Slovenia
The last week of May students and teachers met at a student mobility for the Digital Me week in Slovenia.
DAY 1:
We met at the school OÅ Gustava Å iliha and first had some ice breaker activities. The first day was connected with ICT in school and the students had a workshop on ICT over time, dating the technology and examining it.
After the workshops at the school, we went to the castle of Slovenska Bistrica, where the students participated in a school lesson 200 years ago without any technology. After the tour of the castle, the students in small groups with members from each country got to learn about Slovenska Bistrica in a scavenger hunt, where they had to use their phones to measure things, orienteer in nature, translate, find information and take creative selfies under the WW2 monument.
DAY 2:
Tuesday was in the morning focused on social media, the students presented their digital playgrounds - the social media apps that they use, the number of followers they have, the content they watch, etc. We played Plickers and had a quiz and workshop on TikTok, the leading social media platform at the moment. We discussed the dangers of TikTok, how it can make you addictive, how TikTok earns money, uses our personal information, etc. Afterwards, we visited Maribor and the faculty of computer science, where we met their social robot Frida that works in healthcare, helping patients recover. We learnt a lot about programming robots and other apps that the faculty is developing.
DAY 3:
The first part of the day was on digital stress and how it affects us. The students and teachers took a digital stress self-test. We also checked the number of notifications and had a cpompetition by countries. In only fifteen minutes the amount of received notifications was overwhelming to see, making it difficult to believe how many notifications students get in a day.
We had a workshop on digital stress, bringing awareness to this problem and ways on how to cope with it.
The students learnt about ways on how to avoid and cope with digital stress and we also did some exercises on how to reduce it, including a relaxation technique called Breath Drawing and the students created some interesting drawings in the process.
Afterwards, we had a workshop on designing video games.
After playing Mario Kart in class with the students running in place, jumping over hurdles and solving puzzles, they, in groups with members from all three countries, prepared their own video game meant to play in real life, which we did at Lake Farovec in the afternoon.
DAY 4:
On Thursday we visited Tehnopark in Celje and had a robotics workshop with the robot Pepper, where the students in pairs with their partners from other countries programmed the robot.
We spent the entire morning exploring other science exhibits in Tehnopark, and had a lot of fun. The virtual reality walk on a plank high above the city was particularly scary and felt real for some of the students. We had a quick tour of Celje and the castle, then we continued to Ljubljana. In Ljubljana we planned to do a scavenger hunt in groups with members from each country, but the rain prevented us from doing that. Instead, we visited the House of Illusions, where we learnt a lot about photography, tricks that the mind plays on us, etc.
DAY 5:
Our last day together was all about self-evaluation and peer-evaluation. The students in pairs evaluted the created posters on social media they created before, gave feedback on them and graded them.
Afterwards, we evaluted the week in Slovenia and because the mobility in Slovenia was the last one, students and teachers evaluated the Digital Me project as a whole with a questionnaire and a discussion. We celebrated the entire project with a Digital Me cake. More photos and the programme for the week can be found under Materials.
