There is no doubt regarding the benefits of digitalization. It is indeed an excellent tool for knowledge, economic prosperity and communication.
But we have to be aware of the dangers of its misuse.
Citizens maybe exposed to any form of exploitation and abuse harassment, threats and fraud.
The answer to this drawbacks is our goal: Competent and skilled citizen with critical thinking and media literacy. Education must be redesign so as to enable children and youth to become responsible, competent, free minded digitalized persons.
Is not surprising that the recent work of the Parliamentary Assembly’s of the Council of Europe. The Committee on Culture , Science Education and Media is also focused on the role of education in the digital era and on media education in the new media environment.
This can be only be achieved in an equal field of chances for all the citizens based on:
- Equality of Access
- No exclusion
- Regulation of ICT(or at least its use)
- Training the teachers
This is the reason one must welcome the EU’ s initiative for European education area which provides that by 2025 all schools will have Access to High Capacity Broadband Networks in condition of Adequate Financial backing. This initiative must be extended beyond EU’s frontiers as gesture of solidarity.
Infrastructure development however is not enough. Technological investments without blending ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) meaningfully into teaching and learning processes will not produce the desired transformations in Education.
After all, digital education can only succeed when it serves as a mean to every citizen to become responsible, competent and free minded person.
It is also imperative to provide media education at school and also as part of a lifelong learning process. We need to increase the ability of all our citizens to distinguish opinion from objective facts, quality information from false news and to help them develop a critical approach to the media.
Our task remains to treat Digital and ICT as a mean and tool for the accomplishment of our values and not as a deviation.
This is the reason we fully agree and feel very happy for the Motivation of the French Residency’s Initiative.
I close stating that at the end of the day, we have to build our digitalized democratic society with moderation regarding the tools and stay rigid on our values, rule of law and accountability.