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n.º 28 • April 2012

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From the field

teacher training, online safety, media education

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Barbara BucheggerAustrian Awareness centre Saferinternet.at, Austriabuchegger@oiat.at

Supporting Digital Immigrants. On-line Courses for Teachers on Internet Safety in Austria

Media education is an intercurricular subject in Austrian schools, however, it is not a part of teacher’s formal education. Teachers with good digital competencies are much more willing to discuss online safety issues with their students in classes. Therefore, en-hancing these skills among teachers will ultimately help to bring these topics into main-stream education. A handful of powerful e-learning tools have been introduced to help teachers familiarise with online safety basics and integrate this topic into their classes.

We have found that reaching out to educators with quality e-learning content on on-line safety works best in collaboration with reputable providers of teacher training or sites that teachers go to. This ensures that the resources will match their needs as well as guarantee the sustainability of the knowledge base. These conclusions were formulated by Saferinternet.at, the Austrian EU-funded initiative of the Safer Internet Programme for online safety that, among other activities, provides teacher trainings on this topic.

1. IntroductionIn their daily work, teachers are being increasingly confronted with a massive use of online media among their pupils. However, in their formal education they rarely learn how to cope with this phenomenon. Media education is an intercurricular subject in Austria, however, due to lack of training and information, it is a real challenge for many teachers to put the on-line safety forward in their classes. Furthermore, in the Austrian curriculum there is no spe-cific content and volume defined for this subject. Teachers can discuss online safety-related

Figure 1: Age of teachers in Austria in 2009/10. Source: http://www.statistik.at

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From the field

issues in their classes according to their own level of knowledge or interest, or even not do it at all. The only reference frame-work for media education is the very general decree issued by the Federal Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture in February 20121.

More than 50% of all Austrian teachers can be considered as digital immigrants, since they did not gain their digital compe-tences in their childhood or in the formal teachers’ training. Up to now, there is no guarantee that trainee teachers and newly qualified teachers are receiving information or training on me-dia education and online safety. Only a very few teacher col-leges actually offer courses on these subjects on the undergraduate level.

In order to be able to teach students some specific skills or knowledge, teachers, in the first place, need to have a perfect overview of the topic. In terms of online safety, this means that they must be digitally literate and understand both the risks and opportunities of using online media. Experience shows that teachers who are active computer and inter-net users are more willing to discuss online safety issues in their classes. On the other hand, teachers gradually recognize the need of improving their digital competencies, ei-ther because they see the opportunity for bringing up the content in a more attractive “wrapping”, or, to protect themselves against teacher-bashing, which is actually a form of cyber-bullying.

These conclusions were formulated by Safer-internet.at, the Austrian EU-funded initiative for online safety that, among other activities, provides teacher trainings on this topic (in 2011 more than 4000 teachers countrywide). Another significant source of information was the campaign Safer In-ternet Month of Activity in 2011 where more than 50% of par-ticipating schools fall into the category of “e-learning schools”. These schools had a special focus on ICT in their curricula. It was most obvious in the group of primary schools – all of them namely used ICT in their daily classroom activities. Therefore it is necessary to work on both ends of the teacher spectrum: on the one hand, develop the basic ICT skills among teachers who

1 http://www.mediamanual.at/mediamanual/leitfaden/medienerziehung/grundsatzerlass/index.php

have not used it before, and, on the other hand, offer training on specific issues of online media use for those who are already active ICT users and willing to pass this knowledge on to their students.

2. Relevant topicsMobile phones and mobile internet is getting more and more widespread among Austrian youngsters. Also teachers become more sensitive to topics related to online safety or even cyber-crime. Cyber-bullying, copyright issues or password manage-ment are core topics among cyber-crime-related issues.

Figure 2: Relevant topics for schools in terms of online safety

Since Facebook is far the most popular social network among Austrian youth, the use and misuse thereof is a relevant topic for teachers. They should have the basic information on how Facebook (or any other social network) works, why it is so popu-lar among young people and should have the competencies to bring up privacy issues and data protection in classes.

With the increasing use of smartphones also the topic of cheat-ing is getting more attention in schools. Teachers are looking for information about how to design tests and exams to prevent it and also tools to discover it more easily.

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From the field

Using built-in cameras on mobile phones is also a burning issue. It enables students to take pictures or film anything, including various situations at school. Teachers usually recognize it as an issue only after something went wrong (e. g. teacher bashing on a social network). Otherwise not much attention is given to the question of portrait rights (copyright law).

The biggest challenge for all educators is to stay in the loop with the dynamically growing world of online media. New regula-tions, new technical possibilities and new creative usage of the digital media by students are challenging teachers every day.

3. In search of the solutionDue to the above mentioned circumstances, it is necessary to support teachers with useful tools and resources. The text be-low shows which have been introduced in Austria and how they have been accepted by the community of teachers.

Teacher Handbooks

Teacher handbooks on specific topics have proven to be quite helpful. It is important that they are easy to use (i. e. avoid sci-entific language), include classroom activities and offer state-of-the-art information on relevant topics. Saferinternet.at’s experi-

ence shows that for the success of such handbooks it is crucial that they are available for download. It is even better if the print version can be ordered and is delivered for free too!

Beside these handbooks, Saferinternet.at developed several tools as e-learning activities in cooperation with partners ac-tively involved in teacher training:

Online courses for students

Free and ready-to-use online content for classroom activities is much appreciated by teachers. In Austria, schools use 2 major learning-management-systems: Moodle (http://www.edumoo-dle.at/) and a variation of dot-learn (https://lms.at/). Saferin-ternet.at has developed two courses for students on Moodle. Schools can download them and embed them on their own Moodle site.

