About You Decide

Adults have a responsibility to teach young people about digital judgement, rights and obligations when using social media. You Decide is a solid support tool that provides an excellent basis for talking to young people about the various issues on this field. By learning about rights relating to their own privacy, young people will be better equipped to make good decisions for both themselves and others. Even grown-ups can learn a great deal about privacy and regulations when using You Decide.

You Decide is not only for use in traditional education. Both the police, youth clubs and health professionals in Norway use it in their work with children and young people. Even a lot of parents use it in dialogue with their own children.

Content

The teaching resource consists of this webside with articles and facts about relevant themes, true stories, discussion tasks and films. The themes include privacy, online violations, digital trails, source criticism and what it means to be social online. The films are linked to the themes and provide a good starting point for stimulating discussion and generating interest among the pupils.

Pamphlets have also been created in Norwegian, and include the most important parts relating to each topic. These pamphlets can be downloaded.

Discussion and reflection

Emphasis is placed on not always coming up with definitive answers. The objective is to create discussion and empower the pupils to make their own choices based on knowledge and reflection. When young people understand the consequences of the choices they make, they can also take responsibility to a much greater extent. The programme asks a number of open questions to make the children think for themselves and learn to set boundaries, but the themes also talk about basic rights in order that they are more easily able to protect their own privacy. 

High satisfaction

Previous surveys have shown a very high level of satisfaction among teachers who have used the training programme in their classes. Two out of three teachers replied that they assessed the overall interest of their pupils in the topic to be high or very high. The same number said that to a large or very large extent the material gave rise to discussion and reflection in class.

Almost all teachers felt that the programme increased their pupils' knowledge and awareness of privacy issues, and 96 percent of the teachers stated that they wanted to use the programme again at a later date.

About the project

You Decide is a successful cooperation between two partners: The Norwegian Data Protection Authority who protects the right to privacy and strives to prevent misuse of personal data, and The Norwegian Centre for ICT in Education, which falls under the authority of the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. They work for higher quality throughout the education system by offering a variety of services for ICT in education - from kindergarten to teacher training, and their mission is to implement government policy within their area of responsibility.

This cooperation has shown to be very successful. The Norwegian Data Protection Authority has knowledge about privacy and regulations, and The Norwegian Centre for ICT in Education has economic resources beside knowledge about the educational system and how to make You Decide available to the schools.

The project was launched in 2007, and is still growing both in content and number of users. This year there is a lot of new content such as new design, texts and films. There is also a lot of new content especially for parents, teachers and school owners.