The 4th edition of the European Digital Skills Awards closed this week with the official announcement and award ceremony: 6 outstanding projects were chosen by a jury of 5 experts in digital skills in different fields.
But who had the hard task of choosing? The Digital Skills and Jobs Platform team pre-evaluated the 330 applications received, based on the criteria that were published in the awards guidelines: impact, sustainability and scalability, inclusion and accessibility, innovation and originality. Also, the Platform team pre-evaluated the clarity of the presentation of the applications and the impact of their outreach and communications actions – having a great project is not very useful if it does not reach its target public.
Finally, 28 projects were pre-selected as finalists in the 5 award categories, and the jury members had to select their winners. The quality of the applications was very high and the variety of projects had the jury busy, but during the final meeting the ideas were clear. There was a tie in the Education category: there the jury decided to award two projects of very different scale, to make more visible how operations of different scale and budget can both reach important goals in educating Europeans in digital skills.
Meet the Jury
Alice Bougnères, SQUARE
Alice holds two Master’s degrees, in Public Law from Paris II, and Public Affairs from Sciences Po Paris. For 7 years, she was the Deputy Director of the education branch of the Montaigne Institute which aimed at preventing school failure in deprived neighbourhoods. She is the author of Au service de l’instruction pour tous, a study on education of disadvantaged youth. Since 2019, she is running SQUARE, a NGO dedicated to fostering critical thinking and to combating misinformation among underprivileged youth.
Keith Quille, TU Dublin
Keith Quille is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Enterprise Computing and Digital Transformation at TU Dublin. Before TU Dublin, Keith was a PLC and second-level teacher for almost a decade. Keith was recently an Expert on the development of the European Commission Guidelines on the use of AI and Data in Education and Training, and his PhD was in using AI to predict students at risk of failing or dropping out of introductory programming courses. All of Keith’s research and activities are in computing education research and computing outreach from primary to third level. Keith is involved in developing national formal curricula at the primary level. Keith was co-chair of ITiCSE 2022 (ACM).
Stefano Kluzer (Joint Research Centre and All Digital)
An economist (Bocconi University, Milan) with a Ph.D. at the Information Systems Dept of the London School of Economics, Stefano Kluzer has worked in policy-oriented research and consultancy on information society, e-government, digital competence development and inclusion at regional (Emilia Romagna), national (Italy) and European level (Joint Research Center Seville and various EU-funded projects). In recent years, he has focused on the development and implementation of the European Digital Competence Framework (DigComp), as co-author of various study reports: DigComp into Action Guide, DigComp at Work, DigCompSAT report, and the latest framework’s version, the DigComp 2.2 update.
Veronica Stefan (Council of Europe and Digital Citizens Romania)
Veronica is a professional with more than 17 years of experience, working intensively at the intersection of education, policy and new technologies.
She has been engaged in a variety of international initiatives, from research to public policy, capacity building or project management, while providing expertise for different stakeholders such as the Council of Europe, UN agencies, European Union bodies, as well as many other national and international private and public entities.
Her recent activity includes contributions to digital policies, research on the social impact of artificial intelligence & new technologies and development of digital competences for various professionals. Veronica is originally from Romania, where she has founded a series of non-profits, including the first Romanian Digital Think-Tank; starting with 2021 she leads a series of international partnerships related to digital transformation and youth participation on behalf of the Estonian National Agency for Erasmus+ and European Solidary Corps.
Juliane von Reppert Bismark, Lie Detectors
Juliane founded Lie Detectors, an award-winning non-profit that trains professional journalists to help children and teachers across Europe tell fact from fake online and understand how ethical journalism works. She directs the organisation’s strategy and development and has advised the European Commission as a member of expert groups dedicated to fighting disinformation and embedding digital literacy across the EU. Juliane represents Lie Detectors as a member of numerous media literacy evaluation and advisory committees. Lie Detectors has been cited internationally by governments, EU, EP and the OECD as model practice in promoting news literacy and resilience to disinformation. An award-winning journalist, Juliane previously wrote for MLex, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Newsweek, Spiegel Online, the Toronto Globe and Mail and others, reporting from Europe and the US as well as from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Arctic. She is an alumnus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York.