Wise & Inventive ScreenAgers Erasmus Project

Project Title

Wise & Inventive ScreenAgers

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Wise & Inventive ScreenAgers – WISA
In our digital era schools need to stay connected with the needs of millennials, understand their tendency to express their digital identity and help them become safe and responsible users of media channels. Being media literate is key to responsible citizenship. Media, especially social media, can be (and are) abused for discrimination, disinformation and manipulation, but they can be also used for learning purposes to motivate and challenge young digital natives. Yet, as the analysis of all partner countries’ local context showed, our school curricula don’t give enough space for Media Education. It is not taught as a separate subject with enough hours per week, but only as a cross-sectional topic or offered as an optional subject. The motivation for our project was, therefore, to implement project-based teaching of media literacy, and incorporate it into the school curriculum either as an annual 5-day Media Literacy Project, or a regular extra-curricular activity, Media Literacy Clubs.
Four schools with different backgrounds and different experience in teaching media literacy took part in this project: Biskupske gymnazium Brno a materska skola (CR, coordinator), Colegiul Dobrogean “Spiru Haret” (Romania), Gymnaseio Lykeiakes Taxeis Makrychoriou (Highschool) (Greece) and Manavgat IMKB Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi (Turkey).
By implementing this project we aimed at:
– exchanging, sharing and benefiting from good practices in integrating a variety of media literacy education in the educational process;
– creating a sustainable media-based and media-literacy-enhancing learning environment in partner schools;
– equipping students with critical thinking skills concerning media messages (ability to evaluate, analyze, understand and use media content) to become critical and responsible media consumers;
– developing students’ ability to create and responsibly disseminate media content and become skilful media creators;
– promoting an international and intercultural environment in partner schools through joint teaching activities that use state-of-the-art ICT tools;
– creating and using innovative and digital assessment methods.
To achieve these objectives, five transnational meetings took place. First, a short-term joint staff training event: a 3-day small-scale conference on Media Literacy and Open Education for teachers in Czechia, and four short-term exchanges of students held in all 4 partner countries successively, each tackling a different topic. In Greece, Digital Literacy & Movie-making Lab: Wikipedia workshop, the internet of things, digital storytelling and making videos; in Romania, Wise Media Consumers and Creators, deconstructing media messages, e-safety, personal branding; in Czechia, Fact or Media Fiction: disinformation, fake news, propaganda and creating podcasts; in Turkey, Conflict in the Context: critical thinking, countering hate speech and discrimination online, cyberbullying, and internet ethics. A group of 10 students (aged 15-19, 2 of them students-mentors) and 2 teachers from each partner school, apart from groups of local students and teachers, participated in each transnational activity. The activities took place in the form of workshops, seminars, presentations, debates, creative labs (producing public speech, writing Wikipedia and news articles, scripts and storyboards, making videos and podcasts), competitions, problem-solving tasks, role-playing activities, outdoor quests, online games, team building activities, treasure hunts, visiting a radio station, and others. In between the meetings, a lot of preparatory and post-meeting activities such as creating videos or online debates took place via eTwinning and other platforms.
The project results are both concrete — Media Library: open resources for teaching Media Literacy containing lesson plans and 1 five-day project plan; YouTube channel; website; Media Literacy Bank – an open educational source containing digital materials (eSafety Guide; instructional videos) that can be used in CLIL lessons; eTwinning group and events; podcasts; articles promoting the project; and intangible — raising awareness of youngsters towards European common values, tolerance, democracy and non-discrimination; developing intercultural dialogue; enhancing students’ critical thinking skills and resistant to (social) media manipulation and propaganda; creating responsible future citizens; creating safer, intercultural and media literacy supporting environment in partner schools.
As a result, we have incorporated more Media Education in our schools, either directly via annual 5-day Media Literacy Projects and using our CLIL materials on media literacy, or as extra-curricular activities. The impact on students should be long-lasting: they should be more critical about media content, more resistant to social media manipulation and therefore act in the future as wise, active and responsible citizens.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 125107,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Biskupske gymnazium Brno a materska skola & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• Manavgat IMKB Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi
• Gymnaseio Lykeiakes Taxeis Makrychoriou (Highschool)
• Colegiul Dobrogean “Spiru Haret”