Digital citizenship through language education

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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