Digital Skills – CSI

Short videos, humour

Under the Digital Skills module, CSI implemented two session plans: the first concerned the use of the Gmail workspace (Drive, Calendar, emails etc.) and the second one concerned the identification of fake news. Especially for the second one, we used mainly short videos that had an element of humour, as well as a follow-up discussion afterwards. For the first session plan, since only one participant connected to the Zoom meeting, we had a discussion and the trainer shared her screen to demonstrate the Google Workspace.

The methodology of the session plan “Spotting fake news” was especially successful, as it addressed a very hot topic, fake news, in a period when the pandemic and COVID-19 is at the centre of most discussions, globally. The presentations were quite interesting; the trainer played 3 short videos on fake news and after the end of each video, she prompted a discussion among the participants. The discussions were lively, and all women were engaged, as they all had concerns about fake news especially with regards to what their children watch on the internet. We shared tips and some very smart ways of recognising fake news and unreliable sources, and all participants were very pleased by the end of the session. The good practice here was showing the (short) videos, which is always a much more engaging way of delivering a topic rather than just presenting and allowed the participants to express their own views about each video. The videos were relatively short (3-7 minutes each) so that the participants did not lose their attention and get bored.

Feedback from participant(s) or trainer:

What’s the most important thing you have learned during the workshop?

The most important lesson is to constantly try and find ways to make the training methods diverse and engaging as much as possible, since you need to keep the interest of the participants high throughout the whole training, especially if it takes place in the span of a few weeks, as was the case of the NAME training. Videos are always a great way to make a training more interesting, but keep them short, on-the-point and allow for a discussion afterwards. Since the session plan addressed a very hot and contemporary topic, all the participants could relate one way or another, either with their own personal use of the internet and their experience with fake news or with their children’s use of the internet and their experience with spotting news that are not reliable.