Milestone Reached by ProjectEVOLVE!

The award winning digital literacy toolkit, ProjectEVOLVE, has reached a groundbreaking milestone of 10,000 accounts. Developed by SWGfL and the UK Safer Internet Centre, ProjectEVOLVE is used by schools and education professionals across the country, providing free resources and activities for online development and safety for children and young people.

Since being launched, it has continued to grow week by week and is regarded as an essential toolkit by many teachers and education professionals. Welcoming the exciting news of this milestone, SWGfL Online Safety Director and ProjectEVOLVE lead Ken Corish said:

“We are proud to regard this as a remarkable achievement, given the wealth of digital literacy resources there are across the education landscape.”

“We fully launched ProjectEVOLVE two years ago and its momentum has not only demonstrated it is a resource that is valued but also the data we have analysed as a result has shown it has moved learner’s digital competency forward, one school/one child at a time.”

“Whilst our recent awards were gratefully received, this project was designed to evolve. We have exciting plans for the tool’s development over the coming months. Stick with us and let’s grow together.”

Earlier this year, an analysis and assessment of ProjectEVOLVE’s data was carried out by Professor Andy Phippen at the University of Bournemouth. The aim of this was to assess and identify strengths and gaps in online safety development and knowledge in the education sector.

The findings showed that ProjectEVOLVE’s learning resources (also called impacts) had been viewed over 250,000 times, with some schools viewing resources over 500 times.

The toolkit also includes Knowledge Maps, used to assess student knowledge of online safety. The analysis showed these were used over 80,000 times.

ProjectEVOLVE has eight different strands relating to online safety and digital literacy, which includes concepts such as Self-Image, Online Relationships and Privacy and Security.

One of the key aims of the project is also to help develop critical thinking skills for children. The toolkit has over 600 separate resources exploring various topics for children across all age ranges, from very young right up until 18 years of age.

This approach establishes some of the fundamental building blocks which are needed for online development and wellbeing. This milestone, alongside the findings of the report, continue to show the need for the ProjectEVOLVE toolkit.