Author: Barbara Buchegger. Media education is an intercurricular subject in Austrian schools, however, it is not a part of teacher’s formal education. Teachers with good digital competencies are much more willing to discuss online safety issues with their students in classes. Therefore, enhancing these skills among teachers will ultimately help to bring these topics into mainstream education. A handful of powerful e-learning tools have been introduced to help teachers familiarise with online safety basics and integrate this topic into their classes.

1. From the field
Supporting Digital Immigrants. On-line Courses
for Teachers on Internet Safety in Austria
Author Media education is an intercurricular subject in Austrian schools, however, it is not a
part of teacher’s formal education. Teachers with good digital competencies are much
Barbara Buchegger
Austrian Awareness centre more willing to discuss online safety issues with their students in classes. Therefore, en-
Saferinternet.at, Austria hancing these skills among teachers will ultimately help to bring these topics into main-
buchegger@oiat.at stream education. A handful of powerful e-learning tools have been introduced to help
teachers familiarise with online safety basics and integrate this topic into their classes.
Tags We have found that reaching out to educators with quality e-learning content on on-
line safety works best in collaboration with reputable providers of teacher training or
teacher training, online sites that teachers go to. This ensures that the resources will match their needs as
safety, media education well as guarantee the sustainability of the knowledge base. These conclusions were
formulated by Saferinternet.at, the Austrian EU-funded initiative of the Safer Internet
Programme for online safety that, among other activities, provides teacher trainings
on this topic.
1. Introduction
In their daily work, teachers are being increasingly confronted with a massive use of online
media among their pupils. However, in their formal education they rarely learn how to cope
with this phenomenon. Media education is an intercurricular subject in Austria, however,
due to lack of training and information, it is a real challenge for many teachers to put the on-
line safety forward in their classes. Furthermore, in the Austrian curriculum there is no spe-
cific content and volume defined for this subject. Teachers can discuss online safety-related
Figure 1: Age of teachers in Austria in 2009/10. Source: http://www.statistik.at
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2. From the field
issues in their classes according to their own level of knowledge have not used it before, and, on the other hand, offer training
or interest, or even not do it at all. The only reference frame- on specific issues of online media use for those who are already
work for media education is the very general decree issued by active ICT users and willing to pass this knowledge on to their
the Federal Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture in February students.
20121.
More than 50% of all Austrian teachers can be considered as 2. Relevant topics
digital immigrants, since they did not gain their digital compe- Mobile phones and mobile internet is getting more and more
tences in their childhood or in the formal teachers’ training. Up widespread among Austrian youngsters. Also teachers become
to now, there is no guarantee that trainee teachers and newly more sensitive to topics related to online safety or even cyber-
qualified teachers are receiving information or training on me- crime. Cyber-bullying, copyright issues or password manage-
dia education and online safety. Only a very few teacher col- ment are core topics among cyber-crime-related issues.
leges actually offer courses on these subjects
on the undergraduate level.
In order to be able to teach students some
specific skills or knowledge, teachers, in the
first place, need to have a perfect overview
of the topic. In terms of online safety, this
means that they must be digitally literate and
understand both the risks and opportunities
of using online media. Experience shows that
teachers who are active computer and inter-
net users are more willing to discuss online
safety issues in their classes. On the other
hand, teachers gradually recognize the need
of improving their digital competencies, ei-
ther because they see the opportunity for
bringing up the content in a more attractive
“wrapping”, or, to protect themselves against
teacher-bashing, which is actually a form of
cyber-bullying.
