The Scientific Society with the distinctive title “European School Radio, The First Student Radio” was founded in 2013 by the creators of the action “European School Radio, The First Student Radio”, as a non-profit organization, which started officially in 2011. From 2021 it is based in the radio studio of the Department of Informatics and Electronic Systems Engineering of the International University of Greece in Sindo Thessaloniki, a result of our cooperation for the creation and maintenance of our infrastructure, as well as the implementation of an educational program for schools .
Our team developed an innovative online application, modeled after Communities of Practice & Learning. Based on the general philosophy of developing dynamic partnerships with other agencies, it plans activities that promote Culture in the school and highlights its key role in Media Education and Audiovisual Arts in Education, through experiential workshops, training, artistic events, which promote collaboration, interaction, communication and co-production (educational radio production programs, Student Radio Festival and International Student Music-Radio Competition “Make it Heard”). The actions are organized by the members of the Society, in the context of volunteering, through which the cultivation of Media Literacy, Critical, and Digital Literacy is achieved. The members of the Scientific Society are responsible for the operation of the schools’ collective online radio station, which broadcasts non-stop 24/7 all year round. The web application (http://europeanschoolradio.eu/ ) offers the educational community an automated process of programming and broadcasting broadcasts in a participatory radio program. It allows listening in continuous flow (live streaming) and listening on demand (podcast) , when a production has already been broadcast. It hosts live and recorded shows, in different types of shows in terms of duration and subject matter. The online station maintains a rich podcast archive that reaches 10,000 productions, a number that grows every school year. For the record, our organization owns the exclusive related rights.
European School Radio provides a safe environment for music broadcasting as it has secured a non-exclusive music license from the GEA-GRAMMO Collective Management Organisations, enabling students to become radio content producers using the music of their choice.
The podcast is being used at a high increasing rate as an educational tool and there has been an effort to utilize it in teaching in other countries. We are in the era of “Education 3.0” and interactive online radio can develop “the capacity for collaboration, creativity and social innovation” and be an important resource for fulfilling digital citizenship goals.
Through the radio production process, students:
- acquire skills in the proper utilization of the electronic sources from which the information comes
- adopt a new attitude and behavior towards news and information with a critical spirit and journalistic perception
- develop skills related to new technologies and Media and Information Literacy (digital and audio-visual literacy)
- understand that as individuals they have duties towards the community and to become active citizens, as through the production of audio material they will act as peer educators
European School Radio officially joins the educational process in the following ways:
- By using it as a tool for disseminating activities, producing radio broadcasts that promote the project being developed in a school context
- Through the individual cognitive subjects for teaching thematic units in Language, Informatics, Music, Theater Education, etc.
Cross-curricular through programs involving different subjects of specializations in the school or in different schools in inter-school projects eTwinning, Erasmus etc. - In the Skills Labs, as it is among the approved programs of the Institute of Educational Policy, in the context of the new action “Platform 21+: Skills Workshops”, included in the axis “Create and Innovate – Creative Thinking and Initiative” and in the sub-themes “Create, innovate, undertake” and “New Technologies”. Student Radio is featured among the approved educational programs on the official website Educational Material of the Institute of Educational Policy.
European Dimension
In 2014, he received a Distinction at the European Medea Awards Competition for his action as “highly recommended for use in education”.
In 2016, our organization coordinated the European KA2 “NEStOR” program, in partnership with Aalborg University in Denmark, ITYE Diophantos, the Pedagogical Institute of Cyprus, and two schools from Greece and Lithuania. As part of the program, a platform was developed that automated the process of school participation in Student Radio. From that year, the official collaboration with the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute began, as a co-organizer in Cyprus for the “Make It Heard” Competition, with the result that it became transnational and more and more Cypriot schools participated since the 3rd year of its implementation. action.
In 2017 our organization was invited to participate in the event celebrating the school radio Delta FM (https://www.deltafm.fr/), in Poitiers, France, which was organized as part of the International Week of the Lycée Pilote Innovant International and the Experimental School of the University of Athens represented the European School Radio network as one of the ten school radio delegations from all over Europe. In the same year, the Greek Deputy Minister of Education at the meeting of the Ministers of Education (EYCS) for issues related to the Education and Youth Sector included the European School Radio in the educational actions that strengthen active citizenship and provide students with a stronger voice, but also the unique action that encourages the cultivation of young people’s literacy in the new media and technological reality.
In 2018, a new European KA2 program was launched entitled “Social Radio 2.0- The European School Radio & Podcasting Community for Active Citizenship Education”, which aims to create the next versions of the European School Radio application as a unique community- social media students and teachers in Europe involved in radio and podcasting.
In 2020, in an international competition for websites “EU Web Awards 2020”, European School Radio received a Special Commendation for the attractive design of its web application, aimed at a young audience.
In 2022 the “Make It Heard” Song and Radio Message Competition became international and schools from Croatia and Spain actively participated with the slogan “Youth for Peace” by sending in their native language or English student creations while declaring their participation to attend in the 7th European School Radio Festival in Zakynthos, in which delegations from 2 Croatian schools finally took part. At the same time, schools in Romania, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria also signed up for the radio.
In 2023, it actively participates in the Agora du Mouvement of the French organization “Les Francas” (http://www.francas.asso.fr/), in the context of which, through a youth worker mobility program, European School Radio will inspire young people who are active in education. Also, a collaboration has already been developed with the organization “Les Francas”, who approached us as the only school radio station in Europe, and future partnerships in the field of youth radio production are planned. European School Radio promotes the uniqueness of its online applications and potential partners seek their participation in a single information system. In the same direction, we were approached by Italian journalists from the Media Literacy Foundation (https://www.medialiteracy.it/) to plan joint actions for journalism in schools asking us to support them in the subject of applications.
For detailed information visit the website of the Scientific Society https://society.europeanschoolradio.eu/
