Telenor Surf Academy

Who knows the most about Internet at a school – the students or the teachers? If it’s the students, can they use their knowledge and help their teachers? Telenor wants to test this hypothesis, and therefore invites 20 secondary school students in a pilot project that aims to give students tools and knowledge on how to teach the teachers. The project is called Telenor Surf Academy, and it aims to increase knowledge about the Internet and its possibilities.

Telenor Surf Academy was initiated in order to develop the student’s and the teacher’s views upon the advantages of using Internet in schools. The starting point is that many students have knowledge about the Internet that the teachers do not have. By providing the students with educational tools and practical tips, they can spread the knowledge further to classmates and teachers.

Internet’s role in teaching

Along with a number of selected schools, Telenor wants to highlight that the uncertainty about the risks associated with Internet (bullying, unsafe sources, etc.) shouldn’t reduce all the positive aspects of Internet in schools. Telenor Surf Academy also aims to inspire and stimulate new thinking in education, with the purpose to stimulate development and user benefits of IT in schools. There is probably a great deal of uncertainty among teachers on how to use the Internet and IT in education. In many cases, students are more accustomed to using the Internet and the digital environment than the teachers. The goal of the project is to demonstrate the positive benefits of the Internet and its role in the knowledge society.

“We suspect that many teachers feel unsecure about their pupils’ day to day life on the Internet, just because they don’t have enough knowledge themselves,” says Johnny Gylling, CSR Coordinator, Telenor Sverige. “Some of the topics we focus on in the project are criticism of sources, social media in school and copyrights.”

Room for improvement for the use of new media in schools

As an IT country, Sweden certainly belongs to the world elite, but within schools there are opportunities for improvements. According to the survey “Being a teacher in today’s media situation”, presented on World Summit on Media for Children and Youth (Karlstad, Sweden, in 2010), seven of ten teachers feels that they needs training to deal with issues of privacy, security and source criticism on related to the Internet. As many as eight of ten teachers claim that they want to learn to deal with new media. This shows that there’s a lack of knowledge among many teachers regarding which way is the most effective when it comes to integrating IT in the education. This may be a reason why only four percent of the students (12-16 years) responded that they have Internet based tasks in school at a daily basis. As many as 42 percent have Internet based tasks in school only a few times per month.