Over 90 teachers from 34 cities and towns across Bulgaria participated in the conference “Holistic model for digital and media literacy development based on school curricula”. The conference took place in the city of Veliko Tarnovo on 22nd – 24th November 2019.
This is the second conference of this type after the first national conference “How to teach media literacy at school – methods and practice”, which took place in Sofia on 10th of November 2018.
The conference was organized by the national Safer Internet Centre, run by the Applied Research and Communications Fund and Parents Association, with the support of Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom. 93 teachers from 54 schools across the country took part in the conference – 23 teachers from primary school (1st – 4th grade), 27 from middle school (5th – 8th grade) and 43 teachers from high school (8th – 12th grade).
During the 3 conference days the teachers had the chance to learn about the advantages, the problems and the realities of the digital generation, the role of the educational system and the importance of the school – family partnership.
The main theme of the conference was the digital and media literacy and the development of the key 21st century skills during all educational stages. The new methodology for the development of digital and media literacy “Primary education in the digital era; A teacher’s guidebook” was presented. The methodology was developed by the Centre’s team together with primary school teachers. It is based on the national primary school curricula and aims to integrate the 21st century skills into the everyday practice of the teachers.
The participants had the opportunity to take part in different, interactive workshops based on different school subjects and the grades they are teaching. During the workshops they focused on the key competences they would like to help their students develop and how to better integrate these competences in their day to day teaching based on the standardized school curricula.
All teachers prepared lesson plans based on the subject they are teaching, as well as, combined lesson plans together with their colleagues taking into consideration the cross-curricular links suggested in the school programmes by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science. The educators discussed the importance to teach those skills in a systematic way throughout the educational journey of the students in order to achieve long term results. They also recognised the importance of working with the families for the development of the 21st century skills.
