Estonia has a high rate of internet usage, with 79% of Estonians using the internet. The country's national curriculum has incorporated digital competences and ICT education since the 1980s. Current curriculum focuses on ensuring students are aware of potential online threats and how to avoid them. Research has found gaps between adults' guidelines for online safety and how children actually behave online. Teachers' digital competences are also an area of focus, with standards and tools being developed to promote safe, legal and ethical online behavior among educators. A new e-safety research lab will open in 2013 at Tallinn University to study cyber security and behavioral online safety issues.

1. Digital Competences:
Trends & Issues in Estonia
Mart Laanpere
Head of the Centre for Educational Technology
Tallinn University (TLU)

2. Estonia: an Internet country
• 79% of Estonians use Internet (in EU: 75%)
EuroStat, Dec 2012

3. ICT in national curriculum in Estonia
• 1987: unified Soviet curriculum, programming as
“the second literacy”
• 1996: pragmatic turn, informatics as an elective
subject, ICT as cross-curricular theme
• 2002: ICT & Media as cross-curricular theme, 11
competences, national test in 9th grade
• 2011: key competence; elective informatics
courses in 5th, 8th, 10th, 11th grade; cross-
curricular themes ‘Technology & Innovation’,
‘Information environment’, ‘Safety and security’

4. Digital competences of pupils
• The aims of informatics as elective subject in
grades 5 and 8: “is aware of and knows how to
avoid potential threats caused by ICT to
his/her health, privacy, and personal data”
• Cross-curricular theme ‘Technology &
Innovation’: understands and evaluates
critically positive and negative influence of ICT

5. Comparing e-safety strategies
of adults and children
Lorenz, B., Laanpere, M., Kikkas, K. (2012) Comparing Children’s E-safety Strategies
with Guidelines Offered by Adults, European Journal of E-Learning 10(3)

6. Teachers’ digital competences
• The new Professional Qualification Standard for
teachers is in public negotiation phase
• ECDL vs. ISTE NETS for Teachers as definition of
teachers’ digital competences
• Who needs it and for what?
• DigiMina: online tool for self- and peer-
assessment of teachers' digital competences
• E-safety in NETS: Promote and Model Digital
Citizenship and Responsibility
– Advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use
of digital information and technology
ISTE NETS for Teachers 2008: http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers

7. E-safety research lab in TLU
• Will be established in 2013, 3 researchers
• Cyber security vs. behavioral e-safety: focus on
the weakest link in the e-safety chain (one
between the computer and the chair)
• Our research topics:
– bottom-up e-safety policy development in schools,
– analysing the real-life e-safety incidents,
– changes in schools' e-safety policies in the context
of 1-1 computing and BYOD
– e-safety awareness in digital competences