During the first half of 2024, regional radio station, Beat, developed and delivered a substantial Digital Media Literacy Tour for secondary schools across the South East. For schools that missed out on the face to to face roadshow, Beat have now published a 20 minute video version of the tour which schools and youth groups can access on the Beat website.
From January to May 2024, eleven of Beat’s multi-platform content creators delivered a total of 41 bi-lingual digital media literacy information sessions, on site, at twenty different secondary schools across Wexford, Waterford, Carlow, Tipperary and Kilkenny. The schools that were visited, included two Meánscoileanna Gaeilge where the course was primarily delivered as gaeilge by two of Beat’s presenters who are fluent gaelgeoirí. For each session, the presenters worked in pairs and delivered this campaign with passion.
The course content was created in-house by the team, based on the junior cycle’s “an introduction to digital media literacy” short course curriculum and Media Literacy Ireland’s “Stop, Think, Check” campaign. The presenters’ engaging, fun and interactive sessions brought the theory to life for students. In total, the campaign directly engaged with 2,000 first year secondary school students on site and thousands more online. School’s who would like the digital version of Beat’s Digital Media Literacy Tour can email info@beat102103.com
Beat presenters Niall Power and Shonagh Lyons on the Beat Digital Media Literacy Roadshow
At the end of each workshop, students had to complete a pop quiz to demonstrate what they had learned. All correct answers went into a draw for an iPad for the individual student, and €1,000 for the school to go towards tools to support the school’s media literacy curriculum. The lucky school was Presentation Secondary School in Kilkenny and you can listen back to the big reveal below.
Niamh Brennan receiving her new iPad and Presentation Kilkenny recieving €1000 from Beat to support the school’s media literacy curriculum
The roadshows were part-funded by the new Comisiún na Meán under its Sound and Vision scheme and focused on four main strands of the existing Digital Media Literacy course at secondary school level. The success of the tour prompted Beat to create a bespoke, subtitled, bilingual video version which is hosted on the Beat website, and is available to all schools nationwide. This specially tailored course was commissioned by young people for young people and co-funded by Coimisiún na Meán. The young presenters spoke to twelve/thirteen-year-olds in their own language with relatable content. The students were encouraged to put their learnings from the course, into practise in their own digital lives.
In addition, Beat has also created a series of 10 podcasts which are also desgined to help people, especially young people, to ‘Stop, Think and Check’ when it comes to engaging with digital media. The series covers topics such as ‘Fake News’, ‘Media Literacy’, ‘Social Media’, ‘Men in Media’ ‘Influencing’, ‘International Womens Day’, ‘Screen Time’, ‘Hacking’ and ‘Stereotypes’.
