DIGIT is a European project funded under Erasmus+ KA2 ‘Strategic partnerships’ and coordinated by Polish company INnCREASE. With partners stemming from seven different countries (Belgium, Spain, UK, Poland, Greece, Italy and Slovenia), the project will last for two years (2017-2019) and will seek to boost digital competences for a responsible use of online identity. Through this project the consortium aims to investigate digital identity implications for adults and provide the necessary educational instruments and supporting tools for adult educators.
Digital competences are one of the current key educational priorities of the EU institutions. While digital skills are considered necessary in order to meet labour market needs, the concepts of ‘virtual citizenship and identity’ pose a growing challenge for society. Individuals that may or may not be digitally literate, including the so-called ‘digital natives’ (a person born or brought up during the age of digital technology and so familiar with computers and the Internet from an early age), all need to be informed and aware of how their identity and footprint are being tracked on the internet.
Aiming to develop comprehensive materials that analyse the issue, the DIGIT project will inform digital users about all aspects that come with having a digital identity, and provide some elemental guidelines to minimise cyber threats to one’s data and to one’s public image. In this respect, it will also deal with aspects of cyber bullying and hate speech.
The consortium, led by an innovation consultancy (INnCREASE, Poland), is further formed of a lifelong learning centre (Platon, Greece); a European NGO working on all aspects of lifelong learning (Lifelong Learning Platform, Belgium); a mentoring and consultancy agency working with SMEs (Inova, United Kingdom); an adult education and training centre (DomSpain, Spain); a European network of organisations active in the field of education which promotes digital skills (DLearn,Italy); and a public organisation in lifelong learning education (UPI, Slovenia).
Overall, the project intends to develop two main outputs:
The DIGIT Manifesto and guidelines for adult educators, which will result from partners’ research and information gathered through Focus Groups, where our target groups (adult educators, adults and other relevant stakeholders such as digital experts and public body representatives) will be brought together to discuss the issues, dangers and opportunities of the digital world.
The DIGIT training strategy, which sees the development of training materials for adult educators that will be available on our online platform, tested in a series of pilots. Results from these pilots will feed into a report with policy recommendations targeting policy makers at EU level that will be presented at the project’s final conference in November 2019.
For more information about the project, visit the website: https://digitproject.eu/