TRANSLATIONS AND GUIDELINES
Important aspects to be addressed when considering the well-being of adolescents and the integration of technology into teaching, also taking into account the consequences of the isolation produced by the pandemic, are the gap of knowledge and digital practices existing between the different actors of the school (teachers/ managers and students), the new manifestations of phenomena already known before the digital school as cyberbullying, sexting, and privacy management, and the construction of teaching that can use its contribution without impoverishing the relational aspects but favoring them. To be able to integrate effectively the use of digital in teaching, it is necessary to understand and take into account emotions and affective dynamics that teens experience while using digital devices:
- What role and affective function do digital devices play in their daily life?
- How social media influences a teen’s significant relationships (parents, friends and partners, classmates, teachers)
- How are emotional investments mediated by the use of digital?
- What are the reasons, emotions, affections and psychic dynamics that lead teens to prefer online communication and relationships rather than face to face ones?
- What are the effects of hyper passive use?
- What are the latent psychic needs that guide young people in the search for likes and positive feedback online?
- How Nomophobia influence adolescent concentration in a smartphone didactic or not didact use?
- Does digitalization favor coping strategies aimed at the task, evasion or emotions? In what terms does this affect the handling of school matters?
The first year of the START-DS project was dedicated to investigate the specificities of the issues and needs of each partner concerning digital practice at school, in particular by deepening the aspects of digital that promote or weaken awareness and self-reflection in students, digital habits and attachment to digital devices in terms of nomophobia, the advantages and disadvantages experienced by teachers in using digital in the classroom, the legal and educational difficulties encountered by school leaders in the use of technology in educational institutions.
The integration between qualitative and quantitative tools will be utilized to allow a detailed report of subjects’ experience, including both the analysis of the most subjective nuances that are also involved in the phenomenon and those behaviors that have become consolidated habits. Good research needs to balance quantitative and qualitative methods, look into evidence of both positives and negatives. There is much general research on education technology, but insufficient amount of research into specific applications and contexts.
TOOLKIT FOR STUDENTS
SELFIE (part for students) – Online self-assessment tool aimed at school principals, teachers and students to have an assessment of use practices and digital strategies utilized in the school and to reflect on the effective and innovative use of digital technologies;
DIGITAL HABITS QUESTIONNAIRE created ad hoc by University of Urbino for investigate qualitatively and quantitatively the practices, needs and critical issues encountered in the digital school exploring experience; it also includes the PREFERENCE FOR ONLINE SOCIAL INTERACTION QUESTIONNAIRE (POSI) – to measure the preference for online social interaction (Caplan, 2010) and the MOOD REGULATION MEDIATED BY ONLINE (Caplan, 2010); finally it includes also QUALITATIVE PROJECTIVE TOOL – storytelling allows to go beyond the resistance of the subjects and deepen the psychological dynamics that accompany them in using technology and effectively investing in digital.
DIGITAL AFFECTS QUESTIONNAIRE composed by different validated instruments such as:
- NOMOPHOBIA QUESTIONNAIRE (Yildirim & Correia, 2015) – for investigate the presence and intensity of anxious and worried experiences when the smartphone is not accessible;
- UCLA LONELINESS SCALE – a brief questionnaire designed to measure feelings of loneliness and feelings of social isolation (Russell et al., 1980);
- SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS SCALE – to measure both private and public self-awareness (Fenigstein, 1975);
QUESTIONNAIRE TO MEASURE INTIMATE ONLINE AND OFFLINE SELF-DISCLOSURE (Valkenburg et al., 2011).
TOOLKIT FOR TEACHERS
The measures that composed the toolkit for the administration to teachers are:
SELFIE (part for teachers) – Online self-assessment tool aimed at school principals, teachers and students to have an assessment of use practices and digital strategies utilized in the school and to reflect on the effective and innovative use of digital technologies;
DIGITAL SCHOOLING QUESTIONNAIRE created ad hoc by University of Urbino and inspired by the italian project Generazioni Connesse. The questionnaire dedicated to teachers begins with two demographic questions (gender and years of service) and goes on to explore various aspects of digital technology use in schools through 48 questions.
TOOLKIT FOR SCHOOL LEADERS
SELFIE (part for school leaders) – Online self-assessment tool aimed at school principals, teachers and students to have an assessment of use practices and digital strategies utilized in the school and to reflect on the effective and innovative use of digital technologies;
LEADERSHIP IN DIGITAL SCHOOLING created ad hoc by University of Urbino to explore the challenges facing by School leaders in managing the digitalization of school and to collect their answers and good practices.
TOOLKIT TRANSLATION PRODUCTS
LOOK AT OUR START-DS TOOLKIT!
All the tools used for the in-depth needs analysis of the START-DS project are available in five languages: English, Italian, Polish, Macedonian and Bulgarian.
The instruments of the toolkit are available in the Google Form at the following links. To use the Google Form, please create a copy and save it to your Drive. Do not modify the original Google Form.
DIGITAL HABITS is available at the follow link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1X926HrbNYDYHalCNs2ggzyNvukhSdw17
DIGITAL AFFECTS is available at the follow link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1_PuHpAmfAOOLRAZgIa_ZCEMPF7PvdsX1
DIGITAL SCHOOLING FOR TEACHERS is available at the follow link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1DD9H9zLTt1AswRtdieaMXov2Q9qjAE-O
LEADERSHIP IN DIGITAL SCHOOLING FOR SCHOOL LEADERS is available at the follow link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1LrE5fY6lKnIS5D8jFJ1gCdZNJiXw-s_E
Starting from this ground of school experiences – learning and teaching, social skills and use of technologies – collected by giving a voice directly to those who experience the school, it is possible to propose targeting and specific actions in the classroom aimed at a virtuous use of the smartphone that allows the development of relationships, learning and emotional skills of students and teachers.
References
Caplan, S. E. (2010). Theory and measurement of generalized problematic Internet use: A two-step approach. Computers in human behavior, 26(5), 1089-1097.
Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M. F., & Buss, A. H. (1975). Public and private self-consciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43(4), 522–527.
https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076760
Russell, D., Peplau, L. A., & Cutrona, C. E. (1980). The revised UCLA Loneliness Scale: Concurrent and discriminant validity evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(3), 472–480.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.39.3.472
Valkenburg, P. M., Sumter, S. R., & Peter, J. (2011). Gender differences in online and offline self‐disclosure in pre‐adolescence and adolescence. British journal of developmental psychology, 29(2), 253-269.
Yildirim, C., & Correia, A. P. (2015). Exploring the dimensions of nomophobia: Development and validation of a self-reported questionnaire. Computers in human behavior, 49, 130-137.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.059
