Media Education “takes root” in Moldovan schools

 
 
The contest “Media Education – a priority in my school”
 
At the beginning of the school year, we launched the contest Media Education – a priority in my school, in order to encourage teachers, students, and parents to engage in various activities throughout the school year. Twenty institutions responded to our invitation to participate in the contest, and after the first stage of evaluation of files, 12 schools were admitted to the second stage of the contest. For six months, from November 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021, they conducted media and information literacy activities in school and outside, discussing online safety, critical thinking, behavior in virtual space, and other topics of interest. We also created a group on Facebook, giving teachers the opportunity to share experiences and ideas to promote these topics among the school community and beyond. We were impressed by the interest and enthusiasm with which the teachers got involved in this contest, managing to transmit the enthusiasm further to students, colleagues, parents.    
 
Media Literacy Week
 
It has become a tradition for the IJC to organize the Media Literacy Week in Moldova in October, in the context of the Global Media and Information Literacy Week declared by UNESCO. Between October 19 and 25, more than 1,200 students and teachers participated in school and out-of-school activities promoting media culture and cautious information consumption. Poster contests, photo exhibitions, debates or discussion workshops that addressed topics of media literacy were organized. In the context of the week, the IJC also announced two contests for students – a poster or photography contest on the topic of “I in the media world,” for primary school students, and a video contest on the topic of “Disinformation during the pandemic”, for middle and high school students. In total, 75 materials were submitted to contests: 48 posters/ collages, and 27 video materials. Seven awards were given to primary school students, and six to middle and high school students.

 
 
Media Education training programs
 
From July 2020 to April 2021 we organized 12 training programs for teachers working at all three levels of school education. During those, 230 teachers developed new media skills, learned how to use innovative teaching tools and methods, and exchanged ideas and experiences. Via the Internet, we also reached out to teachers from Russian-language schools from the North and South of the country, including those in Gagauzia, to help them understand how the media works and why it is important to think critically. Overall, between 2017 and 2021 we organized 27 training programs and trained 533 teachers.

 
New textbooks for primary school
 
In order to enable as many students as possible to study Media Education, this year we have printed a new batch of textbooks for primary school level, because the previous batches have run out. Thus, another 1,000 copies of the Media Education textbooks will arrive to primary school pupils in the next years. Today, we have textbooks in both Romanian and Russian in stock, which are transmitted to schools free of charge. Teachers who have followed our training programs and want to teach the optional course just have to knock on IJC’s door. The textbooks in electronic format can be accessed on the Media Education platform.
 
Hackathon 2020 – new tools to develop critical thinking
 
To facilitate the teaching and learning of media literacy in school, at the Fifth Power Media Hackathon, 2020 edition, with the theme of Media Literacy: Analyze, Raise Awareness, Create, we challenged the participating teams to create tools and applications that could be used at Media Education lessons. Two winning teams put their creativity and ingenuity to the test and developed, within six months, two products that come to the aid of teachers. One of them is the ODATĂ-EDU educational platform, which provides teachers and students with a set of exercises and quizzes to support the process of teaching the course. The team Tinerii Abraziv Online from the Youth Media Center created the Media Education video series, and its 10 episodes each present media literacy topics in an engaging and interesting format that is easy for students to understand. Both products have already been tested in classes.

 
Publishing a set of media literacy-related materials
 
Throughout the entire school year, we maintained the public interest in media and critical thinking-related topics by publishing a series of interesting and accessible materials on the Media Education platform, thus helping students and teachers, as well as media consumers, to better understand certain topics. Thus, we wrote what the new cyberattack – phishing – entails; talked about netiquette and sexting; analyzed the impact of TV violence on the mental health of children; discovered what the phone camera is capable of; saw how we can make good photos with a simple smartphone; identified new applications that can make Media Education lessons more interesting and interactive.  We also talked to the teachers Cristina Cernei and Galina Sîrbu, who shared their experience of teaching the optional course in their schools. Furthermore, we created quizzes to help students test their digital knowledge and find out what they know about media literacy.
 
Launching the first media literacy podcast
 
This year we also set out to reach our listeners by launching the first media literacy podcast in Moldova – Podcast cuMINTE. From September 2020, we have been urging you to filter whatever you read in the press, hear on television, or find out on social networks with the help of the first podcast in Moldova that focuses on disinformation in the media, manipulation techniques, and fake news. The cuMINTE podcast appears twice a month and is moderated by the journalist Ana Sârbu. In the 17 editions of cuMINTE podcast so far, we have discussed, among other things, the limits of popularity online; found out about the impact of artificial intelligence on how we get information; and reviewed myths about Covid-19 that spread all over the world.