Media literacy and european citizenship education : cooperation between teachers and journalists – 2020/2022 Erasmus Project

Project Title

Media literacy and european citizenship education : cooperation between teachers and journalists – 2020/2022

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 : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Pedagogy and didactics; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

MEDIA LITERACY AND EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION: COOPERATION BETWEEN TEACHERS AND JOURNALISTS – 2020/2022

Internet is a huge free space to share acknowledge and information. Young Europeans (and elders) are massively connected on the internet and social networks. They consume information but, at the same time, they have become producers of information. Nevertheless, consuming and producing good information aren’t innate and should be acquired.

Nowadays, we are all overinformed, although not always from deontological and reliable sources. As junk food represents a danger for our health, the misinformation jeopardizes our democracies. The increasing numbers of fake news related to the coronavirus crisis or to the Brexit is a startling example of the dangerous drift of the media system.

Media education provides a tool to combat online hate and extremism, as well as misinformation on the internet. Using the internet requires a proper learning and needs to be taught. However, teachers and pedagogues feel often helpless to raise students’ awareness without leading to a widespread distrust of the press and the medias.

Our project consists of dealing with two emergencies in accordance with the European Directives mentioned in the recommendations of the Council of May 22nd 2018 : media literacy and European citizenship education. Our aim is to accelerate the cooperation between professionals who are not used to working together : teachers, journalists, researchers, etc. We are all actors of media education and we should build projects together in order to train the next generations to grow up in a world dominated by the media.

Four schools – 2 colleges and 2 high schools – In France (Marmande), Belgium (Brussels), Romania (Timisoara) and Turkey (Istanbul) work with the French organization Le Retour de Zalumée (Paris) which develops the media education program Globe Reporters since 2007. Around 300 students and about twenty teachers will take part of the project for the next two years. At the same time, the productions will be widely released to reach thousands of others students and teachers.

More specifically, from 2020 to 2022, students will become editors in chief of five professional journalists. They will produce together some hundred interviews about Europe :
– 30 hours of interviews broadcasted under the format of 1’20 podcasts.
– One thousand of images free to use
– Some hundred texts of the backstage of the interviews

All those resources will be published on an access free website.

The pedagogues provide learning paths to help external teachers and pedagogues to use the online resources according to :
– The class levels,
– The matter and the topic,
– The learning objectives.

Through this process, students understand better the journalists’ work, as well as the media system. They are also being challenged in their way of learning. They read, write, learn history, geography. They grow up and know better how to use the internet.
On the other side, teachers have multimedia resources to perform their media education mission properly.

To sum up, our project is a transnational partnership to develop media education actions through innovation, and learning exchanges between teachers and journalists from four different countries (France/Belgium/Turkey/Romania). Our project provides trainings for pedagogues and actions around international key events such as Assises Internationales de Tours 2020, Printemps numérique 2021 (Digital Spring 2021) at the Lycée saint-Benoit at Istanbul, Assises européennes du journalism 2021.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 270657 Eur

Project Coordinator

Le retour de Zalumee & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Lycée Saint Benoît
• Liceul Teoretic Jean Louis Calderon
• Centre d’Enseignement Notre-Dame des Champs ASBL
• OGEC collège Notre Dame de la Salle