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During three days, the participants learned about the content of the Media Education course and the methods of teaching this optional subject to 7-8 grade students.
At the beginning of her activity, Nadine Gogu, the Executive Director of the IJC, encouraged the teachers to take full advantage of this opportunity in order to be able to help children think critically and become rational consumers of information.
The trainers Loretta Handrabura, PhD in Philology, and Natalia Griu, Senior Advisor at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research, both authors of the Media Education curriculum and manual for secondary education, tackled the most important topics included in the study program. These include: the new media and the behaviour on social media; checking the authenticity of a piece of news or of a photo; securing online accounts; forms of online abuse and protection against virtual harassment, etc. The participants also worked with various web tools that can make the media education lessons more interesting, interactive and help pupils develop their creative potential.
Teachers valued the knowledge gained during the training. Margareta Simeretchii, the principal of ‘Ilie Fulga’ School from Stauceni, believes that the course is ‘extremely important in the Internet age’ and ‘the information gained will be conveyed to the pupils in an accessible, clear and convincing way’.
The principal of ‘Antonin Ursu’ School from Chisinau, Lucia Pisarenco, said that ‘as society is becoming more dependent on media, media education is needed to develop a literate public, that is able to filter and use audiovisual content’. According to the teacher, ‘media education allows us to separate the good from the bad, the truth from false. This course is important for pupils because it’ll help them cope with the information traps they are exposed to every day’.
So far, IJC conducted five training courses for primary school teachers, which were attended by 86 teachers, and two training courses for 32 teachers from lower secondary education. In the 2018-2019 academic year more than 1.500 pupils in primary and lower secondary education study Media Education as an optional subject or during orientation classes.
The training was organised by the Independent Journalism Center under the ‘Strengthening Freedom of Opinion in the Republic of Moldova’ Project, implemented by IJC, supported by Deutsche Welle Akademie and funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany.
