On 20 September 2012, the French national centre for pedagogic documentation (CNDP) organised a conference on social media in learning and education for summer university students at the Poitiers Cité des Savoirs.
Young people from across Europe met to contribute together, to have fun and to offer solutions. The event which connected all three of these important points was called the Insafe Summer School in Romania 2012.
In the heart of Romania surrounded by mountains, that is what I call the perfect destination for our Summer School. The small village Sambata de Sus offered great views from our windows.
One of the things I really liked about this camp was the diversity of the program. It was divided between work (sessions and workshops) and fun. There were usually sessions and workshops in the morning. All sessions were interactive and interesting, so I really enjoyed every one of them.
We spoke about Reporting, Blogging, Project setup, Internet threats, Internet addictions, Youth Panels and much more…
The most enjoyable discussion for me was the one about cyber threats future that was led by the Kaspersky team. The guys from Kaspersky prepared a really great presentation.
After the working part of the day we had great fun organised by EcoXtrem. Activities like urban challenge: ice-breaking games in the beginning, archery, Karaoke…
The urban challenge introduced us to Sibiu, a wonderful historical city. By completing 12 missions we explored the best parts of the city.
Project writing competition
“Be creative and have an awesome idea”, was the message of the Safer Internet project writing competition. Each group had to prepare a project dedicated to Safer Internet and at the end of the camp the judges chose the best project, which will be implemented.
We were so excited when judges announced our group G5 as the winners! Our project was about making an international youth-platform for teenagers online, where they could educate themselves, discuss, write…
It is important when young people from across Europe meet and it’s a big experience for us.
There are several reasons why this camp was an advantage for the more interested groups:
So, thank you everyone and hope to see you at the next event!
(Danut) Ok; so another day, another post and another series of events. However, this day is a very sad day. This is the last day of our adventure. The whole week has passed so fast. We made so many friends during this week that now we are all so sad when somebody leaves. We are all with tears in our eyes but we are going to keep in touch. And to make it worse the workshops were all about the last days. The internet addiction workshop was full of new knowledge and opinions even if all of us were so tired. I’m so sad. I can’t even think about the workshop without tears, but life goes on. I can’t wait for the party and I’m sure that we are all going to stay up late.
This whole week was just like a cup of water for a plant. You can hear the sound of the water going in the ground. And as soon as it is there, the plant starts growing. All the participants in this Summer School had the same feeling. We have learned a lot of new things about internet addiction, blogging, viruses, project writing, and the most important thing was the fact that we can be safe while we surf on the internet. Every year we learn something new from each other and from the guests that are invited.
As you can guess, the last day is the most exciting from different points of view: one is because it’s the last day and we got used to each other by creating new relationships. The second point of view, and the optimistic one, is that we get to find out which project was the best and what will happen next year. This year we were glad to find out that we will get the chance to create an international platform for youth workers in order to exchange educational, cultural, but most importantly IT knowledge. Another week has passed, and our interest in this field has grown. A million thanks to the organisers for doing a great job once again!!
So we started another day with a cup of coffee (nothing can start a day like a good coffee!). But even before that, we head upstairs to check out our envelopes in case there´s a new present from our ‘Secret Friend’.* The same routine from the other days was repeated – which basically means that we had a session. In today´s session the participants exchanged their experiences considering the Youth Panels from different countries. Actually, we compared them and then voiced our opinions on what feature we think is ‘good’ and so on. For me, a person who actually didn’t know much about it because I´m a newbie, it was really helpful.
After this first session we had to make a video. The video which was not allowed to be longer than three minutes, and had to show our opinions and advice on the Youth Panels. At the end, all videos were put together to create one funny, long video about Youth Panels. We still haven’t seen the final version, but we’re looking forward to seeing it tomorrow!
When we finished this ‘serious’ session, it was time for some action. After lunch we went into the forest for some really cool activities. The team of EcoXtrem organised Pendulum (it is like an oversized swing) and archery (all of us tried to become Robin Hood). But only one of us actually managed to hit the small yellow dot.
In the evening they organized a crazy hat and funny t-shirt party. We were all supposed to make crazy hats and t-shirts. Of course we wore them that night. The craziest and funniest creations got rewarded.
As you can see, the day’s most important words were teamwork, fun, adrenaline, solutions and international context.
* Secret friend is a concept where each person is assigned a friend at the beginning of the week, and they have to give them anonymous gifts on each day. The gifts are left in envelopes on a board and are supposed to be little trinkets that the person creates themselves, or could for example be sweets. On the last night, the ‘secret’ friends are all revealed during a ceremony.
In the first part of the day we went to a famous horse stables in Sambata de Jos, where the top jockey team gave us a little show. After that we went to the traditional museum ‘Astra Park’, which is the second biggest in Europe. The most exciting part was when we arrived in Sibiu and made an Urban challenge. We were split into five groups. Each group got their 14 ‘missions’ that they had to complete in two an a half hours. To finish the ‘missions’ the groups had to walk around the city, where they had to find the ‘mission places’ to answer questions and take photos (to prove they were actually there). We found out that the most important part is teamwork, because we wouldn’t have been able to do this alone.
The evening started with the opening of the treasure. It was locked: however, each team was given a key. Inside we found medals for everyone who participated in the challenge. After this the evening really got going with a karaoke party. We sang lots of songs and not just English ones, but also songs from Slovakia, Germany, Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania. For the close of the day we all sang and danced the famous song YMCA wich was fun.