SIGNIS Asia Media Education Desk Media Education Training of Trainers

February 22 - 26 (online) 2022
(Five days – 3 hours a day)

The following reflections of Saint John Paul II indicate the crucial need for media education today:
The media offer limitless opportunities for information, education, cultural expansion and spiritual growth that we have never had before. The media has enormous positive potential to promote strong human and family values.

That families find in the media a source of support, encouragement and inspiration in their efforts to live a community of life and love, to educate young people in moral values and a culture of solidarity, freedom and peace.

However, the media has the potential to cause serious harm to families by presenting an inappropriate or even distorted perspective on life, family, religion and morality.
Communication must have ethical criteria of respect for the truth and the dignity of the human person.

Traditional family values and secularism need to be protected.

Parents should teach children to be critical, vigilant, and prudent in their use of media at home.

They should discuss media issues. They must also express their opinions to producers, advertisers, public authorities about what they like and what they don't like.

Pope John Paul II (38th WCD – Media and Family) A Risk and a Wealth

The media continues to alter our values, belief systems, attitudes and behaviors through its content and audiovisual media.
Media has become such a part of life that many of us take a critical approach to its underlying messages.

Critical media literacy aims to engage people with the media through critical examination of representations, systems, structures, ideologies, and power dynamics that shape and reproduce culture and society.

It is an inquiry-based process to analyze and create media by questioning the relationships between power and knowledge.
Critical media literacy is a dialogical process for social and environmental justice. Challenge media messages that reproduce oppression and discrimination.
Critical media literacy celebrates the positive representations and beneficial aspects of the media while challenging the negative problems and consequences, recognizing that the media is never neutral.

Critical Media Literacy is a transformative pedagogy to develop and empower critical, supportive, caring and conscientious people.
This proposed program aims to generate 'Media Education Trainers' who can:
∙ Examine the ways in which the media define our perceptions and shape our life experience
∙ Make 'media consumption' an active and critical process
∙ Make the media accountable and accountable to society.

Program objectives:
1. Understand the concepts of Media Education in practice (Media Education, Media Literacy and Educommunication)
2. Build a strong network of media education trainers in Asia
3. Obtain information from the best practices of media education around the world
5. Generate teaching materials (videos and training manual) for trainers.

Expected results:
1. A clear understanding of media education concepts is achieved
2. An 'Asian Network of Media Education Trainers' is launched to support the efforts of ME activists across Asia.
3. Documentation of case studies (best practices) is produced to inspire EM practitioners in Asia
4. A group of 15 young media education trainers is created who can take on training needs at various levels.
5. A set of media education videos along with a training manual produced to support the trainers.

Selection of participants for this program:

1. Presidents of SIGNIS Asian countries, secretaries of diocesan media commissions, and media professionals can recommend suitable candidates for this program. He or she should be able to support SIGNIS media education programs in their respective countries in the future.

2. The training will be in English

3. The candidate must attend all the sessions and present the tasks required by the organizers to receive the International Trainer Certificate.

4. There will be a series of follow-up programs and participants are kindly requested to participate in them to further hone their training skills.

5. The total number of participants is 15 only.

6. There is no course fee for this program.

7. Please find attached the application form, fill it in and send it to us by February 10, 2022 or earlier. (marryhwang33@gmail.com, magimai2005@gmail.com)

SIGNIS Asia Media Education TOT Program

22-26 February 2022 Online – Program Schedule