Media education advances to the secondary school. IJC has trained a new group of teachers who will take up this optional course

A group of 16 teachers from different Moldovan schools were trained in media education and will teach this optional course to 7-8 grade students. The training was organised by the Independent Journalism Centre (IJC) during 10-12 August, being the first training program for secondary school teachers.

The training was held by Loretta Handrabura, Doctor of Philology, associate prof., ‘Ion Creangă’ SPU, and Natalia Griu, senior advisor at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research.

The training program was based on the Media Education curriculum, approved by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research in May 2018, as well as the auxiliary materials for the piloting of this optional course. Lorreta Handrabura and Natalia Griu authored the curriculum and the Education for Media manual for secondary schools, with the support of DW Akademie.

IJC Executive Director, Nadine Gogu, emphasized at the event opening that Media Education is a IJC strategic activity, underscoring that about 50 primary school teachers have been trained so far and Media Education optional course is taught in over 30 educational institutions of the Republic of Moldova. ‘From the primary school we moved to the secondary one, and in the future we intend to include this course in the high school curriculum. We want this to be a continuous process in order to ensure the information “health” of the younger generation’, said Nadine Gogu.

For three days — 10-12 August — teachers learned with the help of trainers how to develop new media literacy skills and how to pass on this knowledge to secondary school students.

Teachers tested and deepened their knowledge of notions, concepts and media tools by working with factsheets based on the curriculum and manual content. Thus, the participants discussed about the journalist's ethics, virtual identity, identity theft, role of new media, culture of online communication, and dangers of social networks. All these aspects have been analyzed through games, essays or group activities, focused on the importance of media education in school so that students can use correctly the public and online information.

Upon course completion, the participants were enthusiastic and willing to teach this course to their secondary school students. All of them recognized that ‘in the current days we are dealing with an ocean of information, which can become very dangerous for an uninformed person’, therefore, ‘it is extremely important for students to acquire various tools that will help them stay both informed and protected’.

Olga Budurin, Deputy Director of Education at Stefanesti High School, Floresti district, said that ‘the young generation needs media literacy to be able to cope with the current challenges’, and Angela Ojog, teacher of Romanian language and literature at the Romanian-French Theoretical High School ‘Gh. Asachi’ of Chisinau, stressed that ‘it is extremely important for teachers to disseminate this knowledge to students, helping them develop their critical thinking’.

The training was organized by the Independent Journalism Center under the ‘Media Enabling Democracy, Inclusion and Accountability in Moldova (MEDIA-M)’ project, funded by USAID and implemented by Internews.

The training is based by the training material for Education for Media course, secondary school level (7-8 grades),developed under ‘Strengthening Freedom of Opinion in the Republic of Moldova’ project, implemented by the Independent Journalism Center with the support of DW Akademie and funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany.