16-09-2015

Daugavpils teachers mastered the media literacy training in Turkey

Daugavpils City Council implements a strategic partnership project of Erasmus+ project program "Effective media literacy for healthy generation" (project no.2014-1-TR01-KA201-013137), which is co-financed by the EU and coordinated by the municipality of Samsun city, Turkey.

The target audience of the project is primary school teachers, who work with students on a daily basis on these themes: media, advertisement, impact of the internet on different subjects (social sciences, informatics, history, visual arts). The project management group has held visits and developed materials – practical lessons about the media during the project, which will be implemented into the studies in both cities – Samsun (Turkey) and Daugavpils (Latvia).

In September 2015, teachers from Daugavpils went for the training in Turkey, where they learned from their colleagues and visited educational institutions during the project. The project delegation was a group of 25 people with a coordinator from Daugavpils municipality and representatives from Daugavpils University as partners of the project. Teachers from different schools in Daugavpils city, who are interested to approbate innovative learning materials and participate also in further project work, were selected for the project working group. During one week teachers from Daugavpils city together with teachers from Samsun city participated in practical activities, shared their impressions, appended the developed material with the characteristics of the media and internet environment in Latvia, visited the exhibition „The Idiot Box” of US photographer D.Stevens. In addition, the participants of the project visited private schools in Samsun, where they got a valuable experience from the educational institution.

The basics of media lessons could be gradually acquired by 1^st -9^th grade students. The appropriate methodological materials for teachers of Daugavpils are just planned to be developed, therefore this project of Daugavpils City Council is very topical and useful.

Project coordinators, representatives of Daugavpils municipality and teachers of Daugavpils city expressed their willingness for the further cooperation with separate educational institutions, as well as the municipality of Samsun city. In addition, Daugavpils teachers expressed gratitude to Daugavpils City Council for their support and interest in teacher education and organization of international projects.

Culture program included a visit of the participants to the “Amazon” park, the museum of medicine, the historical museum in Samsun city, the tombs of the mountain, and the mountain town Amasya, where they were welcomed by the local municipality. They also visited Istanbul city, the largest city between Europe and Asia, which has a population of 17 million people. There they visited the St.Sophia cathedral - museum, mosques, ancient streets, and the Bosphorus Strait.

The next activity of this project is a visit of 20 teacher’s delegation from the city of Samsun in Turkey to Daugavpils city and common practices with teachers from Daugavpils in October 2015.