The project, funded by the Citizen Participation Unit of the Cabildo, offers a didactic guide to facilitate its teaching in 1st ESO from the subject Education in Values.
Increasing digitalization makes the online world a place full of potential but also of risks. Among the former, it facilitates social interaction and citizen participation; among the latter, it exposes minors to inappropriate content and allows forms of violence that damage their mental health and integral well-being. Faced with this reality, Opciónate invites us to reflect on digital citizenship and to promote awareness of rights and responsibilities on the Internet.
In this context, the feminist entity specialising in sexist cyberviolence, resumes the project Being, being and participating, with which secondary school students began working on these issues last school year. In its first edition, financed by the Citizen Participation Unit of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria, a didactic proposal was prepared for the 1st year of ESO subject ‘Education in civic and ethical values’. A very useful tool with which teachers were able to explain and work with their students throughout the school year on concepts such as participatory cybercitizenship, digital ethics, how to be and become agents of change and social transformation or how to properly manage emotions in the digital environment. This year the aforementioned didactic proposal will be reviewed, improved and updated, giving continuity to the advice in the schools that participated last year and incorporating new centers.
To continue promoting knowledge about cybercitizenship in the educational community, the project will be presented to the four Teacher Training Centres on the island, as well as to other educational agents, both in Gran Canaria and regionally. Today, a large part of students and teachers still need to learn how to set limits in virtual spaces and social networks and how to protect themselves from the cyberthreats and risks involved in being and acting on the internet; They are also not aware of the personal potential that young people have to generate positive changes and actively participate in the digital world in a community way. Through the new sessions that the project contemplates in this second phase, both with students and teachers, they will learn to delve into the need for digital ethics and how important it is to exercise active cybercitizenship, with which to contribute to changing society, from the most local to the global.
And to do so from a feminist, humanist perspective based on democratic values. Digital citizenship encompasses rights, responsibilities and skills necessary to function in an online environment that also presents challenges (depersonalization, anonymity) that can negatively affect coexistence and participation online. Learning digital ethics is knowing the principles, values and rules that should guide activity and behaviour on the internet, promoting individual and collective responsibility. Opciónate insists on the importance of updating the content of the didactic proposal to facilitate learning. ‘We want to test this year the content that was included with the four participating centers in 2023, with some new centers and in new classrooms. With the work in the centers that participated last year and the meetings in the CEPs we will be able to obtain first-hand information about the materials and proposals for activities that work best and if there are any aspects to update in the didactic proposal. So that more teachers have material that will make it easier for them to teach this part of a vital subject to provide students with an opportunity for reflection and joint action to become active agents in their communities and both school and family environments’, explains Ana Lydia Fernández-Layos, director of Opciónate.
