The HY Worker Petra Mecnerova guides children through their world, whereas she is lighting up their way. She embarks with them on an adventurous voyage through the waters of the Internet.
Although children have been around the internet world ‘since their birth’, there are things they should be strongly warned against.
The Adventures of the Internet Seas is a program intended for children who were mostly born already into an age marked by cyberspace and its influence. Petra came with today’s program into the 5th grade of one local elementary school. It is obvious at the first glance, that these children, who are about ten years old, orientate themselves very well in terms related to the Internet, the computer world or the social networks.
Although the topic is strictly virtual, under the baton of experienced HY Worker, children can also experience cooperation in real small groups or the movement games that are related to the topic. “Places will switch everyone who has Facebook…” or the subsequent challenge: “Places will switch those, who has already communicated on the Internet about personal matters with someone, whom he has never met in real life…” goes deeper and deeper into the essence of the program.
Not above cooperation in small groups. Petra sets the task, divides the children into teams, and we can to start.
The essence of the program – among other things – is the reflection aiming at children: Do you have control over what you do and who you communicate with on the Internet, or do you feel lost and out of control if your own behavior? The different topics of the program, or the different “seas”, are directed towards this fundamental question. These include, for example, the sea of communications, the sea of media sharing, the sea of games or the sea of shops. Petra discusses each of these with the children gradually and guides her listeners to think critically and be careful in the seas that we have no control over.
Something is often ‘bitten on’ during the program. During the break is offered the space to return to these ‘bitten on’ questions, problems, topics…
A large part of the program was filled up by presentation of small groups of children. Their task was to describe and think to the end an unfinished story related to each of the subtopics in the program including dangers associated with them. The stories are powerful and often also real. It is great that Petra did not serve the situations to the children ‘on a golden platter’, but that they could think it through to the end by themselves. The children also came up with different solutions together.
Mainly thanks to the action character and interest of the program, the two hours of the program pass like water, and when Petra announces at the end that the bell is about to ring and we will have to pack up, there is a half-desperate exclamation from the crowd, “But we are enjoying it…” This sentence, pronounced by mouth of children, then even for me as an independent listener, sumps up how I felt at the program and how I experienced it through.
Martin Stavjanik, the Authorized Supervisor of the HY Program workers
