Let’s share innovative approaches to fight against anti-social behaviour of our children in schools

Dear friends,

We want to share our experience about EU-funded project “Social Mindedness In LEarning communitY” (SMILEY - http://www.smileyschool.eu), an initiative that aims at transforming the differences existing among the students in a resource rather than in a barrier to integration. Its methodology exploits the potential of new technologies in the field of education. We decided to start this project because of the rising debate about bullying and social exclusion practices at school all over Europe.

By taking advantage from ICT as a mean to stimulate discussions between teacher and pupils on social issues, one of the main output of SMILEY is “Your Town”, an exciting free online role-playing game which encourages players age 10–16 years to think about various positive and negative social situations with a view to promoting constructive and social minded behaviour.

A demo in five languages (English, Italian, Polish, Romanian and Turkish) is available at www.smileyschool.eu/4sch/servlet/MainServlet, where you can try to complete the first mission of the game.

We wonder how the situation is in the schools of your region. Are you aware of children’s antisocial behaviour? What is the most recurrent negative behaviour among children? If so, how do you cope with this problem?

Any contribution, idea, suggestion and innovative approach to the issue is more than welcomed!

If you are a school teacher and want to apply our ICT-based methodology with your students, please do not hesitate to contact me: epo@jogroup.eu