Two-year European project to learn about and counter the phenomenon of school bullying
The two-year project, starting in September 2014, is implemented under the Erasmus Plus program, Key Action 2 "Strategic Partnerships" School Sector, Greek National Agency.
Partnership
The project consortium consists of 5 partners from 4 European countries (Greece, Belgium, Italy and Ireland):
- Hellenic Open University (HOU), Greece (Coordinator)
- INFOREF, Belgium
- Computer Technology Institute & Press Diophantus (CTI), Greece
- Fondazione Mondo Digitale (FMD), Italy
- Dublin City University (DCU), Anty Bullying Centre (ABC), Ireland
Objectives
The main objective of the project is to design, create, implement, and evaluate a training platform that will provide teachers, teacher trainers, and all other stakeholders with access to accredited training materials on school bullying, as well as the means and tools to publish their experiences and comment on the experience of their peers. The trainings will be based on peer learning (literally peer learning) and crowdsourcing techniques. Peer learning is defined as "learning from each other in both formal and informal ways," and "peers" are other people in the same situation. The emphasis is on the learning process, including the emotional support students/users offer each other. In addition, crowdsourcing is a type of participatory online activity in which students can freely solve a problem and share the answer with everyone else. The combination of these two methods seems to increase the effectiveness of training and, at the same time, the sense of belonging to a community. Peer learing using the Crowdsourcing method will be achieved through the use of social networking software.
Expected Results
- A peer learning methodology to address school bullying (which will include training needs, methodologies, assessment criteria and learning outcomes).
- A report on practices and skills to address bullying in school communities (containing a collection of best practices on bullying, cyberbullying, legal framework and case studies).
- Learning objects for using Crowdsourcing (with digital learning objects on school bullying, peer learning methodology, a taxonomy of terms and concepts related to bullying, tag clouds)
- A social networking and peer learning platform (prototype platform and the final version platform that will offer at least the following tools: Blog, Forum, Wiki, Tag cloud).
- The SONET-BULL Guide (which will present the results and conclusions of the project) by FMD
Target audience
In each of the 4 European countries, the project involves a minimum of 5 core users and 50 end-users among teachers, school principals, teacher trainers, parents and representatives of parent associations who contribute to the development of learning content on bullying collaboratively and test the innovative social networking and peer learning platform Sonet-Bull.
