While the importance of media literacy as a competence essential for modern living continues to grow, it remains a largely uncharted territory for general education professionals in Lithuania as well as in Croatia and Greece. None of the countries have media literacy as a separate subject at school and teachers are not fully prepared to facilitate the development of media literacy skills. In response to this situation, the project partners have decided to develop this strategic partnership project titled Media:to understand and to create(The Implementation of Media Education in Schools ) The main goal of this project is: · To create and implement media literacy curriculum in school (secondary and vocational) The objectives are: · To develop a curriculum for Media and Society as a separate school subject focusing on media literacy; ·To prepare the teaching material to facilitate the delivery of the aforementioned subject; ·To train a team of teachers on the knowledge and skills necessary for the delivery of the aforementioned subject · To create a website where all the information and activity output gathered and prepared during the project would be publicly accessible. The project will be implemented by six participating organizations from three different countries. Our team includes: • Three schools: - a lyceum from Greece, a gymnasium from Lithuania, a vocational school from Croatia. Our choice of partner schools ensures that a variety of educational needs are represented in the project. The school in Lithuania delivers standard Lithuanian general education curriculum to students in Grades 9-12; the school in Croatia focuses on vocational education; and the Greek school serves a contingent of students of high academic achievements. Through this partnership, we seek to enable collaboration of partners serving student bodies of similar age but different needs and aspirations and to explore the importance of media literacy to young adults preparing to embark on different professional paths after the completion of their general education. • Two universities: Vilnius Gediminas Technical University from Lithuania and Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek from Croatia. These universities were chosen because of their expertise in media literacy competence as one of the universities has a faculty of creative industries and the other- a faculty of media. • And a lifelong learning centre Kepa Pierias from Greece. The centre was chosen as it is familiar with requirements necessary for the labour market, the lack of competence and and skill of existing and future employees and the demands for contemporary workforce. Through careful collaboration, these six institutions will work on creating curriculum Media and Society covering 34 hours of teaching and the methodological materials prepared for this curriculum; moreover, an Internet platform, where all the materials are stored and publicly accessible, will be created. These six institutions will work on creating the curriculum and teaching materials for Media and Society as a subject. To ensure successful delivery, a team of 50 teachers and 8 lecturers will be trained on the media literacy competence. The curriculum will then be piloted with a body of around 300 students in the partner schools and an even larger group of students will be able to test some parts of this programme that will be integrated in their other school subjects. The curriculum will be adapted to every participating country aiming for it to be used not only by the partner schools, but also by the other schools from the participating countries. It can eventually be expanded to be implemented in other EU countries as well. All the materials will be prepared in four languages: English, Lithuanian, Croatian, and Greek and will be stored on the project website and will be available not only during the project, but also after its completion.
The Erasmus+ IMES-Media: To Understand and to Create (The Implementation of the Media Education in Schools) project has been successfully completed (start: 01-09-2018, end 28-02-2021). Three schools, Vilnius Salomeja Neris gymnasium of Vilnius, Lithuania (coordinator), the 4th General Lyceum of Katerini, Greece, the Elektrotehnicka I prometna skola of Osijek, Croatia, two universities, the Vilniaus Gedimino Technikos Universitas (VGTU) of Lithuania, the Art and Culture Academy of Osijek, Croatia and a Lifelong Learning Centre in Katerini, Greece (KEPA Pierias) collaborated for more than two years in an atmosphere of mutual trust and understanding. Through careful collaboration, these six institutions reached their set goal of creating and implementing media literacy in schools (secondary and vocational). They have also completed every set objective of this project. Firstly, the curriculum Media and Society covering 34 hours of teaching and the methodological materials prepared for this curriculum were created. Media and Society curriculum covers four main topics: Introduction into Media; Media and Self; Media and Community; Media and the State. Methodological materials consist of two parts: theoretical part and practical part. Theoretical part has been written by lecturers from universities dr.Kristina Stankevičiūtė, dr. Snjezana Barič-Selmič; Tomislav Levak and Artūras Kavaliauskas. It focuses on teachers’ self-education and seeks to introduce them to the topics. Practical part consists of 74 lessons that have been written by teachers from all three countries, who were participating in the project. Practical part of methodology is dedicated to the direct work in the classroom consisting of a lesson plan and an activity sheet for students. This methodological material can be taught separately as part of Media and Society subject, or it can be integrated in different subjects that are currently at schools, for example English, History, Mathematics, IT and so on. The curriculum has been piloted with a body of around 300 students in the partner schools and an even larger group of students, approximately 1000 were able to test some parts of this programme that were integrated in their other school subjects. Moreover, The IMES project aimed at not only creating the curriculum and methodological materials for the teaching of a course on media and digital literacy but also at providing teachers in the partner organizations with the necessary knowledge and skills in order to create and teach the course. This was achieved through the participation of groups of 15 teachers and 6 lecturers from partner organizations in every Learning, Teaching and Training activities, hosted by the three partner countries. During these three tightly-scheduled LTTs participants had the chance to acquire the knowledge needed in order to contribute to the joint creation of the first draft of the curriculum and methodological materials, pilot it in the three schools, meet to revise and finalize the created material and translate the original English curriculum and methodological materials into their own language (Lithuanian, Greek, Croatian). What is more, an Internet platform, where all the materials are stored, publicly accessible and can easily be downloaded has been created as well. The three transnational meetings and the online videoconferences held during the last part of the project (due to COVID-19 restrictions that led to the cancelling of the fourth transnational meeting in Vilnius) were crucial in the programming, smooth running and successful completion of the project. A significant part of the project was the purposeful effort on the part of all partners to make the project visible to potential stakeholders and the community, and to disseminate its outcomes. That is why, from the very beginning, reports, photos and other material related to the project were posted on the official websites of the partner organizations, the IMES Facebook page and the IMES website. Finally, the Multiplier events organized by the schools of the three partner countries gave an opportunity to a large number of stakeholders, teachers, principals, education coordinators, representatives of the administration of education, representatives of the local authorities, representatives of parents and teachers’ associations to be informed both about the two intellectual outputs of the project (the “Media and Society” curriculum and the methodological material for its teaching) and the procedure that was followed for the implementation of the IMES project. The curriculum has been adapted to every participating country aiming for it to be used not only by the partner schools, but also by other schools from the participating countries. It could eventually be expanded to be implemented in other EU countries as well. We hope that it will only be the beginning of the journey called Media education in schools.