Partner – Žinių ekonomikos forumas
Location – Visaginas, Vilnius and Vilnius region
Since 2021
The Escape Disinfo project aimed to improve media and information literacy among school students in diverse regions of Lithuania, and to equip teachers with the necessary tools and support through engaging youth-oriented formats to strengthen students’ critical thinking and teamworking skills. The project targeted students and teachers from different schools, with half of the students being drawn from ethnically diverse and linguistic backgrounds.
The project format involved an interactive game, which was organised in different schools for students in grades 7 to 11, and consisted of ninety minute sessions whereby the first 20 minutes were allocated for an introductory briefing involving active student participation, while the remaining time was available for the game itself and the post-game reflection. The Escape Disinfo game included a trainer-led lessons of six inter-related tasks where the students solved various puzzles, riddles and performed collaborative activities and tasks on topics such as resilience to disinformation, media literacy, digital information and recognising fake news, images and propaganda.
This project also had a goal of integrating media literacy and critical thinking-related content into the general school curriculum and providing the students with the necessary skills to identify, analyse and respond to (un)intentionally misleading information. Since teachers in Lithuania currently lack adequate training in media and information literacy, the Escape Disinfo project addressed this issue by providing relevant knowledge, materials and different formats of trainings, during which the teachers gained advanced knowledge of media information literacy and developed the necessary skills to effectively teach students about media literacy and resilience to disinformation.
During the project:
17 Escape Disinfo sessions were organised in 7 schools
More than 380 students (grade 7–11) participated in the sessions
60 teachers participated in the trainings, acquiring media literacy and digital information management skills
85% of the students and 98% of the teachers indicated that they had gained new skills and knowledge in media literacy, which they will apply in the future