#DigitalCourage #DigitalEthics
Online youth meeting - can it work? Yes!
In April, the first online meeting of young people from schools in Olkusz and Gräfelfing, which have been meeting with their groups in Krzyżowa for many years, took place. This time, the meeting was different but no less informative. The content of the programme focused on the topic "Digital Ethics" and brought together 30 young people in a virtual space. During the four days of the project, the participants reflected on their own media behaviour and analysed the relationship between personal needs and the use of social media and other applications. They discussed and named anti-democratic tendencies on the Internet and learned about the concept of "counterspeech" in order to work constructively to make the Internet a place based on democratic values by standing up for democracy and human rights online, taking action against hate speech and spreading positive narratives.
The young people put this into practice in the second half of the project by carrying out various tasks in small groups. This resulted in a podcast episode in which the students discussed in detail the question: "How can we make the Internet a better place?", as well as several video tutorials on making political dumplings and cakes and an article on digital ethics, which was published on the Pedagogue Blog of the Krzyżowa Foundation. In addition, on each of the four project days, two young people were responsible for writing a short post on social media (Facebook and Instagram) and on the Foundation's website, where they briefly reported and described the day and what they had learned.
We were very positively surprised by how much discussion potential and knowledge the young people from both schools brought with them, which made us even more aware of how important the topic of digital ethics is at a time when most social life takes place online. We saw that online youth meetings are possible, but we are looking forward to the time when youth groups fill Krzyżowa with life again!
Project coordination: Annemarie Kelpe, Charlotte Lohmann
Day 1. 13.04.2021
Hello!
Natalia (Olkusz) and Konstantin (Gräfelfing) here - we’re the ones reporting today’s online exchange between Olkusz & Gräfelfing!
Today is marking the first of four days during which we hope to get to know each other and learn about/discuss digital ethics.
Staring at 34 different people through a zoom call made it quite difficult to get to know each and every one at first, but through games and smaller break out rooms we were able to chat a bit about ourselves, our digital media consumption, and other topics. It was very interesting getting to know different point of views, thoughts and interests and compare those between our two countries, schools & cultures.
[Natalia] After today's meeting I can't wait for the next one. I think these sessions will be a great opportunity to take a break from monotonous home schooling and allow yourself to be more creative. The breakout rooms are the thing I liked the most cause we can spend time in smaller groups and get to know each other better. I’m also very impressed that we can share and listen to people with diffrent opinions and point of views.
[Konstantin] My personal highlight today was the moment I got into a breakout room with 4 other students and we ended up discussing the feeling of being afraid of losing time. I think it was exciting to see how we were all able to relate and connect on this level even though we barely know each other and barely live in the same circumstances.
We are full of anticipation regarding the next days of our online exchange and we’ll keep our fingers crossed that it’s going to be possible for or groups to meet in person as well!
Best
Natalia and Konstantin <3
Day 2. 15.04.2021
Hey, we are Zuza and Emilia and we are the reporters for today. We are now going to sum up what we did and learned today.
Emilia: We started the meeting of with some tongue twisters in Polish and German. I thought it was a very funny yet hard experience. What did you think?
Zuza: I think it was quite challenging. After that we talked about the meaning of emojis. Everyone explained their different conception of emojis. The next Island task was amazing as well, don’t you think?
Emilia: Yes, I really enjoyed it as well. We were put into groups and then we had to discuss what rules we would follow if we were to live on a lonely island. Afterwards we compared our results with the actual declaration of human rights, and I thought it was very eye-opening how similar it was.
Zuza: I totally agree with you! I found the short movie we then watched very shocking. It was about racism and hate speech on the internet. I was sitting in front of my computer with my eyes wide open.
Emilia: Right, I found it very upsetting too. The movie then let us to talking about hate- and counter speech. We were put into breakout rooms again where we talked about how to respond to hate speech. For me that was very informative.
Zuza: For me as well. I learned about so many things I didn’t know for example that there are so many different kinds of discrimination and topics we can talk about. It was an amazing day!
Emilia: Yes, I totally loved the workshop today and I am very excited for the next one!
Day 3. 19.04.2021
Hi everybody!! It’s Viktoria and Ada and we’re today’s reporters.
We’re going to summarise how our 3rd day of exchange looked like.
Viktoria: Firstly we were sent to breakout rooms. We were supposed to teach each other some Polish and German words. That was a really interesting part that allowed us to get to know each other even better.
Ada: A very popular german word was “Eichhörnchen“. The Polish had a lot of fun pronouncing it. Afterwards we took a look at our homework, which was to create a meme about hatespeech. The memes were very imaginative and I loved them all.
Viktoria: I also found all the memes very funny. The next part of the meeting was another breakout session. We were discussing about possitive narratives and democracy. I liked to hear other’s opinions about the topic.
Ada: I completely agree with that. It was very riveting and I was able to get a lot of prospects of the topic. I think that discussion did broaden my mind.
Viktoria: Thats true! The last part of today’s meeting was working on our project that we are going to present on Wednesday. The task of my group is to create a podcast about how to make the internet a better place. The podcast turned out to be very political and brought up different opinions and aspects that some people didn’t realise before.
Ada: My group project is to make a tutorial on political pierogi and cake. I also found this exercise amazing. The teamwork was on a really high level. I think that we have some great ideas and hope that everything will come out as we planned.
Thank you very much and see you on Wednesday!!! :)♥️
Day 4. 21.04.2021
[ENG]
Hello everyone! 🤗 We are Lena and Eliza and today we will be the reporters of the youth exchange with students from Olkusz and Gräfelfing. We will try to summarize the last day of our exchange.
[Eliza]: At first, to wake ourselves up properly and gain some energy we did a creative task, which was drawing what we see through our windows🖍
[Lena]: As we already said, today was the last day :( but we still had a lot of fun. We started off with some breakout rooms, in which we discussed political memes. We shared our opinion on them and if we actually use them in real life..
On Monday we started our little projects and today was the day we presented them.
[Eliza]: Before presenting our projects we had a lot of time to discuss and finish our work. There were several groups: some people made a podcast, others cooked political food and the rest wrote a post for a blog. Every group did so well!
After that we discussed some things about social media platforms.
[Lena]: We formed groups which should represent one social media app. Firstly we did a list of pros and cons and then chose rules to improve these negative aspects of each app! Then we shared each other’s ideas and discussed once again.
Sadly our exchange day already was nearly over :( in the end we all complemented each other on mural; which was super fun and cool..
[Eliza]: Complementing each other was such a nice thing to do, it made everyone happier even if we knew the fact that this will be our last task on this exchange, which made us emotional. I cannot wait to meet you guys in real life soon!❤️
[Lena]: We loved the exchange and are hoping to see each other in person in September❤️
