So, now that we got some rest after the trip from yesterday, everyone is finally ready for our last day here. Some people had difficulties waking up in the morning, so we decided to wake them up with the help of a megaphone and a screaming Adam.

We started our day as usually with a breakfast and then had a workshop about Internet Addiction, held by Diana Stanculeanu, a psychologist from Save the Children Romania. At the end of the day in the feedback session we actually found out that the volunteers thought this was one of the most interesting and filled up with new and useful information workshop of the week.

But, before getting to the feedback session, maybe you are wondering why they thought so.

Well, during the discussion we learned how to recognize the symptoms of an addiction, especially computer addiction. Also we found out that we are surrounded by too many addicted people, who need help. These people put aside their real lives and forget almost completely about human interaction which is truly important for our fulfillment as a human individual. Thus, this is a very important issue nowadays that needs to be held under control.

Moving on, we had one hour to finish and hand over the complete state of our projects before lunch. Everyone was excited and nervous at the same time, not only because of the work that this project required but also because some of us had been asked to take part in interviews.

Following the lunch we took part in the last workshop of this beautiful Summer Camp. Partly sad because we are gradually approaching the end of this awesome week, and on the other hand happy because it’s the last one and we are pretty tired, we gathered in the room ready for it. It was a long but fun workshop. We talked about the Youth Panel and we made a comparison between the tools used in Romania and the other countries that took part in the Summer School. Also we summarized everything we have done during this past week and had a feedback session with Georgiana Rosculet.

The last but not the least was the awarding ceremony for the best project of the Camp. The three winning teams have been awarded with prizes and then, the night continued with the revealing of the Secret friend in a very relaxing atmosphere.

Finally, we went to the goodbye party and had a lot of fun. We are surely going to miss each other so much after spending so many special and beautiful moments together…

Bernardo Ferreira (Portuguese Youth Panelist) and Bianca Meszaros (Romanian Volunteer)

The story starts in a wonderful morning in the middle of July. Because of the heavy working schedule of the previous day I fell asleep at 2am in the morning working on my project about Safer Internet.

I was about to skip breakfast if it wasn’t for Ovidiu’s well thought advice who asked Joanna (Portugal) and Adam (Germany) to “kindly” wake us up (me and Mihai) using the megaphone, which sounds like a thousand police sirens.

After taking our sweet revenge, by pouring cold water on Joanna and Adam we finally got to the table, where we found out that we only have about 5 minutes to eat our breakfast before the bus to Bran will leave.

We almost forgot about the trip to Bran that the coordinators organized for the volunteers to have a better look on what Romania has to offer. The trip was described by our coordinator Ovidiu as “legendary”, which also turned out to be true.

Firstly, we went to Bran to discover more about count Dracula, the famous vampire. Despite my initial belief, it turns out that Dracula wasn’t even a vampire. It’s only a legend that came along with Bram Stoker’s novel and now brings lots of tourists to Bran’s castle.  I was even more amazed when I found out that Dracula was actually a very cruel ruler, which went by the name of Vlad Tepes. His well known “thirst for blood” comes from the way he used to punish those who betrayed him.

After this very enlightening experience we continued with our adventure to another place. We went to Brasov, one of the most beautiful mountain cities from Romania.

After arriving at Brasov we visited the Black Church, one of the oldest churches in Europe. Although I have to admit that it was pretty interesting, dear reader, you have to agree with me that a church is still a church.

Hours passed by without me even noticing. We shopped, then we shopped some more and then we went shopping a bit more. After feeling a bit tired, we stopped at a traditional coffee shop to “recharge our batteries”. These are the moments that make life worthwhile.

Like all good things in life have an end, our little trip did also. When we arrived at the Mama Cozonacilor’s camp we were tired, sleepy and hungry. After we ate our dinner like a pack of wolves which were devouring their prey, we costumed ourselves in something which was related to Internet and technology. So, we had many interesting costumes like laptops, viruses, smiley faces, spam, blog etc. We had to present our costumes in front of the others and we also had to create a theatre play, in which we had to involve all the persons who were costumed which actually turned out to be a very fun and creative way to interact with one another. As a prize for our plays, we received safer internet t-shirts, from Save the Children Romania.

