In August 2026, I was part of the Parents International team delivering a tailored three-day DRONE training for school leaders from across Ghana, with a focus on strategic planning, critical thinking and problem-solving. This is my personal account of that experience.

It’s not everyday that one gets the chance of delivering training in Africa. I have been a number of times since joining Parents International, and I’ve been lucky enough to work with significant segment of our target audience: parents, teachers, and now school leaders and school owners.

Every time we go to Africa we know we have to be flexible. It’s just the nature of the work, and it’s only partly a consequence of the conditions of the ground. I would say it’s primarily a choice we make between delivering something that is actually useful rather than something that makes our life as trainers easier. Listening and adapting is therefore the rule.

Every segment of the target audience has characteristics that are unique to them. Parents are usually incredibly motivated because they have a direct interest in honing their skills. They are the primary educators of their children, after all. Teachers train not just because they can improve the quality of their work. Often, it’s because they have a vision for their country, and they know it can only be achieved one child at a time. This time, working with School Leaders, I had the feeling that something similar was happening, with one significant difference: since school leaders are in charge of entire institutes, their policies and their choices have a direct effect on the lives of very many people. In addition, school leaders are, by definition, required to lead, so it’s critically important that they develop both the skills and the knowledge their teachers and their students will need to thrive in a world that presents them with uniquely localised challenges as well as challenges that are very similar across countries and cultures.

One might be surprised to discover that the problems parents, teachers, and school leaders have are facing in Ghana are not too far removed from the ones their counterparts are tackling (or should be tackling) in Europe: technology, bullying and cyberbullying, digital literacy. That’s a great opportunity to put DRONE’s trainings and materials to the test in a non-European environment.

If I’m to be honest, I did see more than one eyebrow rising at first, since quite a few of the participants expected long theoretical lectures. Instead, we used a combination of DRONE materials to keep our training as practical as possible. Transferring agency to the trainees is one of the hallmarks of what we do, and many of the activities contained in DIGITAL PATHFINDER, Drone Handbook for School Leaders, as well as in DRONE’s training modules, are very well suited to be deployed in an environment in which the participants are in charge of their own learning.

The participants of the group I was responsible for devoted plenty of time to exploring information literacy through a combination of game-based activities, like Bad News (https://www.getbadnews.com/en/play-), role-play, and small-group discussion. Confirmation bias was received special attention, which is not a surprise. Not all of the participants were familiar with the concepts, and some of them had difficulties in identifying examples of it during some of the activities. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. The notion that people tend to the information that confirms their opinions more convincing and reliable than the information that challenges them is not new, but experiencing it first-hand, discussing it in a group, pooling ideas and drafting solutions together, is something else. Once the experience is there at the top, it can be replicated for the school leaders’ teachers team, and from the teachers it can trickle down to the children.

Part of what the groups discussed is also how to set up proper parental engagement and make families part of the learning process. Parents are the primary educators of their children and their participation in any meaningful change is not optional, it’s fundamental.

I left our training in Ghana accompanied by a feeling that has now become familiar to me. A few training days won’t translate immediately is spectacular and dramatic result, but bit by bit, one by one, people who can bring about change in their own communities, coherently with their own environments, will learn and will help others learn.

The project identified gaps in digital literacy education, conducted research with students, teachers, school leaders, and parents, and developed practical training materials based on this date. The training materials were assessed through pilot activities and are currently being delivered through large-scale training at European level and in Ukraine. DRONE also seeks to create innovative teacher resources, support digital active citizenship, develop policy guidance, and is building a European network of DRONE ambassadors to sustain the project’s impact.

The DRONE Online Training Platform provides access to the official DRONE learning resources. It includes handbooks for school leaders, teachers, and parents, supporting each group in understanding and responding to disinformation in practical ways. The platform identifies the handbooks as official DRONE Project resources and makes them available alongside the training courses.

The handbooks are designed for distinct roles within the school community. The School Leaders Handbook supports principals and leadership teams in building a whole-school culture of digital resilience, crisis awareness, and responsible information use. The Teachers Handbook provides classroom-focused strategies and pedagogical approaches to help students identify, question, and challenge unreliable information. The Parents Handbook helps families support children and adolescents in developing safer, more critical, and more responsible online behaviour. These resources are connected to the wider project focus on digital literacy, disinformation, crisis management, and active digital citizenship.

The DRONE e-learning platform offers courses for school leaders and teachers in English, Greek, Italian, and Hungarian. The platform lists separate course areas for School Leaders and Teachers in these four languages, allowing participants to access training in the language most relevant to them.

The asynchronous learning modules allow participants to study at their own pace through the DRONE online training platform. The modules include topics such as Information Literacy, Technical Literacy to Combat Disinformation, Organisational Resilience, Problem Solving, Critical Thinking, and When Things Go Wrong. These modules support educators and school leaders in recognising disinformation, developing critical thinking, strengthening school-level resilience, and responding effectively when digital or information-related crises occur.

In addition to the asynchronous modules, DRONE also provides synchronous large-scale training opportunities for school leaders and teachers. The large-scale programme combines 10 hours of asynchronous e-learning with 10 hours of live online workshops. The live sessions are experiential and collaborative, helping participants work through crisis-management scenarios, share practical strategies, and consider how to support vulnerable students in their own school contexts. The project training phase aims to reach 4,000 teachers and 1,000 school leaders across at least ten countries, including a dedicated stream for educators from Ukraine.

Overall, the DRONE Project provides a practical and multilingual learning ecosystem for schools. Through its handbooks, online modules, and live training opportunities, it equips school leaders, teachers, and parents with the knowledge, tools, and confidence needed to promote digital literacy, challenge disinformation, and build more resilient school communities.

Be sure to register for the large-scale training in your preferred language by registering on the following link: DRONE – Expression of Interest for School Leader Training – Fill in form

Register for the self-paced asynchronous modular online training for school leaders and teachers on the following link: https://elearning.mydroneproject.eu/courses/

Visit https://mydroneproject.eu/ to access the resource handbooks for school leaders and teachers in any of the four languages mentioned above.