ONAIR / European Media Education Project
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The project

On air: effective use of media for School Education

Scientific direction

Mario Morcellini

Planning and Management

Alberto Parola

Scientific coordination

Ida Cortoni
Maria Ranieri
Alberto Parola Gianna Cappello

Context

Many studies and survey highlight how the attractive potential of Digital Media (TV, Internet, Radio etc.) towards youth is causing a threat to literacy skills, with images, graphics and sounds that are substituting reading and writing as mean of transmission of information. Similarly the chaotic flow of information, often can be misleading in absence of critical analysis skills.

For these reasons the entire school system and teachers above all, are experiencing serious challenges in motivating students to develop literacy skills and to prevent them in being passive objects of the messages of the Media.

What appears to be missing is the capacity of the teachers to communicate with their pupils in order to make them understand the importance of reading and writing and of the capacity to analyse with critical spirit in a information based society.

 

Objectives

The project intends to supply an answer to the needs highlighted above through a change in perspective involving secondary schools in a common effort in order to make New Media become not a threat but a tool for the development of students literacy skills and for the building of their critical and aware approach to the understanding of reality through New Media.

The project aims to make teachers being able to exploit the attractive potential that New Media have on young generation in order to raise their attention and motivate them to rediscover the importance of literacy skills (reading and writing) and to approach the flow and diffusion of information that the New Media spread, with the necessary critical skills in order to become aware users.

 

Target groups

The main target group of the project is to be considered as teachers and students of secondary schools (junior and upper school) of the 7 countries participating to the project, that will be directly involved in the project activities. At least 70 teachers will be directly involved in the project activities.

 

Activities

  • Research on training needs - Workgroups of teachers and experts in the field will carry out an analysis of the needs and expectancies of the school system related to the possible exploitation of the New Media for the development of literacy skills (reading and writing) and for the building up of the capacity of the students to analyse and interpret information in order to become aware New Media user (development of critic sense and of the capacity of being an aware user of Media).
  • Collection and analysis of on-going experiences - In each country workgroups made up of teachers and experts, will collect and analyse information about the existing experiences in the field of the use of Media in educational contexts for the development of reading and writing skills and for the enhancing of critical sense and awareness as users of Media.
  • Development of Media based educational paths - Starting from the existing experiences, collected and validated eight educational paths related to Media education will be developed and made accessible onto the Internet Portal of the project.
  • Testing and evaluation of the Media based education paths - In each country a pilot group of teachers, duly assisted by the experts, will test the Media based educational paths, in order to evaluate their quality and effectiveness.

 

Results

  • Transnational Report and European profiles of skills on Media education. - The transnational Report will result from the research activity with which the school attitude and expectancies towards the use of new Media for literacy and development of students critical mind and aware approach to New Media will be analysed. The Transnational Report will answer to the following questions: Why teaching Media; What to teach of Media; How, with which tools and methods, to teach Media; How to evaluate Media effectiveness for Education.
  • Database of validated experiences in the field of Media Education - The Database will collect the evaluation forms filled in by the teachers involved about the existing experiences in the field of the use of Media in educational contexts for the development of reading and writing skills and for the enhancing of critical sense and awareness as users of Media.
  • Educational paths for Media education - Each educational package will result in a collection of easy to use, flexible e-learning based didactical units. Two paths will be created for each of the four main issues: Reading skills (i.e. Use of comics for enhancing reading and text analysis skills); Writing skills (i.e. Use of Internet for the development of writing skills, hypertext); Critic sense in approaching Media skills (i.e. creation of a newscast in order to develop the critic sense towards news sources); Aware users of media skills (i.e. How to build a TV programme in order to develop skills for making aware choices).
  • Guidelines for the assessment and evaluation of Media education paths. The testing and evaluation phase of the educational materials will be carried out through a processus agreed by all partners. According to the information emerging from the different testing activities carried out in each country a validated methodology, together with the necessary tools (questionnaires, guidelines for interviews, evaluation grids etc.) for the evaluation and validation of educational paths in the field of media education will be created and made available onto the Portal.