ASAP: A Systematic Approach to Social Media and Pre-Adolescents through Thinking Skills Education

2022-1-IT02-KA220-SCH-000090043

Erasmus+

2022 - 2025

Project Bio

The already significant digital transformation experienced over the last 30 years has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today’s school kids are not only digital natives, they were also forced for almost two years to move most of their daily learning and relational activities to online platforms. Digital spaces are, therefore, increasingly institutionalised even among children and in the school context.

ASAP addresses digital transformation by fostering a conscious use of digital and social media in kids. ASAP works on metacognitive skills, aiming to develop the kids’ understanding of how media shapes and transforms the relation between the inner and outer world. Digital transformation will not end, therefore kids need to develop skills related to awareness, metacognition, and abstraction; linked to thought and critical thinking, thus building resilience and the capacity to feel at home when changes are all around.

ASAP aims to get school communities speaking not only through social media but also about social media. In order to achieve this, an authentic intergenerational dialogue that allows allows kids to claim their expertise on social media and adults to redefine their mediator role of kid's knowledge and emotions is essential.

Project Objectives

• • Providing a broader, transdisciplinary understanding of the complex phenomenon of digital and social media and how such the media shapes our social, emotional, and symbolic relationships with ourselves, the others, and the world.
• • Promoting and contributing to specific research on pre-adolescents (lower secondary school kids) and studying their relationship with digital/social media and its impact on the school community.
• • Highlighting the responsibility of the school community in addressing digital and social media literacy needs through instructional, non-contingent approaches and reforms.
• • Promoting the creation of inclusive school contexts, fostering plurality and respect and fighting cyberbullying and any form of discrimination.
• • Promoting the development and introduction of learning approaches addressing the Digital Key Competence and the social media literacy need of the school community for a conscious, critical, and healthy use of digital/social media.

Partnerships

• Association for Communication and Media Culture, Croatia
• Associazione Le Nius, Italy
• Cooperativa de Formação e Animação (COFAC), Portugal
• DOBA, Slovenia
• Fondazione Politecnico di Milano, Italy
• Istituto Comprensivo Statale Via Bologna Bresso, Italy
• Pepita, Italy
• ProEduca, Czech Republic

Main Project Outputs

• Social Media, Pre-Adolescents and Meta-cognition: ASAP Transdisciplinary Desk & Field Research: the preliminary analysis necessary to lay the foundations for all project outputs, the research will investigate the relationship between pre-adolescents (lower secondary school kids) and social media in our society with a focus on the educational school context from a transdisciplinary perspective. Through contributions from all partners and their different expertise, the analysis will
  provide a broader understanding of the phenomenon, as well as a lend a transnational perspective through the study of the existing situation in the partner countries which will highlight common features as well as specific local issues in the different countries.
• Education Model and Training Programme Development: an educational programme addressing the impact of digital and social media on the school community. This will help users to understand the general principles, mechanisms, and logic underlying evolving digital technologies and how digital technologies can support communication, creativity, and innovation. In addition it will highlight awareness of opportunities, limitations, effects and risks relating to digital and social media usage.
• Collaborative Editorial Board: a varied set of  tools and materials which will be delivered digitally and will include content and guides on topics relating to digital and social media usage. Examples of the material includes interactive games on social media literacy, channels to collaborate and share ideas, explainer videos and visual material for the development of healthy social media skills. The content will target both educators and school children and will be made available in all of the partner languages.

Project outputs will be available to the public as open source in August 2025.