Digital media literacy for youth employment and social realisation

The project “Digital media literacy for youth employment and social realisation” (YDML) aims at providing meaningful support to youth workers who engage in developing youngsters’ skills and competences in the field of Digital Media Literacy (DML). The mastery of navigation and advancement through the ocean of various digital tools, content and choices, is recognised as a substantial challenge for the contemporary youth in terms of citizenship and employment. While digital technology can enable young people to seek and share information, and to connect with others, it can also pose risks to their safety, privacy and well-being. Furthermore, inquiries show that young people have fewer skills for managing digital technologies than are generally credited to them. Most often they are passive consumers of content and just a small number report to engage in activities, supporting their education or in content-creation.In the global quest for increased Digital media literacy both learners and educators need support to mastering their skills for safe navigation and confident use of digital technologies.Partners form 5 countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Italy, Slovenia and South Africa) joined to prepare a youth workers’ training program and set of learning scenarios for interactive DML learning experiences.From the vast variety of topics and problematic, YDML partners chose to focus on three Digital media literacy clusters of competences: Netiquette; Research skills (incl. critical assessment of information, sources, relevance) and Creating original content. These clusters will be central to the learning scenarios, which partners will turn into engaging interactive learning units.Partners will carry out an International inquiry of the youth digital media literacy. The results will allow addressing the most significant DML shortfalls of the young people through appropriate learning content. Three international mobility workshops for youth workers will take place in South Africa, Czech Republic and Bulgaria to enable international collaboration on the project problematic.The partnership with an organisation from South Africa will give richer perspective to the project. The youth workers will learn about the realities and practices in a country outside EU, which will widen their perception on the topical issues of the project and the scope of understanding about the similarities and differences in the globalised world.The learning content, which will be developed will be translated in partners’ national languages and shared online as Open educational resource (OER) through the project web-site. The youth workers’ training program will be used for the processional development of the youth workers in national and international formats.