Media Education

Media, especially digital media impact through images and visual impressions that often advocate ideas contrary to European and human values (language of hatred, stereotypes, discrimination). As teachers share, the school can not counteract to form a critical approach to media messages, because the school educational approach is based on text analysis. Analysis of images, advertisements and music is beyond its scope. So students fall under the influence of a variety of messages and the school seems to be unable to teach them how to “decode” the Internet content and to perceive it critically in a safe learning environment.

The training ‘Mind over Media’ for teachers and students aims to increase their media literacy (concept defined by the European Commission as “the ability to perceive the media, to understand and critically evaluate their messages and media content, and to communicate in a secure environment”).

In methodological aspect the training program applies interactive methods and strategies for the development of critical thinking that are probated by the teachers-methodologists in RU “Angel Kanchev” – Branch Silistra within the project “Development of critical thinking through reading and writing”, initiated by “Open society” in partnership with the Ministry of education and science. It includes good practices from the project ‘Zoom on Interculturality’, funded by Erasmus +.