In May, ARC Fund presented to teachers and parents the project Children in Virtual and Real Violence – Prevention by Interactive Education.
On May 10, the project, which is co-financed by the Swiss Oak Foundation and the Programme Safer Internet of the European Commission and realized in partnership with the Parents Association, was presented at the annual Education Fest in the National Palace of Culture in downtown Sofia. Every year, at the Education Fest hundreds of schools, kindergartens, publishing companies present their profiles, products and services to parents and educators. ARC Fund and its project partner – Association Parents, presented the online platform which will be used by schools to ask for replacing teachers when needed. As for now, the platform offers teachers on the ‘Virtual-Real Violence” discussion course. Experts developed 20 interactive discussion lessons to teach children 11-18 years old to recognize violence both in the virtual world of Internet and in physical life. The lessons were approved by the Institute of Psychology of the Bulgarian Academy of Science. The methodological handbook for educators was also approved for use in schools by the Ministry of Education and Science.
More in detail, the project was presented on 13th of May to teachers from all over the country at the Fifth National Conference on Education “Information Technologies in Education: Necessary Investment into the Future of Bulgaria”. The two-focused objective of the project – prevention of violence among children and resolving the problem of “free classes” at school – attracted big interest on the part of teachers and education experts from schools and public institutions.
Teachers asked for developing similar course for primary school children too and to have the possibility for distance teaching through the innovative teachers’ portal site Teacher.bg where the online platform is based with the cooperation of Microsoft-Bulgaria. The course will be made available for all schools at the website Teacher.bg and exemplary video-filmed lessons will be available for all teachers.
