The “BRIGHTS Awards: best digital story on Global Citizenship topics” have been launched!

Are you wondering what is it about? It is the contest launched by the BRIGHTS Consortium with the purpose of selecting the best digital stories produced by youngsters during the project.

The students will be supported by their teachers or trainers in the production of their digital stories on Global Citizenship Education topics such as sustainable development and lifestyle, social inclusion and cultural diversity, gender equality, peace and human rights, active citizenship and democracy.

The Awards are addressed to project participants in Belgium, Croatia, Greece and Italy: young people who have participated in workshops on digital storytelling supported by their teachers or trainers. If you are one of them find out how to apply for the BRIGHTS Awards.

By submitting their digital story to the BRIGHTS Awards, young participants will have the opportunity to be selected as national winner. Four national winners will be selected in each project country (Belgium, Croatia, Greece and Italy). An International Jury will then choose one national winner per country and the four national winners will be invited to participate with their teacher/trainer in the ALL DIGITAL Summit which will be held in Brussels on the 18-19 October 2018. The national winners will be awarded during the “BRIGHTS Awards Ceremony for the best digital story”, which is taking place on the 18th October in the evening as part of the ALL DIGITAL Awards.

Travel and accommodation costs for two nights will be covered by us for you and your teacher or trainer.

How to apply to the BRIGHTS Awards? Find out more here!

GCE employs concepts, methodologies and theories already implemented in different fields and subjects, including human rights education, peace education, education to achieve sustainable development and education for intercultural understanding. Addressing subjects through GCE can contribute to promoting social inclusion, democratic values and fundamental rights awareness by giving young people opportunities to challenge the injustice of racism, value cultural diversity and develop positive attitudes and behaviours towards people who are different from them.

Digital storytelling is a powerful and effective learning tool in stimulating creativity, digital literacy and critical thinking. The act of publishing one’s story, trying to influence peers to do the same and not to remain silent about the issues of radicalization and social exclusion will become an important factor in this process. Learners will be transformed to empowered actors who choose to put their stories out in order to raise awareness and help others.

In the context of the project, the BRIGHTS MOOC was launched on the 5^thMarch in the four project countries (Belgium, Croatia, Greece and Italy) and it is currently underway. More than 1,000 teachers and trainers enrolled in the massive online course showing great interest in the topic.

Here are the numbers of users registered in each project country: 106 users in Belgium, 162 in Croatia, 758 in Greece and 115 in Italy. Successful participants will receive an open badge and a Certificate of Completion.

This result really proves that Global Citizenship Education (GCE) is of the highest concern to the public and specifically to secondary school teachers and trainers and that, therefore, the MOOC responds to crucial training needs that are emerging among young people, such as intercultural and cross-cultural skills, critical thinking, creativity and digital literacy.

The BRIGHTS partners are now ready to implement the next piloting activities.

The following step is the face-to-face workshop, during which 25 teachers and trainers from each project country and among those who have successfully completed the MOOC, will be trained on how to implement Global Citizenship Education with their pupils using digital storytelling.

Afterwards, all 100 teachers and trainers will implement the BRIGHTS methodology directly with young people at risk of marginalisation (13-19 years old). This will be the core project activity during which the students will be engaged in the production of digital stories on GCE topics. Through the production of digital stories, students will be empowered to combat radicalization and social exclusion and develop social, civic, and intercultural competences as well as critical thinking, media literacy, creativity and digital skills.

In order to raise awareness on the GCE topics, the consortium will launch the BRIGHTS Awards for the best digital story as part of the ALL DIGITAL Awards. The BRIGHTS Awards will be launched through the GCE working group on the Unite-IT Platform. The winners for the best national story will have the opportunity to come to Brussels and take part in the ALL DIGITAL Summit in October.  They will receive an award for the best national story and during the summit one story will be awarded as the best international one.

The ALL DIGITAL Summit will also host the final event of the BRIGHTS “Boosting Global Citizenship Education using digital storytelling” project. By then, we expect a great number of interesting and reflective digital stories produced by youngsters on global challenges and subjects including human rights, peace and democratic values, intercultural dialogue and active citizenship.

The meeting covered the next steps of the project leading to the implementation of the BRIGHTS blended course (MOOC), the upgrading of the Unite-IT platform, and dissemination activities.

