coach youngsters to share their opinions on Global Citizenship Education issues through digital stories (based on the BRIGHTS project experience) who was held by Jasper Pollet, trainer at MAKS, project partner.

Beside the workshops, an interactive session was also organised by the BRIGHTS consortium.

The topic was “Global citizenship education in digital competence centres” and the session was held by Barbara Quarta, project coordinator from ALL DIGITAL, together with Luca Pagliaricci, national tutor from Centro Studi Foligno. They presented the BRIGHTS project as case study, focusing on lessons learned, experiences to share and the role of digital competence centres in teaching global citizenship education. By the end of the session, participants were provided with concrete actions to help them reach this stop of their digital journey.

Hana Galogaza, trainer at CTK Rijeka and BRIGHTS project manager took part in the first-day Panel Discussion on “How can digital storytelling boost social inclusion?” which was moderated by Jan Debognies, trainer at MAKS and project manager. The discussion pertained to the role that digital technology can play in elevating the practice of storytelling as a means to improve the well-being of people around the world in various contexts – students, migrants, low-literate adults, patients. Veronique De Leener, director of MAKS, participated as keynote.

On the second day of the conference, the plenary session was moderated by Altheo Valentini, ALL DIGITAL Board member and project partner. The topic was “Global citizenship education and media literacy and the role of digital technologies in teaching it”. Sara Cella, BRIGHTS project assistant from Università degli Studi Guglielmo Marconi, was panellist in the discussion that concerned the key role played by digital technologies in fostering knowledge, awareness, critical thinking and participation.

Last but not least, the “BRIGHTS Awards: best digital story on Global Citizenship topics” took place on the 18th evening as part of the ALL DIGITAL Awards Ceremony. Kevin Malnar from Croatia, Victoria Ivanova from Greece, Nicolò Fatone from Italy and Wannes Hendrik from Belgium were awarded as national winners and Wannes was also given the trophy as European winner.

During the awards ceremony, the BRIGHTS MOOC “Addressing Global Citizenship Education Through Digital Storytelling” was also awarded as Best Digital Resource. The trophy was given to Achilles Kameas from DAISSY Research Group of Hellenic Open University, which led the creation of the BRIGHTS MOOC.

After this very intense but successful summit, the BRIGHTS consortium is already looking forward to the next activities and opportunities to give more and more visibility and sustainability to the project. The BRIGHTS policy recommendations will ready soon and will be disseminated among stakeholders and training providers. Stay tuned!

Zagorka Prce Veseli from Centre of technical culture Rijeka participated in the event where she presented BRIGHTS project and its results achieved so far, after which she explained in more detail the methodology of education for people who work with young people in the field of global citizenship education. Participants were informed about the method of digital storytelling and how it is used to educate about global citizenship. Zagorka Prce Veseli highlighted its benefits, as well as the knowledge, skills and personality traits that are desirable for the people who use this teaching method. The participants were interested in the possibility of attending a developed online course and they also emphasized the need for the development of the same or similar methods, but also the need to educate the providers of global citizenship education, and the lack of support from the liable governments. The participants were particularly interested in the existence of the working group on global citizenship at the Unite – IT platform and the opportunities that it offers to exchange experiences, as well as the teaching methods that can be used in the implementation of global citizenship education.

This meeting was organized within the framework of the Joint Program signed between the Council of Europe and the European Union to promote global citizenship education through dialogue, networking strategies, capacity building and the exchange of educational practices.

The ALL DIGITAL Summit, co-hosted by the ALL DIGITAL member and BRIGHTS partner Maks, brings together every year ca. 200 leaders of networks and organisations working to enhance digital skills of all European citizens. This year, the event will be organised under the title “Digital Journey: from Inclusion to Empowerment”.

Participants will discuss how they can accompany Europeans in their journey to become digital citizens, skilled workers, empowered educators or inspiring leaders. The digital journey start from inclusion, from raising awareness that digital tools are for everyone. Then it goes on through feeling safe and comfortable with its own capacities, to being empowered by its own knowledge.

In this context, the BRIGHTS project will have a particular focus in plenary sessions, “how to workshops”, interactive sessions, market place etc. where it will be explored in particular how digital technologies and skills can enhance global citizenship education, media literacy, human rights, inclusion of migrants and refugees.

Moreover, on the evening of 18^th October, the Summit will host the Awards Ceremony celebrating the winners of the ALL DIGITAL Awards 2018, including the winners of the BRIGHTS Awards who will come to Brussels from all project countries.

Have a look at the programme for the Summit and save the date!

]]> https://www.brights-project.eu/en/brights-at-social-hackaton-umbria-2018/feed/ 0 https://www.brights-project.eu/en/brights-project-meeting-in-athens/ https://www.brights-project.eu/en/brights-project-meeting-in-athens/#respond Fri, 29 Jun 2018 19:15:01 +0000 http://www.brights-project.eu/?p=1950 […]]]> On the 7-8 June 2018, BRIGHTS partners gathered together in Athens, Greece, for their fourth project meeting, which has been hosted by Hepis.

The meeting focused on the exchange of experiences among the BRIGHTS national tutors about the implementation of the piloting activities (MOOC, workshops with teachers and trainers and workshops with students). The piloting activities were overall very successful with participants reporting that they had a unique and fulfilling experience. Most of the teachers and trainers attending the workshops found the subject about Global Citizenship Education (GCE) very relevant and were happy to apply the Digital Storytelling methodology with their students as a way to raise their awareness on GCE topics.

During the meeting, project partners went also through the results from the evaluation surveys that have been submitted to teachers and trainers before and after the completion of the BRIGHTS MOOC and after the face-to-face workshops. It was a good way for them to analyse what went well and what still needs to be improved in the future.

The meeting was very productive especially in terms of planning of future activities. Project partners will be engaged in the organisation of the BRIGHTS final event which will take place on the 18-19 October 2018 in Brussels and will be hosted by the ALL DIGITAL Summit 2018 “Digital journey: from inclusion to empowerment”. During the ALL DIGITAL Summit, the four best national digital stories and, among them, the best European digital story will be awarded in the contest of the BRIGHTS Awards.

The project is coming to an end, but an exciting time is still ahead of our BRIGHTS partners!

Are you a teacher or a trainer working on Global Citizenship Education? Did you take part in the BRIGHTS MOOC and workshop? Join the working group on GCE on the Unite-IT Platform!

Please click here to download the Informative Kit on GCE: the document summarizes the concept of Global Citizenship Education, its benefits and methodology, and introduces the Digital Storytelling technique as a tool to teach Global Citizenship Education more effectively. Furthermore, it provides best practices regarding its application. It can be used both as a resource to approach the field of Global Citizenship Education for the first time and as a basis to plan and implement more extensive and focused studies and practices in the field.