Digital competence is one of 8 key competences in the European Commission’s Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (2019) document. Followed by multilingual competence, literacy competence, citizenship competence and all the others, each person becomes aware that each competence is intricately connected to all others, being a premise for some and a consequence of others.
This special class was created not only so that students could become familiar with Living Democracy topics, but also to improve their knowledge of specific terms in English and the use of their mobile phones in education and in searching for answers. Thanks to this workshop activity, students achieved each of the 8 key competences in their work.
To familiarise first year undergraduate students attending the Preschool Teachers Training College in Novi Sad (Serbia) with the Living Democracy website (www.living-democracy.com) and its content, at the end of October 2022 the students were tasked with playing a game of Treasure Hunt. It was a kind of quiz with 12 questions in which every student played for themselves. The goal was to be the first one to find the right answers and to know where to look for them in order to find them in less time. Svetlana Lazić, one of the EDISON team members from Serbia, is their professor. She created the questions for the quiz in conjunction with her team colleagues from Serbia.
Before the class, students knew quite a lot about topics such as children’s rights, citizenship, democracy, dignity and value on the one hand, and tolerance, prejudice, violation, discrimination and xenophobia on the other, meaning they didn’t find it at all difficult to participate. Since English is the only language of a total of 15 which is available for this game, this was the starting point (Photo 1). Students used their mobile phones and started to surf within the site trying to find the treasure. They were so immersed in trying to find the treasure that they didn’t notice the time flying. There wasn’t any external reward for being the fastest to answer; the idea was to encourage each student to surf the Living Democracy website to be more informed about relevant topics. (Photos 2 & 3).
The questions were divided into three parts (key words, activity cards, materials) and the students were expected to find them as quickly as possible.
Questions were taken from all three parts: the teachers’ materials, the chapter for parents and the materials for principals.
A separate question and answer session was dedicated to the activity cards. These show how to do physically active teaching. Physical integrity is a fundamental part of human rights, and it is important that students in school can move enough even during lessons.
By Svetlana Lazić