The main objectives of the meeting were:

• Finalise the production of the BRIGHTS MOOC contents and platform
• Plan in detail the piloting phase of the project
• Present a the improved version of the Unite-IT platform and organise the internal testing
• Monitor and plan all the project transversal activities, including management, dissemination & exploitation, and quality assurance.

After the one-day meeting, the two-day internal training of the BRIGHTS national tutors took place on 6-7 December 0n the CTC Rijeka premises. A workshop on the digital storytelling methodology was organised to provide national tutors with the right skills to train teachers and trainers in the project countries. The workshop was conducted by Maks, and all the partners took part in it. It was a great moment for them to experience the BRIGHTS methodology.

The project partners actively collaborated to advance in the project activities, and after this very constructive meeting and training in Rijeka the BRIGHTS team is ready to progress.

More on the BRIGHTS MOOC

All project partners commonly evaluated the draft version of the BRIGHTS MOOC platform designed by HOU and actively participated in the discussion about the instructional design giving feedback on how to improve it.

The BRIGHTS MOOC “Addressing Global Citizenship Education through Digital Storytelling” addresses the needs of individuals having diverse educational backgrounds who share the enthusiasm for implementing Global Citizenship Education using Digital Storytelling with young people both in formal and non-formal educational contexts. During the project, the course is specifically targeted to secondary school teachers and trainers working with young people aged 13-19 coming from the four project countries (Belgium, Italy, Croatia and Greece).

The duration of the MOOC is 4 weeks and requires in total 20 hours of learning. Each week provides training on a specific module and requires approximately 5 hours of study. At the completion of the course participants will receive a certificate of attendance. The MOOC is free of charge. It will be delivered for the first time in February 2018 to participants from Belgium, Italy, Croatia and Greece, in Dutch, Italian, Croatian, Greek.

More information you can read here!

The current global scenario, marked by social, political, environmental and financial crises, requires Education and training policy makers to assume greater responsibility than ever in ensuring that learners of all ages and backgrounds can develop into informed, critically literate, socially-connected, ethical and engaged global citizens. In this perspective, the BRIGHTS Informative kit aims to equip policymakers with all the necessary knowledge about the role that Global Citizenship Education can play in the contemporary society, convincing them into adopting Global Citizenship Education in the training and education curricula.

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.

Please click here to download the English version of the Informative Kit on GCE. It will be available soon in Dutch, Italian, Croatian and Greek.

The objectives of the meeting were the following:

• Commonly produce a draft version the BRIGHTS blended course curriculum and MOOC instructional design;
• Present the results of the survey on Unite-IT platform users’ experience and agree on what technical improvements are needed in order to have a more user-friendly platform;
• Monitor and plan all the project transversal activities, including management, dissemination & exploitation, and quality assurance.

The meeting was very productive. All partners actively participated in the brainstorming about the BRIGHTS MOOC instructional design and became aware of its objectives and contents. Afterwards, three working groups were organised to define the Learning Outcomes of the MOOC Modules. Thanks to the active participation of all partners in the working groups, the BRIGHTS Partnership collectively managed to realise a co-creative process that advanced the state of the project.

The process resulted in the design of a coherent and attractive MOOC, which will be addressed to both secondary school teachers and trainers working with young people in the 4 project countries (Belgium, Croatia, Greece and Italy), starting from February 2018.

Moreover, during the meeting the results of the “Analysis of the Unite-IT users’ experience” were presented in detail by CTC Rijeka and discussed among the partners. The analysis has been implemented on the following three levels: (1) desk analysis implemented by ICT experts; and (2) survey involving both project partners and Unite-IT existing users. Strategies on how to boost the Unite-it working group on Global Citizenship Education were also discussed and planned. The improved Unite-IT platform will be launched in February 2018 when its community on GCE will be actively moderated by four BRIGHTS National tutors and populated by the BRIGHTS MOOC trainees and other interested actors.

The participating students from California, Finland and Greece created digital stories and developed traditional (e.g., speaking, writing etc.), digital (e.g., filming, editing, remixing etc.) and networking (e.g., appreciating and responding to projected cultural landscapes) literacies. Importantly, among others, through stories students expressed their views and worries concerning potential dangers of social networking, and what attitudes would reduce environmental risks. It is these student views that we intend to analyze in order to unlock meanings and metaphors underlying pedagogical storytelling that combined the physical (or actual) and the digital site of learning.

Find out more here!