Brussel, 15 March 2024

HERMMES partners working towards tangible results

After a promising start in April 2022, our EU co-funded project on digital media education hosted its first multiplier event and created the first draft results in 2023.

Hosting a conference about media education with 200 participants

On 29 April 2023, the first HERMMES con­fer­ence took place at our part­ner school, Scuo­la Novalis in Conegliano in Italy. Coor­di­nat­ed by ECSWE, all HERMMES part­ners con­tributed to the con­fer­ence pro­gramme Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Our Human­i­ty: Media and Its (Mis)Uses. Over 200 par­ents, edu­ca­tors, teach­ers, school lead­ers, researchers, and pol­i­cy-mak­ers came togeth­er to get inspired by our keynote speak­ers, par­tic­i­pate in one of the 12 work­shops, and share their expe­ri­ences in one of the 12 dis­cus­sion groups. All with the aim to find solu­tions for age-appro­pri­ate approach to (dig­i­tal) media edu­ca­tion in schools and at home.

Developing a curriculum and guidelines for educational settings

The two pil­lars of the HERMMES results will be the guide­lines for edu­ca­tion­al set­tings and an accom­pa­ny­ing cur­ricu­lum for media edu­ca­tion for chil­dren aged 0–18+. The HERMMES part­ners formed a work­ing group for each of the results. Both groups met reg­u­lar­ly through­out 2023 and came up with first drafts. The guide­lines doc­u­ment aims to pro­vide sup­port for kinder­gartens and schools that want to build their own whole-school approach to media edu­ca­tion. The cur­ricu­lum aims to be an inspi­ra­tional and prac­ti­cal tool for teach­ers to build their lessons. In the school year 2023/2024 both doc­u­ments are being tried out in the two part­ner schools: Scuo­la Novalis and Wittering.nl. Their feed­back will be cru­cial for the final ver­sions of each result.

Trying out a teacher training on media in formal education settings

For a week in Octo­ber 2023, 30 teach­ers joined the try-out of a HERMMES teacher train­ing in the Wal­dorf school in Ostra­va, Czechia. The train­ing was organ­ised in coop­er­a­tion with the Czech Stein­er Wal­dorf teacher train­ing. For a week, learn­ers had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to lis­ten to lec­tures, par­tic­i­pate in hands-on exer­cis­es, and dis­cuss their expe­ri­ences and con­cerns regard­ing dig­i­tal media edu­ca­tion. Inputs were pro­vid­ed by part­ners from the Alanus Uni­ver­si­ty, the Freie Hochschule, IASWECE, the Euro­pean Par­ents’ Asso­ci­a­tion, and ECSWE. The train­ing also served as a learn­ing space for HERMMES part­ners who will design more teacher train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties based on the expe­ri­ence and feed­back col­lect­ed in Ostrava.

Further reading