THE IMEDIAL PROJECT IS ON!

IMEDIAL stands for “Increasing MEDIA Literacy skills of adults to fight misinformation, fake news and cyberbullying”. It is a strategic partnership under the Erasmus+ programme and due to the current situation worldwide, the first Imedial Transnational Cooperation Meeting took place online.

PROJECT GOALS

The IMEDIAL project is based on reports and statistics review at national and EU levels and own research partners. It is a response to the need to integrate “critical thinking, information evaluation and media literacy as some of the top skills for the 21st century” into educational systems. Media literacy practitioners need to develop innovative strategies to inform citizens of issues arising from disinformation.

To achieve this, the EU encourages effective cooperation among educational institutions to provide educational and training materials to schools and educators.

The IMEDIAL project specifically aims to expand and develop the media education skills and competencies of adult educators in the effective teaching of these skills (especially those working with disadvantaged students) and at the same time aims to increase the media literacy skills of students adults (especially disadvantaged).

The IMEDIAL project aims to increase the MEDIA literacy skills of adults to combat misinformation, false news and cyber aggression. The objectives will be achieved by developing:

IMEDIAL workbook and worksheets for educators

The workbook will include methodology, materials, examples, exercises, tests revealing the techniques used by media creators and helping the educators to achieve the goal of the trainings – to let participants enter the world of reading and understanding various information communicated by different media. 

Through this workbook, adult educators will feel confident in delivering trainings that will teach the “media language” and will focus on searching and analysing messages that are found in the Internet, press, radio and television. 

A strong focus in the workbook will be put on how to allow workshops participants to think critically about the media messages, to consume them in a conscious way, to know strategies and tricks used by media broadcasting services and how to “filter” the content, thus staying unbiased about the messages transmitted.

IMEDIAL cards for students

The cards will be physical cards containing concrete activities/exercises – instructions for educator.
The cards will be a set of activities where each of them will be visualized on a physical card containing the following elements: Name of the activity, Description , Tips, Duration, Materials needed to implement the activity.

The cards will also have the category depicted and colour associated with that category (different for each category). There will be 5 categories: ice-breakers, written text analysis, visual content analysis, multimedia content analysis, reflections.​

IMEDIAL mobile application for both groups

The mobile APP will be a mobile application that will serve as a useful tool for adult educators and participants of their workshops by providing means to deliver the IMEDIAL cards to both groups. The APP will therefore contain 2 types of cards: – cards for educators – digital version of cards; – cards for learners – with materials/resources (pictures, texts, video etc.) to be used during workshops. Having the IMEDIAL mobile APP will enable adult educators to deliver workshops in a modern way.​
WHICH IS THE TARGET OF THE PROJECT?

ADULT EDUCATORS

Adult educators especially those that work in non-formal education settings, adult education centres, social centres, NGOs, associations and freelancers working with disadvantaged learners.

LEARNERS

Learners from disadvantaged groups, including persons with low skills and with lower level qualifications, with low income, from remote areas; unemployed, women, immigrants.

The main impact on adult educators is in strengthening their media literacy skills and capacities to offer media literacy training based on innovative IMEDIAL results (workbook, cards for learners and mobile APP) dedicated especially to those that come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The main impact on low-skilled adult learners, especially those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, is upgrading of their media literacy and digital skills which will allow them to have critical understanding of media, be able to identify fake news, manage information they receive and in effect develop trust in media. The project will also have its impact on the stakeholders, participants and participating organisations.