DIGI-CITY GUARDS

Digi-City Guard eTwinning Project Report 2021 Media Literacy & Disinformation GEORGIA– TURKEY – CROATIA

BENGİ EFSA KARKIN TURGUT ÖZAL SECONDARY SCHOOL,GAZİANTEP INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECT The Digi-City Guard eTwinning project is a product “7 İL TEK YÜREK” workshop.Our project involved 62 pupils from 3 countries (Croatia, Georgia and Turkey)I’m one of the founder of the project.We started our project with 4 days of mentor training.I worked with 7 students at the age of 13 from Turgut Özal Secondary School,Gaziantep.The goal of the project is to develop students’ knowledge of the means and dynamics of contemporary digital communication, to learn to use them with awareness and full understanding of the consequences of their actions and to develop critical thinking about a very powerful tool that can be potentially harmful if used in a non-conscious way.

PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT Media, which has become an indispensable part of daily life, has many facilitating functions when used in line with needs. However, in some cases, it is necessary to help the messages conveyed by the media to be read correctly, to explain to people that the world promoted by the media may be unreal, and to realize the existence of the media's management function. Today’s students are “digital natives” (Prensky, 2007)Therefore, learning and solving media literacy has become a necessity of the digital age.Our students received a better knowledge of media literacy concerning how to discover fake news and what to do with it after webinars about media literacy and disinformation presented by experts.They learnt the differences between fake news and disinformation.The project increased their English speaking, writing, and reading skills as well as their knowledge of their and their partner's countries, sightseeing, or culture.Furthermore, pupils developed 21st century skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, digital literacy, creativity and media literacy.The project progressed in accordance with the plan and all activities were completed on time.

STRATEGY ,METHOD & TECHINICAL Web 2.0 has the potential to create more interactive and powerful learning environments in which learners become knowledge creators, producers, editors, and evaluators (Richardson, 2009). Learners’ critical thinking skills can be enhanced through the opportunity to regularly compare their own contributions to those of their peers, and the affirmation of their relative standing in the class may be powerful motivation for learning (Hurlburt, 2008). Thus, Web 2.0 technologies has the ability to “support active and social learning, provide opportunities and venues for student publication, provide opportunities to provide effective and efficient feedback to learners, and provide opportunities to scaffold learning in the student’s Zone of Proximal Development” (Hartshorne & Ajjan, 2009; Vygotsky, 1978). Various web 2 tools were used in the project in order to develop ICT skills, one of the 21st century skills..In order to develop students' problem solving, creativity and critical

thinking skills, student-centered activities were chosen, project-based learning, collaborative learning, and game-based teaching methods were used. Collaborative studies were carried out with peer learning, with an emphasis on group work. I prepared some tutorial videos about the web 2 tools they will use in the activity.My students actively participated in all the activities by using different web 2 tools. COOPERATION AND COMMUNICATION

We used whats app ,twinmail, teacher bulletin, chatroom, forum for better communication among partners had meetings by Zoom and adobe connect. The project was carried out democratically, taking common decisions. The opinions and suggestions of the teachers and teachers were taken through questionnaires, and opportunities were provided to make great contributions to the project. I made motivational speeches at the project entrance about getting my students ready for collaboration so they have eagerly participated in the events.

CONCLUSION Finally, we had a great time preparing “farewell card” in cooperation simultaneously with the whole project team by using “Canva”. Then we created an e-book consisting of all farewell cards by using “joomag” Students did a puzzle that shows the countries of our project sang songs at the last of the meeting. I did lots of activities with our students on time. I did my best in this project. It was a great experience to be in this project. I think this project was memorable. My pupils were actively involved in all tasks. They gained basic skills in media literacy and disinformation and learnt working collaboratively. Thanks to the activities we did, they improved their decision making, creative and critical thinking skills, ICT skills, cooperative working, self-management skills ; also they improved foreign language and social competence. We both learnt something new and had fun during the project.