Safer Internet Day Conference 2013

Project	Cyberethics
Place	Nicosia Cyprus
Date(s)	5th February 2013

Type of participants	children, adolescents, parents, teachers, social workers, trainers, policy makers, industry, press and other media
Number of participants	765
Total Duration	1/2 day

Description

On the 5th of February 2013, the Cyprus Safer Internet Day 2013, the Cyberethics: Cyprus Safer Internet Center with the external support of CYTA, organized a national conference in Nicosia to celebrate the Safer Internet Day 2013. The SID conference was a great success gathering more than 700 participants; students, teachers, parents etc. Presentations and discussions and youth representatives were conducted.

Program

The conference was under the auspices of the Ministry of Education & Culture and was promoted by the majority of the local media while recorded by the MTV-NRG and parts of it were broadcasted at a TV show . There was a welcoming message from a representative of the Ministry of Education & Culture and from Mr. Aleco Alexandrou (Head of Internet Services, CYTA). First presenter at this event was Prof. Efstathios Papanis, Professor of Sociology at the Aegean University Cyprus, who analyzed online rights and responsibilities. Second presenter was Mr. George Tsouvellas, a psychologist at the Greek Intervention Team, "Umbrella". Following Mr. Tsouvellas, the director of MTV-NRG, Mr. Angelos Iacovides, explained why is more fun when you surf on the internet safely.Continuing there was a real internet addiction case presented by Ms. Ifigenia Koveou who experienced internet addiction and managed to get out of it through the support of experts. Outside the conference room there were kiosks for the schools that created the top 10 videos, enabling other schools/students to approach them and discuss about the making of the videos as well as any other information.

Last but not least, there was a debate on online rights and responsibilities among young people coordinated by Mr Kyriakos Pastides. In this debate 8 students were divided in two teams. The first team supported online rights and the other supported online responsibilities. Each team had to discuss a statement or a picture promoting either online rights or online responsibilities. Experts and members of the audience comprised the evaluation committee, and addressed questions to the two teams in order to decide which one was the most convinving team.The debate was very interesting and productive, reflecting the ethical dilemmas that young people face during during their online exoeriences.

Last, Mrs. Anastasia Economou (Head of the Department of Educational Technology of the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute) that presented the top 10 videos chosen from the SID 2013 Cyprus Video Competition, with theme 'Online Rights and Responsibilities". The airing of the videos was held in between the presentations and at the end of the conference the four winning videos were announced and received an award(a tablet per participating student), kindly offered by our partner CYTA! Students from different schools all over Cyprus participated at this Video Competition, which was coordinated by the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute and received 58 entries.

The day was concluded by the participation of the ;CyberEthics team and invited experts at radio and TV shows.

Gallery from the event

Gallery from the lunch with guests

References

External Links