European Award for Best Content for Kids - national competition in Portugal

The Portuguese National Competition ended at the end of October and 44 submissions were made into 3 categories (adults non-professional, adults professional and young people individuals). 

It was interesting to see that the majority of the entries were submitted by teachers in schools, after a special reinforcement was made through the school libraries network. Despite the effort to engage young people and professionals their participation was in a very small scale. In the case of the latter, the PT SIC personally made requests for the participation of some really good websites, but they did not abide by the request, eventually not recognising added value to the European Competition. It will be something to take into consideration in future editions of the competition.

The following entries were declared the winners for each of the above mentioned categories: 

Kookie Centum Square – Adults Professionals 

Three aliens (Tin, Sigma and Elf) had to make an emergency landing on planet Earth. To repair their spaceship they will have to find materials and overcome a series of obstacles. To help them pass each of the obstacles the player will need to use logical thinking, mathematical knowledge and memory schemes. 

School of Magic (Escola da Magia) – Adults Non professional 

In the School of Magic players enrol as Wizardry apprentices. To progress in the fields of magic they need to be successful in many educational and good-humoured games: learn how to fly on a broomstick, discover mysterious places, play with math, recycle with ghosts, master the weather, tell tales, form alliances and conquer a place amongst the most powerful wizards.  
 
  
Learn English - Young People Individuals 

This game is destined to small children aged 6-8 consists of the display of several images and guessing the word that connects to the image displayed. There are three levels of the game and within each, eight images to link to the word that describes them. An image will appear each time with eight words around, the player will have to click on the right one.

SITESTAR.PT COMPETITION

DECO (Portuguese Association for Consumer Protection) and DNS.PT are promoting the SITESTAR.PT COMPETITION that challenges creative and entrepreneur youngsters from Portugal to develop sites and blogs with original content in Portuguese language. The digital spaces to be created within this bid must comply with the rules of security, safety and privacy, as well as the applicable law on intellectual property and related rights legislation.

The Registration for the 1st stage of the competition is open until January 14, 2014 in 3 categories: knowledge, social and economic entrepreneurship, arts music and sports.

Young people between 12 and 18 years can compete individually or in teams, always accompanied by a teacher, preferably the ICT classes’ teacher or the head master of the class. The best 60 ideas receive a .PT domain, accommodation, email address and website creation tools. The authors of the 6 best sites or blogs will be rewarded with a tablet and are eligible to the International Competition «Dot Award».

The checklist produced within the POSCON Thematic network will be used to guarantee the quality of the content as positive content for children whenever applicable to the basic idea of the proposal from the youngsters, i.e., when children are also target publics.

The Sitestar.pt Competition is an initiative from DECO (Portuguese Association for Consumer Protection) and DNS.PT with the support from the Directorate General for Education (DGE), the Portuguese Safer Internet Centre (Internet Segura), IGAC, GDA, INPI, SPA and ANPRI.

European Award For Best Content For Kids – Public voting has started!

The European Award For Best Content For Kids is a competition that highlights quality content for 4-12 year-old children and is organised by the INSAFE Safer Internet Awareness network and the European Commission's Safer Internet Programme.  
POSCON was intensively involved in the preparations for the award and helped shaping the main features of the competition. The first round of the competition, the national levels, have now come to an end, from now on the national winners will compete on European Level. 
The public voting has been launched on 9 December 2013, and until 3 January 2014 the public is called to vote for their favorite entry on www.bestcontentaward.eu/winners. On 7 January 2014, the European Jury will meet in Brussels to select the winners of the Best Content Award. The European winners will be invited to the European Award Ceremony in Brussels on Safer Internet day 11 February 2014.

Media Literacy Lab, University of Mainz, Germany

In June 2013 POSCON cooperated with the Media Literacy Lab (MLAB) of University of Mainz in Germany and their open online course "Good Apps for Children" (http://medialiteracylab.de/): The open and free of charge online course had 250 participants (students, scholars, media educators, providers of apps, industry, parents) working over three weeks on a criteria set to evaluate children's apps. The organization team of MLAB provided the POSCON checklist criteria for positive content as a basis for the work done. 

At the beginning of the course POSCON was presented in an online video conference to all participants (in German: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAVAy1dNW3I). Two POSCON network members were involved as coaches of the project working groups and guided their work on guidelines specifically for apps. Throughout the course the participants developed a database providing reviews of children's apps based on the checklist criteria (www.gute-apps-fuer-kinder.de). They also translated their checklist in to English to allow feedback by POSCON network members and to also include English reviews in the database.

At the end of the course they held a final live event presenting their results to POSCON. Three POSCON network members participated in this live video conference with the organizers of MLAB and gave their feedback on the results and discussed them (in English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A77mEhFldjs).

Cinekid Festival 2013, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Cinekid (http://www.cinekid.nl/) is the world’s largest media festival for children organized in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 

Every year more than 50.000 children are given the opportunity to visit over 500 media productions selected by the festival: feature films, children’s documentaries, short films, animations, television series and single productions, cross media productions, interactive installations and set-ups as well as workshops.

The media festival is accompanied by Cinekid for Professionals, a 5-day industry programme aimed at (international) professionals working within the field of children's media. 

The event brings together broadcasters, networks, entertainment companies, distributors, producers, directors, academics and journalists. Within the seminar "Apps for Children" organized by Kennisnet, Mijn Kind Online and Cinekid on October 25th, national and international experts spoke about high quality apps for children in the entertainment and education app market in the Netherlands and Europe. 

POSCON was invited to present the expert network and introduced the audience producers of children's content as well as teachers and librarians to specific criteria regarding good apps for children within the recently published guidelines "Checklist & Concrete Criteria for Positive Content" by POSCON. All of the speakers' presentations including Nicole Seymour, producer for BBC and Disney, and Lidia de Reese representing POSCON and offering a perspective on apps for children in Germany, can be watched online in English: http://www.kennisnet.nl/themas/mediawijsheid/hoe-maak-je-een-goede-app-voor-kinderen/.