Digital citizenship through language education

The e-lang team and its two Canadian associate partners held a hybrid workshop on November 4 and 5 2021, both at the ECML in Graz and online. During the workshop, which brought together 27 participants from across the Council of Europe countries, the foundations of the project and its first deliverables were presented: the profile of the citizen as a user of languages and technology, the pedagogical approach and the first tasks designed by the team. The workshop also provided participants with an opportunity to design tasks which will be finalised in the coming months.

The participants were particularly satisfied with the workshop and the vast majority plan to implement the approach and the accompanying materials in their practices in language education.

For the team, the workshop brought confirmation of the relevance of its pedagogical choices and its work. The team is therefore particularly motivated for the next stages of production: a book presenting the pedagogical framework and tasks for the development of digital citizenship and language competences. 

Keep up to date with future developments via the project website!

Christian OLLIVIER (trad. Catherine Jeanneau)

The book Formation en langues et littératie numérique en contextes ouverts : Une approche socio-interactionnelle (available in French) results from a collaboration between Catherine Caws, Marie-Josée Hamel, Catherine Janneau and Christian Ollivier within the framework of two European Centre for Modern Languages projects: 

• Digital citizenship through language learning - elang citoyen (2020-2023) 
• Towards digital literacy for language teaching and learning - e-lang (2016-2019) 

It proposes a didactic approach and a type of tasks in the field of language teaching and learning which aim to develop language learners' action and communication competences as well as the skills, attitudes and values necessary to become active, critical and responsible actors and citizens in their use of digital technology. Researchers and language teachers will find more theoretical frameworks and concrete ways to implement language education that promote digital literacy among learners.

CAWS Catherine, HAMEL Marie-Josée, JEANNEAU Catherine, OLLIVIER Christian, Formation en langues et littératie numérique en contextes ouverts : Une approche socio-interactionnelle, Editions des archives contemporaines, Paris, 2021, 183 p., https://www.archivescontemporaines.com/books/9782813003911.

The e-lang citizen project offered a free bilingual (English and French) webinar on Tuesday 22 June 2021, from 17:00 – 18.15 (CEST).

• What is a digital citizen?
• How does digital citizenship education link up with language education? 
• What type of digital language tasks can support learners to become digital citizens?

If you have ever asked or tried to answer any of these questions, this webinar, which took place within the activities of the current European Centre for Modern Languages’ project “Digital citizenship through language education” (e-lang citizen), will be of interest to you.

Primarily targeted at language teachers and teacher trainers, the webinar proposes a profile of a digital citizen as a user of languages and digital technology, based on the analysis of around one hundred recently published texts containing a definition of the “digital citizen” or identifying elements constituting digital citizenship.

The links between digital citizenship education and language education – social interaction and communication skills, plurilingual competences and mediation– have been explored during the event.

Within the project, the coordinating team, from 5 different countries, aims to establish a database, providing concrete and practical learning activities and tasks for developing digital citizenship in the language classroom. The webinar offers a look into the initial materials created. Interested experts will also find out how they can further engage with the project.

(Re)watch the webinare here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxlN4n4fmTQ

The e-lang citizen project will offer a free bilingual (English and French) webinar on Tuesday 22 June 2021, from 17:00 – 18:15 (CEST).

• What is a digital citizen?
• How does digital citizenship education link up with language education?
• What type of digital language tasks can support learners to become digital citizens?

If you have ever asked or tried to answer any of these questions, this webinar, which takes place within the activities of the current European Centre for Modern Languages’ project “Digital citizenship through language education” (e-lang citizen), will be of interest to you.

Primarily targeted at language teachers and teacher trainers, the webinar will propose a profile of a digital citizen as a user of languages and digital technology, based on the analysis of around one hundred recently published texts containing a definition of the “digital citizen” or identifying elements constituting digital citizenship. 

The links between digital citizenship education and language education – social interaction and communication skills, plurilingual competences and mediation– will be explored during the event.

Within the project, the coordinating team, from 5 different countries, aims to establish a database, providing concrete and practical learning activities and tasks for developing digital citizenship in the language classroom. The webinar will offer a look into the initial materials created. Participants will find also out how they can further engage with the project.

