On 3 April 2019, the ALiGN Media Lab held a “Pathways to Digital Literacy“workshop for the middle grade students (7th and 8th) at Abraar Secondary School.

Organized by Ghadah Alrasheed (ALiGN postdoctoral fellow), in four 60-minute sessions, participants learned about media literacy and media production. Two media literacy sessions, facilitated by Nasreen Rajani (ALiGN researcher and PhD candidate in Communication & Media Studies), focused on critical new media literacy, digital values and ethics, and fake news detection. Throughout the sessions, students were engaged in exercises and games to help them critically understand new media texts, images, and contexts and learn some fact-checking skills.

Facilitated by Amir Yaghchi (Computer Science student), another two sessions were designed to enhance the students’ media production and application of technical skills through the use of apps such as Google Spreadsheets. During the sessions, students learned how to enhance their skills of their data reporting, visualizing, and analyzing.

Here is what the Principal of Abraar School got to say about the workshop:

https://twitter.com/NimaoAli/status/1113574187568848896