New Online IJC Training – 19 Secondary School Teachers Familiarized with Media Literacy

The training was delivered by Natalia Griu, Secretary of State, Ministry of Education, Culture and Research, and Dumitru Stoianov, journalist and fact-checker.

During the three days of training, teachers developed their skills in teaching the Media Education optional course to lower secondary school students, on the basis of the curriculum and textbook with the same name.

Mila Corlateanu, representative of Deutsche Welle Akademie in Moldova, greeted the teachers and congratulated them for choosing an online training. “We hope that this school year many of you will choose to teach Media Education, a course that has flexible methods and tools, available online”, mentioned Mila Corlateanu.

Nadine Gogu, IJC Executive Director, encouraged the participants to explore the resources made available by the organization, as well as the platforms Mediacritica, Educatia Mediatica and  T(V)E Privește!. “This year, teachers will benefit from innovative tools for teaching this course, developed by the winners of this year’s edition of the Fifth Power Media Hackathon”.

The teachers got acquainted with the textbook and subject-matter terminology, they discussed about the components of unbiased news, the online etiquette, and performed a social media investigation as a practical exercise. The learning process was facilitated by various interactive online tools.

Trainer and textbook author, Natalia Griu, encouraged the participants to understand the importance of the relationship that they establish with their students. “A teacher should be aware of the risks young people face and pay attention to the possible signs of online aggression and abuse”, emphasised the expert. Dumitru Stoianov said the same as regards online safety: “It is important to keep up with the technologies used by students, so that we know how to guide and protect them”.

At the end of the training, the teachers’ fears regarding the online format were dispelled, confessed Olga Paicu, History teacher at “Nicolae Iorga” Theoretical High School in Chisinau. “The training was useful and welcome. It proved that we can meet wonderful people in the online environment, too”, she commented. Iuliana Grosu, Computer Science teacher at “George Calinescu” Theoretical High School in Chisinau agrees that media literacy is important: “I’ve received a lot of information, experience, inspiration and answers to many questions that I will convey to my students”.

IJC has trained 171 primary school teachers, 120 lower secondary school teachers and 74 upper secondary school teachers so far. The Media Education optional course has been taught in schools in the Republic of Moldova since 2017 and was included in the Framework Program of the Ministry of the Education, Culture and Research of the Republic of Moldova at all three levels of education – primary, lower secondary and upper secondary.

This training was organised by the Independent Journalism Center under the “Strengthening Media and Information Literacy” project, supported by Deutsche Welle Akademie and funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany (BMZ).