Please register here by 21 June 2021.

A working meeting of the e-lang citizen team, including the project associate partners from Canada, took place on the 25th and 26th of February. During this meeting, the team finalised a conceptual profile of the digital citizen as a language and digital technology user. The team also agreed on how best to display the format of the publications that were analysed to produce the profile. This list is now available as a bibliographic database on Zotero.

But first and foremost, this meeting focused on the finalisation of the first set of tasks and activities forming the project database. Real-world tasks have been developed and will soon be available on the project website in French and English. They can be carried out in many languages and at different levels. These tasks encourage learners to contribute to participatory websites. In doing so, they can use and develop their language skills while experiencing digital citizenship. Finally, the task description also includes ways to promote reflective practice in three main domains: the social (interactional) dimension, the language-related dimension and the citizenship dimension.

The e-lang citizen team

• "Digital citizenship through language education" ECML project website: English - French

The Digital citizenship project seeks to help learners become digital citizens and develop the capacity to use digital media critically, creatively and autonomously in several languages.

At an initial online meeting of representatives from the project team and MSLU, ideas were exchanged on how synergies can be developed and the expertise of MSLU can best be integrated and utilised in the further development and goals of the project. With a webinar (in June) and a workshop (scheduled for November) coming up as well as a pedagogical framework for the development of digital citizenship and a database of accompanying activities there are plentiful supply of possibilities for involvement and for enhancing the outreach of the project. 

It looks like being an exciting and very productive cooperation.

The e-lang citizen project members and associate partners from Canada met online on 8-9 October 2020. During these two busy days of work meetings, the team members had the opportunity to discuss the results of a meta-analysis carried out over the past few months. This analysis focused on how the notion of digital citizen and digital citizenship was defined in literature and in the publications from major international organisations (Council of Europe, UNESCO...).  The list of all the defining elements mentioned in these texts allowed us to draw a large portrait of what we call the technology and language user citizen.

This citizen is thus perceived as a social agent acting - online and offline - within various communities each one with its own values, rules and norms. The action of the citizen is shaped by the interplay between, on the one hand, the context, social rules and values of the communities and, on the other hand, his intentions, his own values and attitudes, his ethics, his awareness, skills, knowledge and critical understanding of the world and - in particular - technologies and their use. Ideally, this action will be competent, responsible, ethical, creative, informed and safe (for people, data, the environment, health...).

The project will now develop teaching material with tasks, especially Real-World Tasks. These language classroom activities aim at addressing the different dimensions that constitute the technology and language user citizen.

Christian OLLIVIER
"E-LANG citizen" project coordinator

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• ECML project website "Digital citizenship through language education (E-LANG citizen)": English - French
  
  
• "Digital Citizenship Through Language Education (E-LANG citizen" is one of the 9 projects of the ECML's current programme of activities "Inspiring innovation in language education: changing contexts, evolving competences" (2020-2023): English - French

Digital citizenship education is a societal priority which has been recognised by the Council of Europe. A project on this topic has just started at the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML): "Digital citizenship through language education - e-lang citizen". This project is a follow-up to the e-lang project on digital literacy for the teaching and learning of languages. Through the project a didactic framework will be developed as well as pedagogical resources for teachers. The aim is to enable language teachers to help their learners to

• evaluate critically and autonomously the information published on the Internet;>
• understand how the participatory web works, how information is generated and disseminated;
• become critical, creative and responsible agents on the participatory Web;
• become citizens of an inclusive (multilingual and multicultural) society.

On January 20th and 21th, the project team held its first meeting. The four ECML experts (C. Ollivier, coordinator, C. Jeanneau, T. Natri and U. Szigeti) met with the two Canadian associate partners (C. Caws and M.-J. Hamel). During this meeting, the objectives of the project were specified and the work on an operational definition of digital citizenship was launched. This definition will highlight the language dimensions of digital citizenship. It will provide the basis for the development of pedagogical resources for teachers.

Feel free to follow us on the project website www.ecml.at/elang2 - which is available in English and French - and on Twitter (#ECML_elang).

Authors: Christian Ollivier and the e-lang citizen Project

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