Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom

Education in the Philippines

Following the UNESCO Global Assessment Framework for Media and Information Literacy (MIL), this research has gathered information on relevant aspects of a country’s readiness for MIL initiatives. Through the MIL framework “UNESCO brings together Information Literacy and Media Literacy, along with ICT and Digital Literacy, as a new literacy construct that helps to empower people, communities and nations to participate in, and contribute to, global knowledge societies”. Understanding a country’s challenges and opportunities for MIL interventions is helping us to better localize our intervention. We have focused on the Tier One area of MIL Education when evaluating the country’s readiness, more exactly this means: the existence or lack of national policies to implement ICT and digital literacy initiatives in schools, the offer of pedagogical training for teachers in these areas, and the existence of MIL related courses in the national curriculum of high school students.

The following are used as important variables to demonstrate the country’s MIL’s readiness;

Mandatory MIL course in curriculum for students

The Department of Education in the new K-12 Basic Education Curriculum included Media and Information Literacy as part of the Core Subjects under the Communication Learning Area for Senior High School (SHS) at Grade 11 or 12 with one semester allocation. The Media and Information Literacy course introduces the learners to basic understanding of media and information as channels of communication and tools for the development of individuals and societies. It also aims to develop students to be creative and critical thinkers as well as responsible users and competent producers of media and information.

Mandatory MIL course in curriculum in teacher trainings

In the basic education curriculum, media literacy education is only introduced on the second semester of Grade 12. Therefore NCCT belives in this: “Understanding and Utilizing Media in Teaching (UUMT): A Seminar-Workshop in Media Literacy Integration in the K-12 Curriculum” was originally based from NCCT’s Media Literacy Seminar-Workshop for Teachers. To cope with the continuing education needs of Teachers, the program was redesigned and developed further to address the more important needs of Filipino teachers. The three-day seminar-workshop aims to empower and encourage basic education teachers to teach media and with the media. By the end of the workshop, participants will: 1) Understand the role that media plays in our students’ environment; 2) Know and understand the different media literacy concepts; 3) Examine possible ways of integrating media literacy lessons in different subject areas; 4) Write, demonstrate and critique different media literacy education lesson plans; and 5) Submit exemplary Lesson Plans in Media Literacy in different Subject Areas to be compiled by NCCT.

Existence of training programs to specialise teachers for teaching MILs

Think first campaign launched by google, with a grant to the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication (AIJC) as part of Google News Initiative’s objective is to help curb misinformation in global and local news.

AIJC will be spearheading a program to educate teachers on what news literacy means in the digital age. AIJC plans to train around 300 senior high school teachers in public and private schools nationwide to prepare them in teaching 9,000 students to recognize misinformation and disinformation through news literacy class sessions by December 2019. Educational videos will be made available on YouTube to be used by teachers as resource materials. The program is designed to have students know the relevance of news literacy in their day-to-day lives and equip them with the knowledge to verify news and other information they access online. AIJC also wants young students to actively engage in challenging misinformation and disinformation on social media and be champions in building a better internet space for everyone.

In addition, the campaign aims to have the Department of Education include news literacy as part of the Media and Information Literacy core course across the country.

Additionally, a Teaching Guide is created with the intention that it would be used by current and future Grade 11 or 12 teachers of Media and Information Literacy. In addition, teachers from all educational levels across all content and subject areas are also welcome to explore it as a guide to integrate technology into their class activities. Through this teaching guide, teachers will master the following:

prioritizing literacy ;
learning and teaching media and information literacy through constructivist approach;
becoming competent consumers and producers of information and media resources; and
developing digital citizenship and lifelong learning.

Moreover, the Ministry of Education envision an MIL teacher with the following qualifications:

Masters in Education Major in Education Technology or IT/ICT Education or any related field;
Three-year experience in teaching education technology or T/ICT Education or any related field
Three-year experience in the analysis, design, development, implementation and assessment of different types of media and information;
High competencies in online / offline software technologies;
Highly motivated, outcome-based oriented and life-long learner"