These conclusions were formulated by Safer- Figure 2: Relevant topics for schools in terms of online safety
internet.at, the Austrian EU-funded initiative for online safety
that, among other activities, provides teacher trainings on this Since Facebook is far the most popular social network among
topic (in 2011 more than 4000 teachers countrywide). Another Austrian youth, the use and misuse thereof is a relevant topic
significant source of information was the campaign Safer In- for teachers. They should have the basic information on how
ternet Month of Activity in 2011 where more than 50% of par- Facebook (or any other social network) works, why it is so popu-
ticipating schools fall into the category of “e-learning schools”. lar among young people and should have the competencies to
These schools had a special focus on ICT in their curricula. It bring up privacy issues and data protection in classes.
was most obvious in the group of primary schools – all of them
namely used ICT in their daily classroom activities. Therefore it With the increasing use of smartphones also the topic of cheat-
is necessary to work on both ends of the teacher spectrum: on ing is getting more attention in schools. Teachers are looking for
the one hand, develop the basic ICT skills among teachers who information about how to design tests and exams to prevent it
and also tools to discover it more easily.
1 http://www.mediamanual.at/mediamanual/leitfaden/medienerziehung/
grundsatzerlass/index.php
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3. From the field
Using built-in cameras on mobile phones is also a burning issue. ence shows that for the success of such handbooks it is crucial
It enables students to take pictures or film anything, including that they are available for download. It is even better if the print
various situations at school. Teachers usually recognize it as an version can be ordered and is delivered for free too!
issue only after something went wrong (e. g. teacher bashing on
Beside these handbooks, Saferinternet.at developed several
a social network). Otherwise not much attention is given to the
tools as e-learning activities in cooperation with partners ac-
question of portrait rights (copyright law).
tively involved in teacher training:
The biggest challenge for all educators is to stay in the loop with
the dynamically growing world of online media. New regula- Online courses for students
tions, new technical possibilities and new creative usage of the
digital media by students are challenging teachers every day. Free and ready-to-use online content for classroom activities is
much appreciated by teachers. In Austria, schools use 2 major
learning-management-systems: Moodle (http://www.edumoo-
3. In search of the solution
dle.at/) and a variation of dot-learn (https://lms.at/). Saferin-
Due to the above mentioned circumstances, it is necessary to ternet.at has developed two courses for students on Moodle.
support teachers with useful tools and resources. The text be- Schools can download them and embed them on their own
low shows which have been introduced in Austria and how they Moodle site.
have been accepted by the community of teachers.
The one course is for pupils aged 10 – 14 and the other one
for 15 – 18-year-olds. The courses are chiefly meant as content
Teacher Handbooks
for replacement lessons. The teacher who substitutes another
Teacher handbooks on specific topics have proven to be quite teacher can use this online-course instantly and provide an in-
helpful. It is important that they are easy to use (i. e. avoid sci- teresting and useful classroom experience. But more and more
entific language), include classroom activities and offer state-of- teachers download this resource in order to integrate it in their
the-art information on relevant topics. Saferinternet.at’s experi- classroom activities, such as computer-sciences.
Figure 3: Saferinternet.at Moodle course for 10 – 14-year-old pupils. Source: http://moodle.saferinternet.at.
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4. From the field
These courses are designed for individual use, but they work tive resentment, as opposed to other topics, such as cyber-bul-
also well in groups and teams. They combine elements of col- lying or portrait rights to name just a few. Teachers are most of
laborative courses and web-based training. the time eager to learn something new that helps them “spice
up” their daily routine in school.
Web-based training for teachers on creative
commons and copy right Collaborative online course
Since 2008 the “Virtuelle PH”, an institution for web-
based teacher training, is offering a course on online
safety as a collaborative learning experience. The
course is designed for 10- 15 participants and lasts 4
weeks. The participants are teachers from all types of
schools and of different ages which leads to an inten-
sive learning environment. During the years, the focus
of this course has changed from general information on
online safety and risks to a more focused course on how
to implement such content into classroom activities
and on the use of social networks in schools. One part
of the course is thus held on Facebook. This gives teach-
ers a hands-on experience on coping with and working
on a social network without being disturbed by their
students or children.
Obviously, for beginners, it is rather difficult to get used
to learning with each other in a small online group.
