On Monday, April 14, a media literacy workshop was held in the elementary school “Ivo Lola Ribar” in Veliki Gradište as part of the “Lie Detector” project. Seventeen eighth-grade students from this school attended the workshop. With the teacher of Serbian language and literature Slobodan Jotić, through current examples, the students analyzed media manipulation, disinformation and fake news and learned the techniques for recognizing them. How social networks attract our attention was presented to the students by Marko Tadić, an expert in social networks. In the second part of the workshop, practical work followed. The students were divided into groups and given the task of coming up with three news stories, among which there will be true and false news. After that, the groups presented their news, and the others guessed whether it was real information or misinformation. Parallel to the students, the workshop was also organized for teachers. History teacher Petar Pantić presented possible approaches to media literacy topics. This workshop was attended by Marija Jović, a psychologist and teacher of the subject Virtues and Values as a Life Compass, and Marko Lapčević, an English teacher at Elementary School “Ivo Lola Ribar” in Veliki Gradište. The aim of the workshops is to encourage critical thinking as a basis for the development of media literacy, which is one of the most necessary skills for the world of the 21st century. Workshops for teachers are important for the discussion of how to integrate this vital skill into the education system. Also, they talked about the extent to which their students have developed critical thinking towards the content that reaches them via social networks and other media. The “Lie Detector” project is jointly implemented by the Association for the Education of Youth and Adults from Požarevac and the Boom 93 portal, as part of the wider “Youth and Democratic Development” project. This project is implemented in partnership with the Belgrade Open School with the support of Sweden.
