Education is the foundation of our functioning in the society. It supports progress, prevents social inequalities and makes the world function better. The pandemic has particularly affected this area - both teachers, parents, and children themselves. Schools had little time to make a shift to remote teaching. For some, it was easy, but for others - quite the opposite. The CyberMocn@ Szkoła Project was founded in response to teachers' needs and it aims at supporting them in their everyday tasks. The purpose of the project is to equip the participants with tools and technological solutions streamlining their everyday work with students (also online). CyberMocn@ Szkoła is organized by the Citi Handlowy Foundation in cooperation with the Warsaw Institute of Banking and the Early Stage English Language School.
The CyberMocn@ Szkoła project was launched on October 8. First classes in the form of online lectures were conducted by Wojciech Ronatowicz (pedagogue, teacher, expert, Safer Internet Forum) and Aleksandra Piotrowska (psychologist, research fellow of Educational Psychology Center at the University of Warsaw).
The pandemic has affected us all - it has turned the world we live in entirely upside down. The world we will have to learn anew. We don't know yet whether the new world will be better than the one we had before but, if there is one thing we know for sure, it's that all of us will have to accept the new reality (...). It is our employees who inspired us to initiate the program. Citi currently employees over 8,000 people. In March, nearly 7,000 of them started working from home, which means that we have experienced the new reality of remote work. In turn, employees who are parents of school-age children showed us the scale of challenges faced by teachers. This has helped us prepare an appropriate program. We hope that it could also serve our children as a guide to the world not only of great potential, but also of great dangers, said the President of Citi Handlowy, Sławomir S. Sikora, during the opening.
The CyberMocn@ Szkoła Project will start in October 2020 in the online formula consisting of workshops and lectures. During the workshops, we will demonstrate safe and free technology solutions that are helpful in everyday remote teaching; discuss in detail the rules of safe use of the Internet and show what students may be doing online most often. Experts will indicate ways to take care of students' mental and physical well-being in the digital age as well as present the best practices for teachers of foreign languages in organizing engaging classes. They will also help to design interesting online classes to attract students' attention remotely and keep them by the screen. In addition, we will also present effective ways of communicating with parents both in person and online.
The CyberMocn@ Szkoła Project consists of three modules:
The first module is addressed to early school education teachers and will focus primarily on how to introduce younger pupils to the virtual world, what are the related threats, how to prevent them and how to educate parents in this scope. In the course of 4 online meetings conducted by certified trainers, participants will also learn the benefits arising from using the Internet, and also receive scenarios of lessons dedicated to children and parents to conduct them at their schools.
The second module is addressed to tutors (teachers of various subjects), and to pedagogues as well. The aim of the training is to improve the work with children and parents, getting acquainted with tools available online and developing ways of working with chronically ill children (so that they are not excluded from the school community). Participants will be provided with "A good tutor online" (Dobry wychowawca online) brochure, which will serve as a compendium of information provided during the training.
The third module was designed for teachers of foreign languages. During the training, they will also become acquainted with cyber security, topic of hate speech and how to prevent it. The program of training includes also a part dedicated to the methodology of teaching foreign languages.
