Teach-the-teachers workshop at Ithaka ISK

On Tuesday March 15, the MMM team met with Ithaka ISK teachers and Mira Media for a half-day teach-the-teachers workshop.

The group of teachers, having shown interest in the program, will fulfill an important role as media literacy ambassadors in the school. In the second week of April of 2018, they will take the lead during the Media Literacy Week in teaching two school classes in critical media literacy through making media. This week will draw on our shared pilot experiences running a 3-month critical media literacy program last year. The MMM team will also be present to support teachers and students.

During the teach-the-teacher workshop, we started with a hands-on assignment.

Participants were asked to select one photograph from their personal pocket archive. During 2 minutes, they had to make a selection, without knowing what would happen with the selected photograph. After everyone had made a selection, participants were instructed they would have to line up their phones with others. As such they were asked to create a new collective narrative on the basis of their individual photos.  The new narrative revolved around bridging distance and opening up new perspectives. The assignment, which we also intend to use during this year’s training, draws attention to issues around privacy and self-presentation: what pictures from our personal archive do we want others to see,

Subsequently, we conducted a brainstorm session to work towards shared principles of on what media literacy could entail for us, in the particular context of working with young migrants. In pairs, workshop participants wrote down their media literacy keywords on post-its, which were collected and thematically discussed.

The following shared themes emerged:

-Balancing safety concerns, including personal conceptions of privacy and legal frameworks with opportunities including strategic self-presentation such as in vlogs and Video CV’s.
-Developing a skillset to confidently and creatively produce media to be able to “share one’s own opinion”, “to have one’s voice matter” and to develop one’s “digital identity”
-“Critical consciousness” of media technologies as instruments to search, gather and assess information as a way to “understand media manipulation”.
-Awareness of the opportunities and constraints of generating a financial income through vlogging and producing other audiovisual and written media.
-“Sharing of expertise”:  students learn from teachers and teachers learn from students. Students might have technical skills teachers lack, teachers might offer means for reflection and vice versa.

Subsequently we discussed the framework for the 5-day media literacy week lesson plan MMM team members Ena Omerovic and Hemmo Bruinenberg have developed in detail, in line with best practices observed during our pilot and developed in consultation with Ithaka ISK. Ena and Hemmo have setup a framework consisting of 20 lessons teachers can pick-and-choose from. The lessons balance instruction and discussion with a high level of making audio-visual media. The five days focus on day 1) introducing and reflecting on our media landscape, 2) news, fact & fiction, 3) vlogging, 4) online vs. offline, 5) presentation of footage and material produced by students.