Sebi Patulea (Romanian volunteer) and Ancuta Coman (Romanian volunteer)

We are going to talk about what we have done today in the camp. Basically we had three workshops.

In that morning we have started with a discussion about online privacy held by Bogdan Manolea, the representative of the Association for Internet and Technology. So, what is privacy?

Generally it’s our stuff. What we mean about privacy has to do with our details in our lives. Importantly privacy is a personal subjective condition. It’s our photos, our personal details like our name, age, birth place etc. Moreover it’s our right to say “leave me alone”.

We’ve also talked about search engines. An interesting fact that intrigued us from yesterday’s workshop is that Google’s search engine actually stores all our search queries among other personal data. It was also mentioned that all the data will be deleted only if 18 months have passed from our last search on Google.

In addition we’ve talked about encryption and how to decrypt the content. We have to replace every letter plus 13 in vocal. We’ve seen a few videos about privacy and we were amazed of how easy a hacker can break a password and steal your personal dates.

If you want more details about privacy you can find it on www.privacy.net

The next training we attended was held by Mihai Olaru, the representative of the Romanian Hotline.

What is the Hotline? It’s a chat room where you can report an abuse on the internet. In Romania since February, when the Romanian Hotline was launched, we had about 300 abuses. So it’s important to have a place where we can report abuses.

The workshop of the day was represented the resolution goal for the European Parliament.

At this workshop the participants were debating the suggestions to improve the program and the internet in general. The suggestions will be integrated in the final resolution which will be transmitted to the European Parliament in order to change the most important issues on the online safety as we, the European Youth, see it.

What can we do? We can make a declaration which will be send to EP, make a positive paper of Summer school.

What the content will be?

• Positive, it must have prospects
• Suggestions about the program related to E-Safety
• Legislative proposal
• Major concerns
• Means of involving youngsters

In the evening, Mama Cozonacilor was visited by a group of traditional Romanian dancers who set up a show for us and afterwards invited us to dance with them. Even though we didn’t catch all the steps, we had a lot of fun.

By Mihai Botezatu (Romanian volunteers) and Androula Mavrou (Cyprus)

After the previous day’s disco party most of the participants were tired and had to be waked up by organizers with the help of a megaphone. Those who we’re already up were awaken completely and the breakfast could start.

The first event of the day was the presentation of Kaspersky Lab led by Stefan Tanase (Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab). We had an insight of the size of Kaspersky Lab and their work .There were useful tips and advices told by Stefan and by the audience. Some of them were:

• Always keep a backup
• Use a safe and complex password
• Always double check weird content (emails, PDF’s, message boxes)

The next activity in the schedule was writing projects. Every participant found their groups of 5 and started working. Currently all topics are secrets of each group in order to keep it more original. And after 1 hour (or even more for some groups) everyone enjoyed a nice meal and a bit of their free time by going for a walk or taking a short nap.

Then the Kaspersky Day continued with a discussion on digital pollution. All the participants of the workshop were divided in 3 groups and each group had to think of as many digital pollution types they could and some included:

• Malware
• Viruses (Trojans, Worms)
• SPAM
• Phishing
• Keyloggers
• Flooders
• Chatroullete
• Pop-ups
• Corrupted downloads

After a short coffee break the workshop was continued and multiple aspects of parental control software were discussed from 3 different points of view (Teachers, parents, children). It was concluded that parental control might damage the relationship between parents and their children if not handled with trust form both sides and that it would be best for children under 8 years to protect them from harmful content online.

Since the workshops had ended for the day there was some free time for everyone to enjoy the fresh country side air, talk, play volleyball, ping pong, board games or just relax.

The Kaspersky day closing event started with a minor delay but when everybody gathered the Kaspersky “guys” presented their song that they wrote and a video with pictures of previous year’s camp. After their big surprise classical hit songs were played and everyone was singing along and some campers “took on the stage” and showed what they got. There were popular songs played like:

• The Who – Behind Blue Eyes
• Sex Pistols – Anarchy In UK
• The Beatles – People
• Kansas – Hotel California

And some Romanian songs like:

• Vama Veche – Epilogue
• Vama Veche – Nu am chef azi

From the expected on hour of singing the event extended into late night because everyone was so excited, specially thanks to the Kaspersky “guitar guy” Ionut.

