Books and screens and the reading brain - conference in Vilnius

E-Read, a scientific project financed by COST organised a major conference in Vilnius, Lithuania on 27-29 September 2017. A stakeholder round table was held as part of the conference, focusing on textbooks and other reading material used in and by schools, and EPA was invited to present the parents' view.

Facebook parenting page

As most of our children live a substantial part of their lives on social media and Facebook is one of the most important ones, they have decided to offer parents, especially ones who are not advanced users of their social media service, a special site, Parents Portal. EPA has started working with Facebook Europe to ensure that their service offer and the wishes of parents for the safety of their children online are aligned.

Please spend a few minutes on the following survey. Facebook wishes to learn more about parents' knowledge, attitudes and concerns, and adjust their services accordingly. The survey is available at the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/KJT5SMC

The digital revolution pushes offline education to change at last

The Lifelong Learning Platform (LLL-P, former EUCIS-LLL) held its annual conference, Education in a Digital World, in Tallinn, Estonia on 31 May-1 June. Eszter Salamon, President of EPA and Vice President of LLL-P represented parents at the event. The conference was dealing with not only burning issues around digital technology in education, but could also tackled the wider effects, how technology and information in our lives affect education in general. To underline the complexity of the topic LLL-P has decided to postpone the finalisation and publication of their major position paper originally planned to be published at the conference, and to include outcomes of discussions at the event as well as further members’ input in it.

DigiLitEY Think Tank meeting in London – report

I was invited to join the Think Tank meeting of the DigiLitEY project in London at the end of March 2017 as an expert. This research project is focused on technology use by children under 8 years of age. The London event mostly focused on the working group that focuses on parents and home. While we were presented interesting research evidence mostly gathered through literature review, a discussion has also been started on how it would be possible to engage as many parents in the discourse as possible.

Helping to overcome the challenges parents (and teachers) face in the digital age

DLearn, The European Digital Learning Network asked EPA to contribute to their website, that we did, by an article entitled Helping to overcome the challenges parents (and teachers) face in the digital age. It is hopefully the first step in collaboration for a Europe prepared for the digital age, with special focus on parents and children from our side.

DLearn aims to embrace the challenges brought by the digital transformation in terms of digital skills mismatch and digital learning opportunities. The 47% of Europeans is not properly digitally skilled, yet in the near future 90% of jobs will require some level of digital skills and numerous opportunities in terms of jobs that are going to shape the labour market.

Fragmented notes brought home from the Fundamental Rights Forum

The EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) organised the first European Fundamental Rights Forum in Vienna on 20-23 June 2016. The event brought together about 700 people from and beyond Europe from policy, practice, governments, civil society, research, arts and several other fields. The organisers did the huge job of discussing the issues of inclusion, the refugee crisis and digital challenges on a human rights basis by providing the organisers with an enormous amount of food for thought as well as opportunities for networking and discussion.

The following paragraphs are not intended to be a full report, but rather a collection of a few thoughts and issues that echoed in me as president of EPA, vice president of the Lifelong Learning and Social Platforms, as a child rights activist for over 25 years, as an apt reader, a Hungarian and a mother. It is unusual for this blog, but I hope they will also resonate with the readers, and given the richness of the programme I couldn’t find any other ways to make a report.

Press release: Representing parents in Europe: the first 30 years

The European Parents’ Association (EPA) is celebrating its 30^th Anniversary this year. Our November conference – co-organised and hosted by our Luxembourgish member, FAPEL -, taking place in the EU Presidency country, Luxembourg is aiming at taking stock of the state of play and highlighting some of the areas to be developed in the field of parental involvement. A Manifesto about the direction of parents’ representation for the years to come is launched at the event.

In our event we will revisit the past 30 years, present the results of two recent Europe-wide surveys on parental involvement and school costs, with special focus on the achievements of the past 15 years and give the floor to our members to share their experiences and try to find answers to our questions.

ICT in Schools - contribute to the survey

The Danish company, Skoleskyen (school cloud) is conducting a EU-wide survey of parents on the use of ICT in schools. The aim of the survey is to find out how much technology is used at schools in Europe. The topic is in line with our conference in Lisbon. This is the reason why we are happy to the share information about the survey to get more parents to participate on request of our Danish member, SOF.

Challenges for Parents in the Digital Age - conference report

The last EPA conference and GA so far was held in Lisbon on 4th and 5th April 2014. The speakers and participants were dealing with a hot topic, the various aspects of the digital age in connection with families, parents and schools. The few paragraphs below will try to give a very short insight to this very interesting and lively conference. You will also find the presentations of all the speakers with their contact details if you want to work on with these topics.

Digital Natives and their Digital Immigrant Parents/Teachers

12 years ago, in 2001 Marc Prensky published a very interesting and still up-to-date  article (years before social networks) about Digital Natives, the generations that were born in the digital age, using computers all their lives and Digital Immigrants who learnt to use IT later at a later age.