Traffic safety work through media education at Imatra 

Road safety habits and attitudes are learned as a child, when it is more certain that they will carry through to youth and adulthood. By influencing elementary school children, the road safety habits of young people can also be ensured.

Objectives

The goal of the work is to try a different, more inclusive way of traffic education in schools. Through media education, the aim is to find more effective means and new enthusiasm for traffic education work.

Pupils are awakened to think about the safest way to move with different modes of transport and in different types of environments. The most important goal is to find the means, how  
in the future, traffic education work will be carried out in Imatra elementary schools in order to improve the safety of young people.  

Key measures

In the project, students design traffic education videos, which are worked on with professionals into finished videos. The students participating in the work learn about safe movement and the videos reach out to other schoolchildren. The videos made and presented by the students themselves will serve as traffic education tools in the future. The project provides information on combining media education and traffic education in school

Finding out the starting situation and recruiting schoolchildren

• elective subject groups are established
• survey for students about traffic safety

An experiment in media education

• The students of the elective group come up with ideas and make videos about safe movement with the help of professionals.  

Impact assessment and operating model 

• Survey for students about their experiences 
• Survey for parents about experiences 
• Teachers' and media educators' view of success 
• The operating model for the future is planned together with various parties  

Project results 

• Traffic education videos have been prepared for schools, which can be shown to students in the coming years as well.  
• Information has been obtained on how combining media education and traffic education works. 
• The students of the optional subject have received effective traffic education through media education and a plan has been made for showing videos in the future.  
• Information on combining traffic education and media education has been obtained in Imatra, and other cities are also getting tips from the experience.

Schedule

• Survey on traffic safety for students in spring 2021 
• The elective will be implemented in autumn 2021 
• Impact assessment at the end of 2021 

The project will last a year. It will be implemented between 01/.2020-01/2022. 

Cooperation

At work, media education is carried out by Sweet Karelia and impact assessment by Sitowise Oy. 

Costs

The total cost of the project is €43, of which €576 was received from the Road Safety state grant. The costs of the city of Imatra are €26.