The one course is for pupils aged 10 – 14 and the other one for 15 – 18-year-olds. The courses are chiefly meant as content for replacement lessons. The teacher who substitutes another teacher can use this online-course instantly and provide an in-teresting and useful classroom experience. But more and more teachers download this resource in order to integrate it in their classroom activities, such as computer-sciences.

Figure 3: Saferinternet.at Moodle course for 10 – 14-year-old pupils. Source: http://moodle.saferinternet.at.

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These courses are designed for individual use, but they work also well in groups and teams. They combine elements of col-laborative courses and web-based training.

Web-based training for teachers on creative commons and copy right

Copy right issues are one of those topics that are relevant for all Austrian teachers, but only a few of them have enough practical information and experiences. This is why the “e-basics” course was de-veloped. The course is offered by a regional educational por-tal and is targeting teachers at the outset of their digital lives, namely those ones, who are not confident in using digital equipment in classroom yet.

Copy right and creative com-mons is an easy topic for the start. It does not induce nega-

tive resentment, as opposed to other topics, such as cyber-bul-lying or portrait rights to name just a few. Teachers are most of the time eager to learn something new that helps them “spice up” their daily routine in school.

Collaborative online course

Since 2008 the “Virtuelle PH”, an institution for web-based teacher training, is offering a course on online safety as a collaborative learning experience. The course is designed for 10- 15 participants and lasts 4 weeks. The participants are teachers from all types of schools and of different ages which leads to an inten-sive learning environment. During the years, the focus of this course has changed from general information on online safety and risks to a more focused course on how to implement such content into classroom activities and on the use of social networks in schools. One part of the course is thus held on Facebook. This gives teach-ers a hands-on experience on coping with and working on a social network without being disturbed by their students or children.

Obviously, for beginners, it is rather difficult to get used to learning with each other in a small online group. But the more online courses a teacher has visited and the more experience he or she gains, the easier it gets to work in online teams. Sometimes the course par-Figure 4: Creative Commons online course provided by e-LISA Academy.

Figure 5: Safer Internet course on the Virtuelle PH

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ticipants even launch online cooperation between their schools which neatly breaks school and school type bar-riers. Most of the time, the participating teachers have never met before in real life, but sometimes they know each each other from other collaborative learning set-tings.

EPICT: European Pedagogical ICT-licence: Module on Safer Internet

In order to train teachers on ICT skills that can be used in classroom activities, EPICT (www.epict.at) was imple-mented in Austria in 2009. Since then hundreds of teach-er teams have taken part in this training initiative. The idea behind EPICT is to strengthen teamwork in schools and motivate teachers to learn from each other. There-fore it is not offered to individuals, but rather to teacher teams. Also for this teacher training, Saferinternet.at de-veloped a specific module on online safety and good use of digital media in education. A set of classroom activities is included in the module so as to offer teachers ideas their EPICT papers.

In addition to this, Saferinternet.at compiled a catalogue of classroom activities related to the topic of safe use of online technologies. These activities were drawn up and carried out

by schools all over Austria in the framework of the Safer Inter-net Month of Action in 2011. In this campaign more than 200 schools participated and 70 best practice examples were pub-lished. All activities in the catalogue are described so that they can be easily copied in other schools; the resource is available for download under the link: http://www.saferinternet.at/up-loads/tx_simaterials/Safer_Internet_Aktions_Monat_Beispiel-sammlung_Mai2011.pdf

Social Networks as training ground

More and more teachers are using social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter or Google+ as their pool for informal online learning. It is an easy way to share and distribute valid content on internet use and news. The unique feature of social networks is the fact that they are used by young people and teachers equally therefore they have a strong potential to be successfully integrated in classroom activities.

Figure 6: Catalogue of best classroom activities

Figure 7: Saferinternet.at on Facebook. Source: www.facebook.com/saferinternetat

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From the field

4. ConclusionsReaching out to educators with quality e-learning con-tent on online safety works best in collaboration with reputable providers of teacher training or sites that teachers go to. This ensures that the resources will match their needs as well as guarantee the sustainabil-ity of the knowledge base. Publishing quality content under the Creative Commons license enables all rel-evant players to exploit, enhance and adapt it accord-ing to their own needs and experience. In this way the message can spread among educators very fast.

To win educators for the idea of online safety, it is good to start with topics that are rather neutral and useful for their daily work. Copy right is one of such topics. It is advisable to avoid topics that might be perceived as too negative or threatening (e.g. cyber-bullying).

Teachers with good digital competencies are much more willing to discuss online safety issues with their students in classes. Therefore enhancing of these skills among teachers will ultimately help to bring these topics into the mainstream education. On the other hand, educators are also more willing to acquire such digital skills when they realize that students are more attentive and perform better in classes where online media are used as a teaching tool. Good knowledge of online media among teachers also reduces the risk that they become victims of teacher bashing on the internet.

Figure 8: Saferinternet.at on Google+. Source: https://plus.google.com/b/113122011105349794428/

Copyrights The texts published in this journal, unless otherwise indicated, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivativeWorks 3.0 Unported licence. They may be copied, distributed and broadcast pro-vided that the author and the e-journal that publishes them, eLearning Papers, are cited. Commercial use and derivative works are not permitted. The full licence can be consulted on http://creativecommons.org/licens-es/by-nc-nd/3.0/

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