So another day in the Summer School in Romania was concluded and we can’t wait to see what is prepared for us next.

Summer School Safer Internet

Maybe you were wondering what this Summer School is all about. Many of us did not know this before we came here and now you are all about to find out!  Join us on our journey in which not only will we make new friends but also learn more about e-safety.

So let’s start! A perfect summer school has to be unforgettable! The best ingredients for this are: a beautiful location- „Mama Cozonacilor” – Bran, Romania, with green landscapes and blue sky, amazing people from 9 countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Poland, Portugal, Romania and great trainers.

The first training was about blogging. Our trainer, Chinezu (the ChineseMan) gave us an inside view of the Romanian blogosphere and revealed us some of the responsibilities that each person who blogs, on a daily basis, should bear in mind. For one hour and a half we all interacted with him and in the end we discovered that both, Internet and blogging are good things and great tools. The choice of deciding what is right or wrong online is in our hands. Chinezu was impressed to by our involvement and he wrote about our Summer Camp here: http://chinezu.eu/2010/07/12/me-as-a-devils-advocate-in-safer-internet-debate/

“It was really interesting, funny and educational” said Austris from Latvia.

Between trainings we witnessed a special moment, the Awarding Ceremony of the Safer Internet Day Quizz. There are three winners from Romania, Poland and Lithuania: Adrian Orlandea, Olaf Tycjan Kowalski and Domante Tribuisyte. The winners received a special trophy handed by Janice Richardson from the European Commission, Sanda Foamete from Microsoft Romania and the representative of Liberty Global. After congratulating them we moved on to our activities.

”I was really excited and happy for being awarded this prize. It was a wonderful experience and I can’t wait to attend the future competitions.” said Adrian form Romania, winner of the Safer Internet Daz Quizz.

The second training of the day was held by the Microsoft team. In addition to the previous one, they talked about some technical details that should make blogs and sites better and more visited. As technology evolved, new tools as Sylverlight, PhotoSynth and IIS Media Services were developed in order to transform online life into a more vivid one.

„It was very interesting because I’ve never seen these products before. I will definitely try to learn some more about it” said Ivan from Bulgaria.

We came on this camp not only to have fun, but especially to do something about the risks we might encounter on the Internet. In order to do this, we attended a session about projects design moderated by George Roman from Save the Children Romania, the national Coordinator of the project. During the next four days we will split in teams of maximum 5 members from two different countries at least. Divided like this we will have to cooperate and make relevant and achievable projects. The best three projects will be sent to the European Commission. Moreover, the authors will be awarded with prizes provided by Kaspersky Lab.

Adam from Germany thinks that this session helps us „improve our ability to write projects. Every project one writes is better than the previous one. This helps us set up aims and goals for a Safer Internet.”

After a full day, there was time to relax. Before the end of the night we played and ice-breaking game. Youngsters had to talk about certain topics for 5 minutes. This was a great opportunity for all of us to interact, to get to know each other better by sharing personal opinions regarding different subjects. The topics were very relevant, we discussed about cultural aspects, things important in our life and, last but not least, online safety. The day ended with a party. A member of the Kaspersky Lab team took the role of the DJ for the night and put on the best songs for us to dance and have fun.

We will keep you posted with everything that happens here. Do not miss it!

Sigur.info Summer School 2010

European youth speaks out in Romania on Safer Internet for Children

We are the RO in EUROPE!

The first edition of the European Summer School on Safer Internet for Children, organised in collaboration with INSAFE,  within the SIGUR.INFO programme by the Romanian Consortium coordinated by Save the Children Romania, will be held between 11th – 17th of July in Mama Cozonacilor, Brasov County.

