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Description
The project‘s goal is to reduce the confusion among students caused by conflicting information about the war in Ukraine.
According to the ongoing observations of educators in five schools in the Montana region the students'' initial fears are giving way to a state of confusion and an inadequate reaction to the flow of information related to military actions.
The project aims to overcome the problem by forming a set of new competencies among students for evaluating the credibility of sources and building a critical attitude towards the content of information.
The main goal of the project is to encourage critical thinking, media literacy and civic education.
The key activities are: (1) Creating "Truth Detective" workshops in the media space and (2) Developing a web-based tool "Fake News Calculator" - an innovative software for technological assessment of on-line information sources, specially created for the project.
Furthermore, the project will train 25 teachers on the topic of "Recognition and verification of online disinformation" in order to support meaningful interaction with their students in the newly created international situation.
The end users of the project are students from five schools in the cities of Montana and Berkovitsa – the foreign languages high school "Peter Bogdan", Science and mathematics high school "St. Kliment Ohridski", Financial and Business High School "Vasil Levski", Forestry High School and High School "Dr. Ivan Panov".
Summary of project results
The project aimed to address the confusion among students regarding the information on the war in Ukraine.
The Recognizing and Checking Online Misinformation teacher training encouraged educators to discuss the war in Ukraine with students while practicing over time the set of competencies initially developed within the two modules.
A ‘Truth Detectives’ workshop was created. The group leaders underwent the training of trainers "Recognition and verification of online misinformation". The curriculum included practical topics and was based on experiential learning.
As a result of the project, students were able to independently recognize fake news articles and publications; to recognize disinformation techniques and to verify online information. Students improved their public speaking skills, respecting the opinions of others and forming their own opinions.
The experience gained during the implementation of the project will enable the project promoter to multiply the activities and further develop the relationships already established between the stakeholders.