“Digital Citizenship across Borders” was a two-year project that involved a cooperation of schools from four European countries (Spain, Austria, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands) and three language families (Romance, Germanic and Slavic). The project aimed at attaining a number of objectives relating to students. First, it aimed at enhancing their skills, including foreign language skills, intercultural skills, ICT skills, critical thinking skills, or cooperative skills. Moreover, it aimed at developing students’ cultural knowledge and European attitudes and values of tolerance, democracy, respect and responsibility. The project also aimed at attaining a number of objectives in the participating teaching staff, including the extension of the portfolio of teaching methods, enhanced and safer use of ICT, and development of communicative and foreign language skills. The attained skills and knowledge were not only present during the duration of the project but we also expected them to be of long-term benefit for the participants as well as for the schools.

Digital Citizenship is a very up-to-date topic, encompassing and addressing many of the issues European society is currently facing, including active citizenship, media literacy, critical thinking and many others. Furthermore, the international cooperation of the schools involved added to it the multicultural and plurilinguistic element, enhancing the experience and providing for authentic communication in foreign languages.

During the last decade we have seen how ICT and digital and social media have become an integral part of life, including school life and the learning-teaching processes. Nevertheless, neither students nor teachers always have a clear idea of the possibilities and the risks that their use implies. Through this project, we aimed to enhance the students’ use of ICT, not only for educational purposes, but also, more importantly, for their everyday life, especially in the social dimension. At the same time we wanted to provide the teaching staff with tools and methods that would allow them to use ICT and digital media on an everyday basis in a safe and confident way. It is important to realize that a mere formal inclusion of new tools does not always mean a real change in education. We believe in a more practical approach, which encompasses experience sharing of both methodological and technical aspects, as well as includes hands-on activities for teachers.

The project methodology rested on the four pillars of Digital Citizenship (Ferrari and Martens 2016), namely skills, engagement, belonging, and security, hence the total number of project partners. The partner schools were assigned the topics of the four short-term exchanges to correspond to, as well as expand on, the already existing expertise the respective school possessed in the given field. Furthermore, the partnership provided a platform for sharing experience in teaching methodologies, project learning, etc.

The project involved four short-term exchanges which were subsequently hosted by each of the partner schools, attended by around 6 students and 2 teachers from each visiting school and by host school students and staff. To ensure that as many students as possible got a chance to participate, there was a different group of students every year. Each of the meetings focused on one of the four pillars of Digital Citizenship and involved students working in international project groups on tasks connected to the topic of the meeting. The short-term exchanges were complemented by online activities for students which took place between the project meetings. These activities gained in difficulty as the project progressed, starting with short getting-to-know-you activities, followed by more complex tasks (e.g. research) related to the topic of the upcoming exchange. These served as a preparation for each Short-term exchange. Additionally, online activities and methodology trainings for teachers were created which were also accessible for teachers not participating in the project. The topics of these online courses corresponded to the upcoming events and the participating schools took turns in preparing them.

The project results are a set of materials, including student presentations and visual reports, as well as lesson plans and teachers recommendations for the implementation of the digital Citizenship topics in everyday lessons. All results and materials are freely accessible on the project website and have been disseminated to the public and school-related audiences via a series of presentations hosted by the participating schools.