European Future – The fellowship of the fact – united against disinformation

With 24/7 access to online information, the need for revised media literacy teaching methods became urgent. The project focused on equipping teachers with a teaching approach and ways to equip stu...

With 24/7 access to online information, the need for revised media literacy teaching methods became urgent. The project focused on equipping teachers with a teaching approach and ways to equip students with the skills to be responsible consumers and creators of media. It emphasised the use of digital tools and news literacy resources for engaging learning experiences. The project aimed to improve learners' skills and strengthen intercultural understanding. Participants exchanged ideas with peers from different countries and gained new perspectives. The different backgrounds of the partners enriched the project. The project aimed to improve media literacy by addressing pedagogical challenges and improving social-emotional skills as assessed by PISA. Objectives included teaching students to recognise media manipulation, promoting democratic values and increasing news literacy. Specific objectives were to create a curriculum, provide learning exercises, connect schools with the community and promote critical thinking through debates and workshops. Planned activities included thematic games, workshops on fake news and/or media and international debates to deepen understanding of media literacy and intercultural competence.

The project began with a kick-off meeting in Budapest, where all partners brainstormed ideas for a curriculum about fake news. Here, coordinators shared their expertise through seminars, ensuring a collaborative project work. Germany, the leading organization, introduced the competence measurement tool, while Bulgaria introduced tools necessary for the project. The second phase ended with a meeting in Plovdiv, where coordinators conducted seminars to create SOL material about fake news and media. This material included recent and historical examples for students. At the Plovdiv meeting, students worked with this material and were introduced to the competence measurement tool. The third phase involved analyzing data from the first student group meeting and expanding the curriculum with new ideas and tasks. Coordinators organized thematic workshops on fake news and prepared students to discuss political issues which were highlighted in the meeting in Budapest. The next phase focused on compiling the curriculum into a digital reader and evaluating the student work through the last competence measurement turn in Frechen. Finally, coordinators layouted and finalized the reader and presented the results to the school community.

The main output of the project is the curriculum in the form of a reader on fake news. This reader contains all the materials, like a digital bank, collected and developed by the coordinators, such as texts, images and videos. The reader also contains our lesson plans, which are intended to be a guide for teachers to help them approach the topic of fake news with their students. In this way, the coordinators have developed a student-centred approach to the issue of fake news and the dissemination of information in the media that takes into account students' fears, aspirations and solutions. By-products of the project are a well-maintained website and an Instagram account, which also helped us to reach out to other teachers, schools and students. A less concrete but still important outcome is the fact that we have enriched the competences of teachers and learners in several ways: Professionally, by developing rich learning materials; socially, by working with partners in group processes; and interculturally, by getting to know other Europeans, their lives, their culture and their everyday life. This is perhaps the most precious gift of all, especially today, because it breaks down barriers and develops international friendship.