Project background: independent critical thinking, media literacy and media education are needed in the contemporary world to be able to analyze the influence that both traditional media and social media agents seek to have on both our actions and mindsets. Particularly social media is an arena where visual messages of potentially high impact can go viral among peers and have the influence without an opportunity to read between the lines: while being under the direct influence of film / clip it is hard to stand back and reflect which could cause provoked actions. Due to the advancement of IT-technology, particularly among the young, visual communication has become a dominant vehicle of influence via advertisements, propaganda and documentary films. Problem statement: · Media education has not been well integrated to curricula of school, higher education and vocational trainings; · Media literacy is a competence people working with youth (youth workers, youth leaders, trainers, teachers etc) typically lack. · Thus those topics are generally not part of youth work either so consequently media literacy competences of youngsters may remain poor. Our strategy of tackling the problem: · In recent years visualization has gained an impetus in the fields of vocational training, facilitation, graphic recording etc, also in the Youth Field. · Screening and discussing documentary films as a method of non-formal education has been tried out across Europe in the Youth Field; · According to the partners' international experience (for example gained through a 3-year project “Youth of the World” www.youthoftheworld.org and through Erasmus + project "Active citizenship with global dimension") visual methods have proven to be attractive both to youngsters and youth workers. · Visualization is one of the useful approaches that can help to deal with a variety of issues: a method of particularly good potential is facilitating the discussion with visualization after a media clip, documentary, propaganda or advertisement film. Target group: for training of trainers who are expected to both implement the competences gained through the project and act as multipliers: · A trainer locally active in the Youth Field with a well-connected target group with whom to practice film that “seek to discussions” screenings with visual facilitation; · Or a similar youth worker with a potential and interest to develop the competences. · Project coordinators also match that profile so that they will participate at the training for trainers and implement the competences gained. We intend to use visualization which is one of the useful approaches that can help to deal with a variety of issues: a method of particularly good potential is facilitating the discussion with visualization after a media clip, documentary, propaganda or advertisement film. Desired impact: Youth workers and youth trainers feel confident to use documentary films and clips together with visualization as methods in youth work. Youngsters will have obtained skills to analyze their understanding of media messages and the impact that media messages can have. Youngsters and youth workers have gained transferable skills (use of films, content analysis, visualization, facilitation of discussion, presenting their learning outcomes with the help of Youth Pass). The result of the project is that participants of the trainings and final conference feel more confident about using documentary film collection, templates and handbook and have obtained basic knowledge about media literacy. Skills for developing templates are obtained and there is confidence and knowledge on creating templates by themselves for new films and running film evenings with analytical discussion for youngsters.
Project background: independent critical thinking, media literacy and media education are needed in the contemporary world to be able to analyze the influence that both traditional media and social media agents seek to have on both our actions and mindsets. Particularly social media is an arena where visual messages of potentially high impact can go viral among peers and have the influence without an opportunity to read between the lines: while being under the direct influence of film / clip it is hard to stand back and reflect which could cause provoked actions. Due to the advancement of IT-technology, particularly among the young, visual communication has become a dominant vehicle of influence via advertisements, propaganda and documentary films. Problem statement: · Media education has not been well integrated to curricula of school, in youth work it's still a developing topic how to raise these issues. · Media literacy is a competence people working with youth (youth workers, youth leaders, trainers, teachers etc) typically lack, because of poor preparation · Thus those topics are generally not part of youth work either so consequently media literacy competences of youngsters may remain poor. Objectives: - promote the usage of visual facilitation as an easy tool to start discussions - promote the usage of various film clips accompanied with discussions to maximise the impact of the clip - learn from the various expertise of different organisations (Scotdec's global educational aspect, Mondo's film database and BRFs skillset about media literacy) - increase the network of participating organisations both locally and internationally. Number of organisations involved directly: 3 Profile: Mondo. NGO Mondo (Estonia) is one biggest NGOs in Estonia, established in 2007, working on humanitarian aid, development cooperation and global education. It trains teachers and youth workers and develops teaching and learning materials and workshops which are used in different levels in formal as well as non-formal education. The Centre has a film library with more than 160 documentary films available for schools and youth centres for free and a library of educational and background materials. A large variety of background materials can also be found for free from Mondo's global education webpages: www.maailmakool.ee Scotdec Scotdec is a small but very effective Global Learning Centre which has been working in the field of development education for over 30 years. In this time we have gained an excellent reputation for professionalism and innovation, developing professional development programmes and resource materials. We are very effective at building strong, positive working relationship with professional teaching and youth work networks in Scotland. Also, we have skills at developing resources for youth workers and peer educators We work with educators in the formal and informal sectors: in the formal sector with teachers, students and lecturers from Early Years right through to Higher and Initial Teacher Education and in the informal sector mainly with Youth Workers and Youth Leaders. Baltic Regional Fund The “Baltic Regional fund” is a non governmental organisation and foundation, supporting social and intercultural dialogue, social inclusion and cultural exchange among young people and adults .The organization is located in Riga but the foundation organizes regular activities in the whole of Latvia as well as collaborating on a European level, implementing educational projects. Foundation target groups are: children, youth, students, adults and especially groups of social risk - early school leavers, migrants and unemployed. Organization's activities: Project work, seminars, training courses and consulting. Description of undertaken main activities 1 transnational meeting amongst coordinators to plan before the start of the project. 1 learning/teaching activity for 15 youth workers from three organisations 2 transnational meetings happening in Edinburgh and Riga to have face time amongst participants to develop network, ideas and work on project outcome. 1 transnational meetings amongst coordinators to have final discussions concerning the project. Results and impact attained - 15 educators, who participated in learning/teaching activity know about using media clips as a tool, visual facilitation as a method and have gained the skills of thinking critically about the media. - educators and their connecting organisations have the confidence in using media clips as a method to talk about various topics (including global ones, but also more personal ones). - all participants are more informed about the work done in Scotland, Latvia and Estonia and have taken back to their work situation best practises that are implemented in the organisations. - all participants have developed a network of international contacts - cooperation network in international youth work.