In late March – early April 2019, the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (UNESCO IITE) in partnership with the Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Programme, Interregional Library Cooperation Center and central scientific libraries of Stavropol Krai and Altai Krai (Russia) with the support of the Ministries of Culture of these regions and the Federal Agency on Press and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation held two workshops aimed at promoting reading and media and information literacy.
The workshop in Stavropol was hosted by the Stavropol Regional Universal Scientific Library named after Mikhail Lermontov on 28–29 March 2019, while the workshop in Barnaul was hosted on 1-2 April 2019 by the Altai Regional Universal Scientific Library named after Vyacheslav Shishkov. In total, over two hundred representatives of libraries, educational institutions, publishing houses, book selling establishments, mass media organizations and authorities in science, culture, education, communication and information from Altai Krai, Stavropol Krai, the Republic of Ingushetia, the Karachay-Cherkess Republic and Tomsk Oblast took part in two workshops.
During the workshops, participants discussed such topics as the state programme aimed to support children and youth reading in the Russian Federation and other measures for stimulating reading among young people in the era of information technology, gamification in education, as well as engagement of libraries and educational institutions in promoting reading and developing media and information literacy.
Tatyana Murovana, Programme Specialist at UNESCO IITE, delivered presentations at the workshops to introduce the UNESCO approach to understanding media and information literacy and informed the participants about the UNESCO IITE efforts to update the content of this concept in the context of the development of artificial intelligence technologies. In addition, Ms. Murovana presented the UNESCO IITE project focused on the development of the electronic course, which will enable teachers to master new competencies of media and information literacy in the format of mobile informal education.