Sažetak
The aim of this invited speech is to introduce effective practices of digital empowerment through e-Service-Learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The overall purpose of e-service learning is to motivate students to make positive social change, while the purpose of digital empowerment is to make an individual fit to the digital technology, placing that individual at the center of teaching and drawing upon his personal experiences to engage him.
e-Service-Learning (e-SL) is a form of service-learning where the instructional component, the service component or both occur online and has only recently come into focus as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In Croatia, e-SL was implemented in the academic field of information sciences, where robotics and Minecraft Education were used by university students to digitally empower the target group - upper elementary school children, but also to teach them foreign language and cultural heritage. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and in the wake of the earthquake that hit the country, all e-SL projects were implemented as extreme SL, where both learning and service occurred entirely online. The community partners in e-SL projects were city libraries as information and cultural centers that had a need to promote the new collection available for young users (micro:bit and Maqueen robots). As a result, the target group that used robots developed the interest in programming and robotics, skills of logical thinking and reasoning, problem solving, communication and basic foreign language skills. Minecraft Education has deepened pupils’ interest in the cultural heritage, since they learned Glagolitic script (a main source for understanding Croatian literary, cultural and national identity), while navigating the Minecraft Education platform contributed to the improvement of their digital skills.
Apart from that , the e-SL projects met the following needs:
• university teachers were digitally empowered learning how to use emerging technologies,
• university students were equipped with new skills and sensitized towards digital education needs of the school children.
Ključne riječi
e-service learning; digital empowerment; Croatia