On 5 November 2020, the third webinar within the project “Media and Information Literacy in the Digital Age: How to Teach the Teachers”, initiated jointly by UNESCO IITE and the UNESCO Information for All Programme, was held to discuss cooperation in the field of media and information literacy between educational institutions and non-governmental organizations of CIS countries.
The webinar was organized with the support of the Eurasian Association of Pedagogical Universities, UNESCO Chair of Media and Information Literacy and Media Education of Citizens of the Moscow State Pedagogical University (MSPU) and the Association of Media Education Professionals. The webinar was moderated by Ms. Irina Zhilavskaya, Head of UNESCO Chair of Media and Information Literacy and Media Education of Citizens at MSPU, President of the Association of Media Education Professionals.
The webinar’s topic turned out to be relevant and led to a lively discussion. In a number of CIS countries, non-governmental organizations are actively working to develop media literacy of various groups of citizens. Digital projects stand out most notably, including “Three points. Know what you watch”, “Media literacy for all”, “Media Q”, “How to read media”, “MediaSabak”, which are supported by various national and international foundations. The links between non-governmental organizations dealing with MIL issues and educational organizations are gradually being established. In Russia, the Center for Digital Cultures and Media Literacy is established on the basis of the Higher School of Economics, the regional Media Literacy Center works in partnership with the Don State Technical University, the MSPU has experience of cooperation with the Russian Cinema Educators Association, etc.
Ms. Gulnar Asanbaeva, Regional consultant for media literacy at MediaCAMP (Kazakhstan); Mr. Ilya Ber, Lecturer at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, author of the course on “Information Search and Verification in the Modern Media Environment”, founder and editor-in-chief of the fact-checking project “Provereno.media” (Russia); Ms. Saida Sulaimanova, Director of the Center for the Development of Contemporary Journalism of the Republic of Uzbekistan (Uzbekistan); Ms. Shakhodat Saibnazarova, Associate Professor of the Department of Television and Radio Broadcasting at Russian-Tajik Slavonic University, manager of the factcheck.tj resource (Tajikistan); Ms. Aigul Omurkanova, Associate Professor of the Department of International Journalism at Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University (Kyrgyzstan) and Ms. Svetlana Tantseva, Executive Director of the Association of Media Education Professionals (Russia) participated in the international webinar.
During the webinar, the participants discussed how relevant is the link in the field of media and information literacy developments for the NGO system and for the education system, how realistic and feasible it is, how integration can be achieved, in what forms, with the help of what methods and projects, how this activity will fit into the educational and political strategies of pedagogical universities in CIS countries. The webinar was broadcast on three channels on Facebook and YouTube. 650 people participated in the webinar.
The webinar recording is available on the UNESCO IITE YouTube channel.