But the more online courses a teacher has visited and
the more experience he or she gains, the easier it gets
Figure 4: Creative Commons online course provided by e-LISA Academy. to work in online teams. Sometimes the course par-
Copy right issues are one of
those topics that are relevant
for all Austrian teachers,
but only a few of them have
enough practical information
and experiences. This is why
the “e-basics” course was de-
veloped. The course is offered
by a regional educational por-
tal and is targeting teachers at
the outset of their digital lives,
namely those ones, who are
not confident in using digital
equipment in classroom yet.
Copy right and creative com-
mons is an easy topic for the
start. It does not induce nega- Figure 5: Safer Internet course on the Virtuelle PH
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5. From the field
ticipants even launch online cooperation between their
schools which neatly breaks school and school type bar-
riers. Most of the time, the participating teachers have
never met before in real life, but sometimes they know
each each other from other collaborative learning set-
tings.
EPICT: European Pedagogical ICT-licence:
Module on Safer Internet
In order to train teachers on ICT skills that can be used
in classroom activities, EPICT (www.epict.at) was imple-
mented in Austria in 2009. Since then hundreds of teach-
er teams have taken part in this training initiative. The
idea behind EPICT is to strengthen teamwork in schools
and motivate teachers to learn from each other. There-
fore it is not offered to individuals, but rather to teacher
teams. Also for this teacher training, Saferinternet.at de-
veloped a specific module on online safety and good use
of digital media in education. A set of classroom activities
is included in the module so as to offer teachers ideas Figure 7: Saferinternet.at on Facebook. Source: www.
their EPICT papers. facebook.com/saferinternetat
In addition to this, Saferinternet.at compiled a catalogue of by schools all over Austria in the framework of the Safer Inter-
classroom activities related to the topic of safe use of online net Month of Action in 2011. In this campaign more than 200
technologies. These activities were drawn up and carried out schools participated and 70 best practice examples were pub-
lished. All activities in the catalogue are described so that they
can be easily copied in other schools; the resource is available
for download under the link: http://www.saferinternet.at/up-
loads/tx_simaterials/Safer_Internet_Aktions_Monat_Beispiel-
sammlung_Mai2011.pdf
Social Networks as training ground
More and more teachers are using social networks, such as
Facebook, Twitter or Google+ as their pool for informal online
learning. It is an easy way to share and distribute valid content
on internet use and news. The unique feature of social networks
is the fact that they are used by young people and teachers
equally therefore they have a strong potential to be successfully
integrated in classroom activities.
Figure 6: Catalogue of best classroom activities
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6. From the field
4. Conclusions
Reaching out to educators with quality e-learning con-
tent on online safety works best in collaboration with
reputable providers of teacher training or sites that
teachers go to. This ensures that the resources will
match their needs as well as guarantee the sustainabil-
ity of the knowledge base. Publishing quality content
under the Creative Commons license enables all rel-
evant players to exploit, enhance and adapt it accord-
ing to their own needs and experience. In this way the
message can spread among educators very fast.
To win educators for the idea of online safety, it is good
to start with topics that are rather neutral and useful
for their daily work. Copy right is one of such topics. It is
advisable to avoid topics that might be perceived as too
negative or threatening (e.g. cyber-bullying).
Figure 8: Saferinternet.at on Google+. Source: https://plus. Teachers with good digital competencies are much
google.com/b/113122011105349794428/
more willing to discuss online safety issues with their students
in classes. Therefore enhancing of these skills among teachers
will ultimately help to bring these topics into the mainstream
education. On the other hand, educators are also more willing
to acquire such digital skills when they realize that students
are more attentive and perform better in classes where online
media are used as a teaching tool. Good knowledge of online
media among teachers also reduces the risk that they become
victims of teacher bashing on the internet.
Edition and production
Name of the publication: eLearning Papers Copyrights
ISSN: 1887-1542
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