2020 was a crazy year for most and, nevertheless, a year of opportunity and innovation for Insight. Founder-director, Janice Richardson, was able to put to good use remote teaching strategies developed in her native Australia to support schools, industry and international institutions to meet challenges brought by the closure of schools due to Covid-19. In the annual report that you can download here, we looked back through the year’s events under the umbrella of several overarching themes that together describe the vocation of Insight: online well-being, research and innovation, and working with youth. Here you will be able to find the highlights of the previous year. We’re looking forward to what the next years will bring us!

Download the annual report here.

The Covid sanitary crisis has been a watershed experience for us all, pushing our pragmatism to the limit and leaving behind those unable to innovate. In a keynote to European academics on 12 May, Insight looked at the ingredients of entrepreneurship and the levers that make or break innovative initiatives. The session is one of a series implemented by the EdTech project, led by 4 top universities in Spain, Belgium, Finland and the UK, funded by the European Commission.

The Huawei SmartBus project is designed by Insight to deliver a high-quality, evidence-based educational programme to school students around Europe on issues of high importance in the digital age. The SmartBus sessions took place in Iceland, Denmark and Finland in the end of 2020; eventually designed as a virtual tour.

The survey results, highlight important issues that awareness raising campaigns targeting children in the three Nordic countries need to immediately take into account. Several issues concerned social media profiles like privacy, what online ‘friends’ may actually be, or ‘the real me’. The digital footprint and reputation, online bullying, respect and empathy online as well as respecting other people’s privacy were hot issues too.

The SmartBus will now be back in business in Iceland, but this time with another focus: parents. We are curious to see which results will come out and how they will differ from or accord with the view of children.

Morocco is a country on the move to strengthen online safety and cybersecurity awareness among its citizens, and Insight experts are working with the Council of Europe at the heart of the action. Already this year, an online space has been launched where citizens can learn, build awareness, report and get support through a multitude of resources and partnerships. Morocco became in February, the first country in the region to set up of a hotline portal, where citizens can report child sexual abuse content in the drive to rid the internet of this plague.  Insight is also using its innovative Digital Compass to get an overview of Moroccan children's internet habits and their digital weaknesses in order to address them appropriately.

Insight has just launched findings from 2020 Scandinavian teens in a hybrid online wellbeing project built on the innovative Insight Digital Compass and powered by Huawei within its Tech4ALL campaign. We learn that creative activities are top favourites for Icelandic teens, whereas Norwegians top the scale in technical knowledge. This shows a solid technical understanding. For 11- to 15-year-olds in Denmark and Finland, the internet seems to be more a tool for communication and entertainment. The project has enabled the Insight team to define 9 recommendations for decision-makers and awareness raisers.

Join us tomorrow to discuss the importance of the role of parents in helping their children develop the competences to become responsible digital citizens.