Building digital skills to challenge fake news
Creating a new lab to build digital skills and involve young people in the quest to challenge fake news.
Name of project: Making together to build community
The challenge
After the pandemic, more than 50% of children aged 6 to 10 years old had a digital device. In a European study, 80% of children aged 9 to 16 reported using a smartphone to go online daily. What do young people do when they are online?
The challenge identified by this community in Cavriago – a small town in northern Italy – was to help children develop a critical sense and to navigate the web safely. They wanted to give young people the tools and skills to understand how things work: how is the video you’re watching made? How do video games work? How do you know if the news is true or false?
The initiative
Made up of local residents represented by Cooperativa Accento and Multiplo colleagues, the challenge team started to work with the local primary school on a project called ‘School of lies’. They showed how fake news was made, where to find trustworthy sources, and, by trying to write fake news, began to demonstrate how to recognise it.
They also set up a digital laboratory in the centre of the library where they worked on video editing, coding, robotics, 3D modelling and printing to help children understand how things are made and how they work – through the active use of technology.
What’s next?
As a next step, the challenge team wants to bring together a group of passionate people – a group of dreamers and makers (‘The MultiMakers’) – to share their time and knowledge. By expanding the digital laboratory, the equipment and the time available for this initiative, they hope to reach more children and involve them in this initiative.
They also want to develop partnerships at a European level to help share their solutions and their experiences, as well as learning from other initiatives to help inspire their own ideas and proposals for the community in future.
Relevant links
https://www.comune.cavriago.re.it/multiplo/laboratori-digitali/
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