Save the Children Romania strongly supports child participation activities in all areas of concern for children. Therefore, The Safer Internet Center in Romania feel that Internet safety and technology are primordial issues for which children and youngsters should be consulted. Most of the times , they are the ones who benefit from the new emerging  tools, they are the ones who see first the new trends; Basically, they are the ones who grow up along with the online environment. Internet and Web 2.0 are totally un-localized mediums, which pose the same challenges all around the globe, to children and adults from different social specters. That is why, this year, we will bring together participants from Romania, Germany, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Portugal and Latvia to spend a week in the lovely area of Bran and “speak out” on the major topics of debate around Safer Internet. This is also the reason why this page is in English J. The participants are all youngsters who have activated in the Youth Panel of their respective countries, giving feedback on programme activities and getting involved in informative sessions.

The need for a common, globalized approach, in an already globalized world is vital. Therefore, the youth panelists will benefit from trainings and workshops where you will be able to interact with each other and with specialists on specific areas of Internet safety. Speakers from Kaspersky Lab, Save the Children Romania, APTI, Microsoft as well as the well-known blogger Chinezu, will all involve the children in discussions and activities that will try to establish key measures to be taken as well as trending security threats. At the end of the Summer School, we hope to develop, with their support, a position paper with their opinions on the event and the suggestions concerning the programme.

Moreover, in the second day of the camp (12^th) of July, they will all participate in a award Ceremony hosted by Insafe, the European coordinator of all the nodes implementing the programme, for the Safer Internet Quizz. More information regarding this issue will come soon.

The main sponsors of the one-week event will be Kaspersky Lab Romania, who have also supported the National Summer School in 2009, and have proved to be a trusty ally in our work for a Safer Internet. Support will be also given by Microsoft Romania, and INSAFE.

So, stay tuned in order to find out more regarding this unique event!

Felicitari castigatorilor. Acestia sunt urmatorii

Categoria 10-15 ani

• Perioada 9-22 martie: Renunta sa navighezi non-stop pe motoarele de cautare - Robert Olteanu
• Perioada 23 martie-9 aprilie: Experiente interesante traite pe Internet – Togan Sanziana

Premiile castigate: cana Kaspersky, minge relaxare Kaspersky, sapca si sticker Microsoft, prelungitor USB Sigur.info si o carte

• Powerpointul Experiente interesante traite pe Internet a fost desemnat cel mai bun proiect pentru ultima luna a concursului la categoria celor mici.

Premiile oferite de sponsori sunt: O rama foto digitala de la UPC, un LifeCam VX 3000 de la Microsoft, card de memorie Data Traveler King oferit de Cosmote, suport de curs alaturi de voucherul de certificare ECDL – modulul Webstarter, licenta antivirus Kaspersky 2010.

Categoria 16-21 ani

• Perioada 9-22 martie: Dependenti sau nu de Internet? - Ramona Georgiana
• Perioada 23 martie-9 aprilie: Schimbarea esti tu! – Catargiu Simona Mihaela

Premiile voastre sunt: cana Kaspersky, minge relaxare Kaspersky, sapca si sticker Microsoft, prelungitor USB Sigur.info si o carte

• Proiectul care a castigat in aceasta luna este Schimbarea esti tu!

Simona va primi o rama foto digitala de la UPC, o camera foto Samsung ES15 si un card de memorie Data Traveler Kingston oferite de Cosmote, un LifeChat Lx3000 de la Microsoft si binecunoscutul suport de curs alaturi de voucherul de certificare ECDL si licenta antivirus Kaspersky 2010.

Inca o data felicitari castigatorilor si tuturor participantilor

Dupa cum bine stiti,  concursul a luat sfarsit, dar asteptam in continuare parerile si articolele voastre creative privind utilizarea in siguranta a Internetului.

Keep in touch

Proiect transmis de Enculescu Marian, CN Victor Babes, Bucuresti

Aventura nedorita1 Enculescu Marian

Am primit pe adresa blog-ului o prezentare interesanta si … “enciclopedica” in acelasi timp. Va lasam pe voi sa intelegeti de ce

Experiente interesante traite pe internet

Proiect Trimis de Ţogan Sînziana si prietenii sai.

Proiect realizat de Stroe Simona, CN Victor Babes

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