On 26 January, we had the pleasure of doing the «Media and Information Literacy» workshop. The workshop took place at the Mihai Eminescu high school in Constanta. Obviously, 13 Students from a 9th-grade class were able to follow this non-formal and interactive activity.

To begin with, our volunteering team aimed to raise awareness among high school students about Media and Information Literacy. In particular, we focused on critical thinking about the media and the information we consume. The 1 hours and 30 minutes workshop encouraged participants to engage in the process of inquiry and self-discovery.

Firstly, our team talked about T4E and what we do. Then, each of us introduced ourselves and thereafter we explained the flow of activity.

Secondly, everyone participated in an Ice Breaker that we thought of in advance. Thus, Ibrahim, our volunteer, explained the rules. Also, he told the students to choose one candy from the box. At the same time, each colour was connected to a question:

• Yellow: Why would you unfollow someone
• Orange: What is your favourite social network and why
• Red: What would make an advertisement attractive for you
• Green: What would make an advertisement unattractive for you

Subsequently, students wrote the answers to these questions on post-it notes and sticked them on a flipchart. Also, the flipchart was divided into 4 columns with questions written in advance. Then, Doina read the answers from the post-it notes to the class. As a result, everyone was impressed by so many wonderful ideas.

Thirdly, Bianca continued with a short presentation on:

• What is Media Literacy
• How media messages are constructed and how to deconstruct them
• Ways to produce media and information content
• In what way manipulative information and media is. How are these formally and informally produced, organized, and disseminated

The exercise

Further, all of us did an exercise to build on the information presented earlier. Afterward, we asked the students to get into groups. Then, they analyzed Starbucks advertising and wrote their observations about it. Students answered the questions by coming to the board to explain their answers.

After that, we guided students to log in to our Moodle platform using a QR code to attend a quiz. The quiz is available in Module 4 of the Media and Information Literacy course, which is part of the Digital Citizenship series of courses developed by our association together with European partners from other three countries. The reason why they completed the test is to evaluate their level of understanding of information. Of course, we were very grateful that the answers were a success and that students understood the messages.

Finally, we were happy to have constructive feedback from the students. Some were very satisfied and others contributed with some suggestions. At this point, we use these suggestions to improve the activity. As a result, better activities help us achieve our common goal – to learn together in a pleasant and interesting way.

Location: Mihai Eminescu high school, Constanta, Romania

Date: 26th of January 2022