Hot August for Media Literacy: Another group of secondary school teachers has been trained to teach this subject

The Independent Journalism Center has held the second training in media literacy for secondary school teachers. The training took place during 17-19 August and involved another group of 16 teachers from different Moldovan secondary schools, who will teach the optional course of Media Education to 7-8 grade students in the academic year 2018-2019.

The training was held by Loretta Handrabura, Doctor of Philology, 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 handbook for teaching this optional course. Loretta Handrabura and Natalia Griu authored the curriculum and the textbook for secondary schools, with the support of DW Akademie.

Opening the event, Anastasia Nani, Deputy Director of IJC, has reviewed the achievements of IJC since 2014 until now in the field of media education. Thus, 76 media lessons were held during this period in schools and universities, as well as two media literacy camps ‘Filter the Information’, with more than 2000 pupils and students trained.  Furthermore, on the initiative of IJC, in the education institutions of Moldova it was brought in for the first time the optional discipline ‘Media Education’ and the primary school teachers have been trained to teach it.

‘With the development of the media market in Moldova there came out many portals aiming to manipulate the public. For that reason, it is important to continue the training process and bring the media literacy closer to pupils, by teaching them to discern between what is true and false. We rely on your support and hope that this course will be requested by pupils’, said Anastasia Nani.

The trainer Loretta Handrabura has noted that ‘today the children are more advanced than the adults as regards the technology, but some of them cannot discern between what is good and what is information trash in the media space’.

‘There are several traps that the pupils must avoid. The purpose of the optional course ‘Media Education’ is to provide the pupils with tools that help them develop their critical thinking and avoid thus manipulation’, said the trainer.

For three days the teachers passed through the most important topics in the field of media literacy, as provided in the curriculum and the text book. Thus they talked about the identification of fake news, the role of image in the media, stereotypes, xenophobia, the journalist's ethics, the danger of manipulation, online safety, the forms of online aggression, the role of the new media, the culture of online communication.
 
Liliana Barbarosie from Radio Free Europe has talked to the teachers about propaganda and manipulation in the media space of Moldova. She stressed that the only way to stand against manipulation is to develop the critical thinking, encouraging the teachers to coach the pupils to question everything.

The participants in the training said that they will make every effort to teach as exciting as they can this subject, because the discipline ‘Media Education’ aims to contribute to the building-up of informed media consumers.

Aliona Coropceanu, Deputy Director for Education at the ‘Petru Zadnipru’ Theoretical Lyceum of Chisinau, said that she managed to internalize a lot of knowledge in a short time. ‘We are very interested in teaching this course in our Lyceum, in order to help the students to use correctly the new technologies and avoid the danger of misinformation, which lurks everywhere’, said Aliona Coropceanu.

Last week, another group of 16 secondary school teachers attended the first training in media literacy. Previously IJC trained 71 primary school teachers to teach the optional course ‘Media Education’ to the 3rd and 4th grades. During the education year 2017-2018, this course was taught in more than 30 educational institutions of Moldova.

The trainings are 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 trainings are 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.