Teacher development in media literacy: the Vysočina Region

More than 60 % of teachers have never taken part in media literacy training. As curriculum author, I designed a 40-hour programme for the Vysočina Region to address this. Instead of dry lectures, we turned to experiential learning. Teachers try out activities for their students firsthand, adapt them, and come up with their own.

Education has to respond to real needs. An initial needs analysis among twelve hundred people revealed enormous demand for practical tools. The pilot run in the Prostějov area, with 29 teachers from 10 schools, then exceeded its capacity targets by 300 %, with 33 % of participants putting new methods into practice before the course even ended, and 90 % planning to do so by the end of the school year.

We’ve now completed the third of five planned runs, with 63 teachers involved so far. During the course itself, more than a third of them tried out pilot activities directly in their own classrooms. The programme also works like a snowball, since satisfied participants go on to recruit people from their own staff rooms into the next runs.

Rather than a one-off training session, we’re building a sustainable practice. People leave with a shifted attitude, from fear of technology to critical openness, and the project is gradually growing an independent community of alumni, supported by an ongoing stream of materials even after the course ends. The programme also serves as an incubator for junior trainers, who grow into leading sessions through structured shadowing.