Throughout the month, several school clusters from Santiago Island participated in sessions implemented by future teachers from the master's degree in Pedagogy at Santiago University. This experiment was implemented as part of the Education Technologies subject, taught by teacher Cristina Novo, the coordinator of the ICT Competence Centre for Higher Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Santarém.

As such, Safer Internet Day activities took place in the Amilcar Cabral and Justina Ferreira High Schools, Assomada, Achada Bolanha, and Tarrafal II. They engaged approximately 500 high school students and 30 teachers. Topics such as cyberbullying, social networks' "risks and challenges," copyright, games, and technology addiction were addressed during the sessions. These activities attracted a lot of media attention in Cape Verde and were widely publicised, increasing awareness of online safety issues in the country.

The next steps involve training courses for teachers, with the aim of raising awareness among the educational community of the urgent need to promote digital citizenship and media education. In a similar approach, this action plan will be implemented as a joint venture between the ICT Competence Centre for Higher Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Santarém and Santiago University.

The ICT Competence Centre for Higher Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Santarém, in cooperation with the Directorate-General for Education of the Portuguese Ministry of Education and within the framework of the SeguraNet Awareness Centre, has been striving, over the last 15 years, to disseminate the topic of digital citizenship, by giving particular emphasis to the development of digital educational resources on the subject. This work, already widely publicised in Portugal, will now reach an international scale through the Santiago Island project. This future action plan will target not only the training of trainers but also the dissemination and training initiatives in schools and among teachers, students, and families.

For more information about Portuguese Safer Internet Day activities, visit the Portuguese Safer Internet Centre's Safer Internet Day profile page.

Find out more information about the work of the Portuguese Safer Internet Centre (SIC) generally, including its awareness raising, helpline, hotline and youth participation services, or find similar information for Safer Internet Centres throughout Europe.