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Connecting Continents: Media Literacy for Russian Educators

The Media Education Lab is now running professional development workshops for Russian teachers using the power of digital technology!

On March 25, 2014, Renee Hobbs and Elizaveta Friesem together with Svetlana Gudilina of the Russian Academy of Education held a webinar connecting Harrington School of Communication and Media with twenty K-12 educators from Moscow. Russian teachers interested in using media education in their classrooms shared their understanding of the media, and talked about the importance of helping students to make sense of media messages that surround them.

The online workshop held on March 25 was the second one in the series of webinars that aim to foster intercultural exchange in the area of media literacy education between U.S. and Russia. Using Adobe Connect, Renee Hobbs, Elizaveta Friesem and Svetlana Gudilina discussed with Russian teachers main terms of media literacy education and talked about how educators from each country implement principles of media literacy in their classrooms. Participants were introduced to the critical questions of media literacy and practiced applying them to a television commercial. They also viewed an example of video documentation of classroom practice from the Powerful Voiced for Kids website to explore the concepts of empowerment and protection as they apply to media literacy education in the elementary grades.

The third webinar will be held within the next two months. U.S. and Russian media literacy educators will continue the intercultural dialogue that not only helps participants expand the repertoire of classroom practices, but also reminds them how many common hopes and dreams they share and how much they can learn from each other.Â