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Description
The project aims at reducing to minimum the negative effects of stereotypes and disinformation from the virtual world on the students of Forestry Vocational School in Berkovitsa, which were identified during the students’ social isolation and education in an electronic environment due to Covid-19. A survey carried out in June 2020 among the students to examine their attitudes to reading showed that hardly 35% of them checked their information source, while 37% checkеd data in other sources. Coming across controversial information together with other shortages has resulted in an inadequate response to the information flow (Source: a monthly report of the school psychologist). The situation can be remedied by developing evaluation skills and critical attitude to the authenticity of information. The activities are fully in line with the project goal, i. e. promoting media literacy and civil education. The keys to achieving the goal are training students to improve their media literacy and acquire civic competence and developing a web portal for digital citizenship. The activity titled Development of a Guide with a methodology to teach/learn Media Literacy and Media Stereotypes supports teachers in their full interaction with their students in an e-environment. The project activities are planned to be implemented for 7 months and the main venue will be the Forestry Vocational School in Berkovitsa, where a simulation of a referendum will take place, as part of the training.
Summary of project results
Media literacy and civic education for students of grades 8 to 12 were aims of the project. In this regard, training was conducted to improve media literacy and civic competence of 74 students attending Vocational Forest High School in Berkovitsa, the project partner organization. Due to COVID-19 pandemic some of the classes were held on the TEAMS platform. The created web portal for digital citizenship supported the learning process.
Within the activity named "Referendum simulation" the students from the school applied the formed civic competencies. The Handbook (with a methodology for teaching media literacy and active citizenship) helped teachers to fully interact with students in an electronic environment.
Acquired civic competencies of the young people determine an adequate future behavior of the target group as active citizens.Improved skills of the pedagogues for teaching media literacy––achieved through the distributed Handbook––also guarantee sustainability of the achieved results.