Summary:
The WEIWE(R)BE project aims to promote strategies to develop information literacy skills, within curricular and school libraries practices, by training both students and teachers in and with ICT, as well as sustainable digital contents (OER).

Description:
The WEIWE(R)BE project emerges to overcome the weaknesses witnessed in different educational levels, from basic to secondary school, in the information literacy and digital skills of the pupils/students.
Therefore, the project's objectives are the following:
-to empower pupils/students for critical and reflective reading, when accessing various sources of information and in the analysis of Web content, namely Wikipedia articles, understood as Open Educational Resources;
-to promote information literacy as a key requirement and competence for learning, and an essential asset in the networked society;
-to trigger a change in the information behavior within learning and research processes.
The results achieved point out to the fact that the aims can be fulfilled – and indeed they have been, even in the midst of the pandemic difficulties. Besides, the best practices accomplished will certainly be maintained, shared, and improved, namely in the promotion of both the SGDs and the WSIS values in the Society.
Finally, the impact generated has been greater, e.g. the whole school communities are being empowered – not just the students, but their teachers and families too. Moreover, as the school principals have valued the project, they will support its replication and sustainability, thus probably entailing new partnerships.

https://sites.google.com/view/redeweiwer/WEIWERBE

• Portugal

• Youth

After the pilot phase, it was acknowledged that the WEIWE(R)BE project – Wikis, Education & Research within the School Libraries – could be applied to other (inter)national communities, outside the Lisbon district, in Portugal. This implies the existence of institutional networks, sometimes relying on personal/professional networks, and the implication of the different educational actors, so as to enhance the results of the project, in a continuous and sustainable basis. It also implies, for instance, a prior study of the local educational settings and curricula or of the regional/national policies for education, training and qualification.
Thus, for now, we are expanding its implementation only at a Portuguese scale, but already including rural/remote school communities. More in-depth analyses will be carried out to better evaluate the project’s follow-ups and updates, if needed, as well as with regard to supervision, mentoring and tutorship practices, to specifically support the teachers and the librarian teachers, who are directly working with the students participating in the project.
However, we believe that the dissemination of the results of the project will reach wider and broader educational audiences (including academics), at least across all the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) – Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and East Timor. Therefore, it is assumed that the project should be further applied in other local/national/international learning, teaching, training and research scenarios, so as to foster the development of digital skills and competences, including ICT and informational competences, as underlined in national, European and international policies, on an individual or global-society scale, ultimately contributing to meet the UN SGDs and the WSIS AL.

Having a strong pedagogical background and social focus, and relying on collaborative work, in an innovating empowerment spirit of knowledge transfer, the project has proved to be self-sustained. The core team has been granted institutional support, of the entities involved in the partnership, which has helped to cover the expenses in most cases (like e.g. the Wi-Fi , web-conferencing tools and the mobile devices). So, some of these resources, specially for the training sessions we have been delivering, have also been catered for by the participating schools themselves to the students (e.g. through the school library, with the support of the school’s principal and the Pedagogical Council validation). Besides, the students have also been using their own devices in the classroom, in a BYOD (bring your own device) approach, or at home, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
Moreover, and with regard to the pedagogical and training resources, these have been developed under creative commons licenses, in the framework of open science, open access and open education. Therefore, they can be defined as open educational resources (OER) that contribute to aid us in implementing open educational practices. These principles are aligned with the Portuguese national strategy for digital skills (Portugal INCoDe.2030), at a national level, and with the SDGs, namely SDG number 4, at an international level. In this context, particular attention is focused on open access and open software, using free and license-free digital repositories and open-source web technologies. Hence, not only we’ll continue to advocate for openness, but we will continue to be inspired by it in our educational actions, practices, training and work.
So, to guarantee the sustainability of this project, we’ll keep on working as thus far, and will, at the same time, try to foster that some of the work can continue to be developed by post-graduation students, embracing the project’s values and mission too, in their thesis/dissertations/academic researches.

Information literacy and digital literacy skills are central in a networked society, and educational institutions should consider them effectively and across the curriculum. The WEIWE(R)BE project emerges exactly to address the need to develop such competences, through training and the access to information online sources, in particular Open Educational Resources, like Wikipedia, and thus foster and enhance the development of collaborative work, ICT skills and communication procedures, critically and autonomously, in formal learning situations, in which school libraries play a key role. Such work can induce information behaviors, which e.g. enable to fight fake news/misinformation and empower for inclusive attitudes. The values and mission of the project have been inspired by the principles like those currently advocated in various national and international initiatives - among others: Portuguese National Program for Digital Skills (Portugal INCoDe.2030), Portuguese National Profile of Students Leaving Compulsory School (approved by Order No. 6478/2017, July 26th), Referential Learning from the School Library, Portuguese National Open Science Policy, which stems from the definition of an European Agenda for Science and Innovation, based on the statement that “Knowledge is of All and for All”, and the United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. By contributing to the acquisition and development of multiple skills and literacies, we have been promoting the WSIS values in the educational communities we have already been able to train, focusing on secondary school levels, as well as teacher training. Indeed, our main focus starts with pupils (and their teachers and librarian teachers), because, as the literature and our experience has proved, if we start to develop ICT skills, information literacy and digital competences at an early age, it will have an important social impact and a strong benefit on society, currently and in the future, leading to a better, more conscious and participatory citizenship.