10.1 Awareness rising and school involvement

The first goal is the active involvement of the whole school community

Our experience with the partner schools demonstrated how important it is to involve effectively the whole school community in the project goals.

It is not an easy task since it requires an high motivation and effort from all the school staff and the stakeholders reference people.

These are our extra-tips based on our implementation experience:

  • Make sure the Head Master and his direct collaborators are highly motivated on the project. On this purpose make sure that the project brings many positive (and visible) outcomes for the school (ex: high visibility on the media, positive reputation towards parents communities…). Without their high motivation the project will not give deep results.
  • Make sure that the teachers and school staff feel understood in their needs and prized in their effort. As far as possible, they should be actively involved in the project planning and appreciated in their competences which may be a value for the project (ex: active participation in previous project on similar topics, finding links between project topics and ordinary school subjects, special personal competences – ex. Multimedia and artistic skills). Avoid to make them feel the project is an other Top-Down project (as often happens).
  • Involve the representative of local communities as local NGO, social and health services, council and state authorities using focus group, media and public events to prize and underline their active involvement.
  • Involve the parents through parents associations, community network, sport associations and any other form of organized gathering which can include the parents.
  • In our experience we could clearly see how Parents are strategical actors in the promotion of the responsible use of digital media; in the same time they are the most difficult to reach and involve so that they may result as a weak point in the digital culture reinforcement process.