Bucharest, September 13, 2021 – Vodafone Romania Foundation announces the launch of „School of the Future”, an educational program developed to help children adapt to a constantly evolving digital society, to discover the possibilities offered by the digital world, but above all, to show them they have the power to be the shapers of their own future. The program, aimed at children between the ages of six and twelve, is part of a pan-European digitization initiative carried out by the Vodafone Foundations in Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Turkey and Hungary and has a budget of EUR 320,000.
„School of the Future” provides users with a set of free, extracurricular activities, in accordance with the European DigComp methodological principles, in order to familiarize children with digital skills and help them reach their full potential. The first 20 courses uploaded to the platform deal with themes like new technologies and programming and were overtaken from the „DigiCraft” program designed by the Vodafone Spain Foundation in collaboration with the University of Salamanca. The program provides educational and recreational resources for each of the actors involved in the education of minors: children, parents and educators.
In the school year 2021/2022, more than 100 lessons dealing with new technologies, internet safety and programming will be uploaded to the platform. The content of the „School of the Future” can be accessed free of charge and is made available to the general public.
„We continue our mission to encourage children’s digital education, this time with a new program that helps them learn while playing. The program permanently places the child at the center of learning, and digital skills are formed in a unique way. For example, one of the lessons currently available in the platform is „Mission Impossible”, in which the evil Qezil has stolen a memory card with destruction codes and plans to destroy all video games on planet Earth. The children must recover the card by infiltrating Qezil’s mansion and fooling the security system. By going through this content, children learn to use the programming language correctly and create simple programs „, said Angela Galeța, director of the Vodafone Romania Foundation.
The European DigComp framework defines 5 areas of competence that make up digital expertise: information and information literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, security and problem solving. The „School of the Future” methodology covers the five areas of competence, identifying the skills that children need to develop and setting specific goals for each age group.
The methodology relies on team learning and promotes respect for the environment, recycling and responsible use of devices. The program also aims to harmonize the digital world with the analog one, proposing activities that are not only based on the use of electronic devices, but also involve the development of motor and cognitive skills, logical thinking and teamwork.
Each lesson includes a guide featuring: the duration of the lesson, the age to which the content is addressed, the degree of difficulty (high, low or medium), instructions for preparing the lesson, including the required materials (applications, technological devices, pencils, worksheets etc.), the objectives and competencies of the 21st century that are achieved by children who cover the content, recommendations for parents or teachers and the possibility to download the lesson in pdf format.
The Vodafone Romania Foundation is a Romanian nongovernmental charitable organization, established in 1998, which operates separately and independently from the company’s business. Over more than 20 years of activity, the Vodafone Romania Foundation has funded 1,168 programs run by 745 NGOs throughout the country, in the fields of healthcare, education and social services. The projects had over 3 million beneficiaries – children, young people, elderly, physically, socially or economically disadvantaged people. So far, the Vodafone Romania Foundation has invested 31 million euros in projects run by non-profit partner organizations. More details about the Foundation’s programs are available at www.fundatia-vodafone.ro, http://jurnaldebine.fundatiavodafone.ro/ and www.facebook.com/fundatiavodafone.
