A group of ten educators and journalists from Bosnia went on a study tour to Prague between 20 and 23 October to learn about methods of media and information literacy education in the Czech Republic. The visit took place as part of Media Smart: Building resilience to disinformation through training programs for journalists, educators and families, a project by Transitions and Mediacentar Sarajevo.
The group visited the elementary school Kunratice, where Tomáš Titěra, deputy director for digitization and project and financial management, presented the school’s MIL activities. They then had a meeting with representatives of the Czech Radio to learn about the project “Ověřovna a ověřovna na vlastní kůži” iRozhlas (stylized as iROZHLAS), an internet news server of the Czech Radio.
Táňa Abrhámová and Anja Grabovac presented to the group the activities of Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO) an international academic consortium focusing on activities concerning digital transformation and information disruptions primarily in Central Europe.
On the second work day of the tour the group visited Seznam.cz, a unique internet news service, where Peter Jančárik presented the outlet’s efforts to evaluate media quality and fight disinformation, those relying on the use of artificial intelligence in particular.
The day ended with a visit to the City Library of Prague, where Veronika Spišáková presented librarians’ MIL initiatives.
Before their return to Bosnia, the group had an extended meeting with Transitions and Mediacentar to evaluate the visit and consider possible application of some of the methods of teaching MIL they learned about.
”It will be interesting to implement the ideas we got here. We will try to involve both the teachers and librarians at schools to help them adopt a new approach to teaching media literacy,” said Ivana Sivric of the Faculty of Philosophy in Mostar. “Study tours such as this one are enriching both professionally in terms of gaining knowledge and culturally,” added Ernad Osmic, a teacher at Fourth Elementary School in Brcko.
The Media Smart project is implemented with support from the Czech Republic’s Official Transition Program