Home of freedom thoughts - it's media
▶Summary
O1. raise awareness about the importance of critical consumption of media. O2. promote media and ethical journalism as a tool to foster responsibility towards society. O3. enable students to do ba...
▶Objectives
O1. raise awareness about the importance of critical consumption of media. O2. promote media and ethical journalism as a tool to foster responsibility towards society. O3. enable students to do basic media analysis and reflect on and combat manipulation practices. O4. foster critical and analytical thinking. O5. develop interpersonal and communication skills in multicultural contexts. O6. develop intercultural competences and EU awareness. O7. boost students’ creativity. O8. create an international network of active teenage media makers. O9. create a network of teachers who promote the use of media in teaching The objectives were linked to the horizontal priority, Inclusion and diversity in all fields of education, training, youth and sport. The partnership aimed to provide a multicultural context for students to foster cooperation among students and teachers in Europe and to develop activities that raise awareness about media and democracy. The aim was to promote the use of the media in teaching practices. Students use multilingual competences, entrepreneurial mind-set, critical thinking and creativity as a way to practice democratic, social and civic engagement through the democratic dialogue as part of the EU values.
▶Activities
We carried out 3 student exchanges (LTTA1, 3 and 5), 1 virtual training workshop (LTTA2) and 1 parallel event at each school (LTTA4): LTTA1 DK – Media yesterday and today. LTTA2 TR (online, 3 meetings of two hours each) – The rise of social media and the decline of truth. LTTA3 IT – Media Education in high schools. LTTA4 IT (parallel) - The power of social media LTTA5 TR –E-newspaper and Teacher’s Guide LTTA1, 2, 3 followed the descriptions in the application. LTTA4, which was intended as an online meeting, was changed due to the different school calendars and also poor communication and coorporation among the teachers on how to carry out a meaningful online meeting. Instead, each country arranged events at the school to reflect on social media through teaching material from the Europea Commision and to talk with a journalist/expert about the power of social media. At the LTTA5 the students wrote articles for the Instagram newspaper. The teachers discussed the use of media in subjects and digital education in the three school systems. We tried to collect our experiences from this project as a start for the work on the Teacher’s Guide, which we worked on after the last meeting in Turkey.
▶Impact
We have some soft outputs. The objectives O1-O6 are qualitative, transformative, and relational values, which makes them a bit challenging to measure. However, the students have learned about traditional and modern media, as well as fake news. They have worked with and reflected on these topics and gained insight into the cultural differences between the three countries. Consequently, they have gained an understanding of the possibilities and limitations of media, so they say. The students' creativity (O7) has grown through the work with posters, surveys, and an e-newspaper. Additionally, energizers and creative approaches to the subject have been a significant part of the project. Based on the project, the students have formed an international network (O8) of young people interested in the media. At the schools, we continue to work with this interest after the project is finished. The teachers have attempted to form a network of educators (O9) who can promote the use of media in various subjects. We have developed a Teacher’s Guide for use by other teachers. However, we must also admit that the collaboration has not been optimal, which has made this work particularly challenging. Our objectives O1-O9 will be elaborated later