The DAISSy Research Group of Hellenic Open University (HOU) participated at the 17^th ALL DIGITAL Summit 2024, which was held in Madrid, Spain, on October 15^th, 16^th, and 17^th, 2024. The International event AD Summit is organized annually by the European organization ALL DIGITAL (AD), a pan-European Network based in Brussels representing member organizations from all over Europe. The AD network collaborates with 25,000 digital skills development centers with the aim of ensuring that every European citizen can benefit from the digital transformation. The DAISSy Research Group has been a member of the AD Network since 2016. 

The theme of the 17^th AD Summit 2024 was “Engaged Digital Citizenship: Connections for an informed and conscious society”. The programme included keynote speeches, panels, workshops and informative sessions with over 400 in person participants representing 100+ organisations from 30+ countries, and an even larger number of online participants through live broadcasts. The novelty of this year’s AD Summit was the Digital Village, an open space that hosted exhibitors and makers that was organized in 4 main quarters, which reflected the 4 thematic streams of the Summit, each focusing on a distinct aspect of engaged digital citizenship:

• Fostering a Digital Society,
• Educating on Media Literacy, Data, and AI,
• European Digital Rights, Online Safety, and Wellbeing: Guiding Policy Principles, and
• Empowering Digital Social Innovation.

HOU Professor Achilles Kameas, Director of DAISSy research group chaired the Summit organizing committee and, with the assistance of Ms Phoebe Kamea, was responsible for the conception, planning and implementation of the Digital Village. Together with a representative of the Municipality of Madrid, he inaugurated the Digital Village, and he was awarded the honor to be its first Mayor!

HOU-DAISSy “inhabited” the Digital Village with two stands, in two different “neighborhoods”: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Empowering Digital Social Innovation. Dr. Theodor Panagiotakopoulos, Mrs Eleni Georgakakou and Mrs Ioanna Marini, members of DAISSy, presented the numerous relevant projects and their results that DAISSy has implemented throughout the years.

Moreover, DAISSy participated at the sessions:

• Panel discussion with experts: “ALL DIGITAL Academy Panel – Integrating emerging technologies in education”, on which Prof. Achilles Kameas, presented the MOOC on IoT that DAISSy members developed for the project “ADA – All Digital Academy” and discussed the future of Education in the era of AI,
• Workshop “The ALL DIGITAL Academy: AI, IoT and GenAIEdu courses”, during which Dr. Theodor Panagiotakopoulos, Senior Project Manager and Researcher of HOU-DAISSy, presented the pilot delivery details and results of the All Digital Academy MOOC on Internet of Things.
• Three lightning talks on which,
• Achilles Kameas gave two presentations on “Fostering social innovation through inclusive entrepreneurship” and “Inclusive STEAM educator competency framework”, in which he presented some of the results of projects Reinser and SpicE, and
• Eleni Georgakakou, Senior Project Manager and Researcher of HOU-DAISSy, gave a presentation on “Countering online hate speech with an online game”, in which she presented the results of project LEAD Online and further discussed on the use of online games as educational tools.

Overall, the participation of DAISSy-HOU in the 17th ALL DIGITAL Summit was extremely successful. Not only the DAISSy group, but also HOU were promoted to all participants and stakeholders, especially after the great success of the Digital Village. Moreover, the members of HOU-DAISSy had the opportunity to get to know fellow AD members and establish collaborations. At the end of the event, in recognition of the excellent collaboration in organizing the Summit, Prof. Achilles Kameas presented an honorary gift to Víctor Hugo Martínez Buixeda, General Director of Fundación Esplai, a large Spanish network of third sector organizations.

The Summit sessions were attended by European Commission and Council of Europe representatives, policy makers, stakeholders in digital education, trainers, educators, representatives of civil society, and market representatives, who were actively involved and contributed experience, ideas, tools and policies. Its main findings and outcomes are summarized in the white paper Goals and recommendations for Engaged Digital Citizenship, which will be presented to the members of the ALL DIGITAL network, EC officers and other stakeholders in a special event that will take place in Brussels on December 9^th.

For more information on the 17^th ALL DIGITAL Summit 2024, as well as the recorded speeches, you can visit: https://all-digital.org/all-digital-summit-2024/.

For more information regarding the projects and actions of DAISSy:

• Website : https://daissy.eu/
• Facebook : @DAISSyResearchGroup
• Linkedin  : https://www.linkedin.com/in/daissyresearchgroup/
• X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/daissy_research
• Instagram : @daissy_researchgroup