Rome (Italy). From 25 to 27 May 2022, “Learning Teaching Training”, an event organized by the partners of the European project F.A.K.E., was held in Rome at the premises of the St. John Bosco Province (IRO). Let’s Fight through Awareness Knowledge and Education, including il CIOFS/FP Italy, the Association of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians engaged in Professional Training, which aims to counter the spread of fake news, educating young people to a critical use of social media and the web with digital tools and interactive activities.
The objectives of Project F.A.K.E. are:
- combat fake news, manipulation and disinformation and promoting equity and inclusion, facilitating conscious and critical access to media and social content, creating digital tools suitable for young people with learning difficulties, with poor academic performance, or with a tendency to early drop out from schooling, and NEETs (not employed or included in an education or training course).
- develop the digital skills of Trainers and enable them to help and train young people to identify fake news and to make a conscious and critical use of social media. Provide trainers with a range of resources on digital practices and tools to combat the risks of manipulation and marginalization on digital platforms and social media.
- Counter racism, hate speech, the misperception of people belonging to a national or ethnic minority or with difficulties in cultural inclusion and episodes of violence on social media.
- Promote active citizenship against manipulation and disinformation, especially on educational, scientific, and cultural content, during a pandemic emergency and beyond.
The event “Learning Teaching Training” actively involved about 40 participants, including young people and Trainers, from Italy, Germany, Lithuania, France, and England, who got involved in first person by participating in workshops dedicated to coding, with approach strategies to complex problems, and workshops carried out following the techniques of the “theater of the oppressed”, a theatrical methodology that helps to unmask the conflicts present in society and to seek collective solutions, educating for peace and respect for human rights.
This has made it possible to innovatively explore topics related to fake news and online violence in the context of global events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, and to introduce and test the tools of digital storytelling to improve digital literacy of young people and adults.
Through games, exercises, and theatrical techniques, the participants were therefore able to discover and experiment with new tools to deal more consciously with the theme of fake news, hate speech, and cyberviolence.
The event also represented an opportunity for Trainers to explore the Resource Pack, a tool created within the project, which will serve to develop skills in non-formal education related to understanding and combating fake news by young people.
