This session will provide an overview of media and information literacy (MIL) concepts that may be foreign to some ASEAN participants. Aside from defining MIL, this session will urge participants to recognize the importance of media embeddedness and that MIL is a critical skill that must be taught in all aspects of daily life. For participants just starting with MIL, a better grasp of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation is essential. Participants will also learn how to use MIL skills to take advantage of the media and information in their life and make decisions to change their community one student at a time. This session will help introduce the concepts that the presenters will cover throughout the three-day training course.

Since 2020, governments worldwide have had to establish limits on physical meetings to curb the spread of COVID-19. Fast forward to today, the education sector strived to shift from face-to-face classroom interactions to remote learning modalities. Under the “new normal,” how would secondary school instructors and educators counteract the spread of false information and prevent students from becoming victims of fake news? What are the emerging roles of school heads, principals, secondary school instructors, and teacher educators in the digital classroom? What strategies can they use to meaningfully engage students in critically evaluating a piece of information they will encounter inside and outside the school?

People can believe whatever they choose, as long as they think it is correct. Post-truth became an international word in 2016, which relates to situations in which objective facts are less significant in molding public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. Without bordering on cynicism and distrust, how can teachers and educators use simple fact-checking techniques to counteract misinformation and disinformation? This session may focus on strategies for discerning facts from fiction, lateral reading, and finding online fact-checking tools.

Teachers’ and educators’ internet safety approaches in the classroom have evolved as technology and our use of it has. In the past, digital citizenship lessons on internet safety focused more on dos and don’ts, such as creating secure passwords and avoiding talking to strangers online. While secure passwords are crucial for all technology users, teachers should never underestimate the dangers students might encounter inside or outside the classroom, because most internet safety concerns are much more nuanced. This session will look at how teachers can assist students in developing the critical-thinking skills and mental habits necessary to navigate common online safety dilemmas – keeping online gaming experiences fun and healthy, and the benefits and risks of online-only friendships.

How do we keep our students’ data safe, private, and protected while harnessing the benefits of remote education? This session will examine identity threats to student privacy and their right to personal security on the web, steps students can take to protect themselves, and future strategies. In the age of manufactured consent, exploring digital footprint awareness and approach will help teachers understand how to empower students to choose and control what they leave online for others to find.

Deepfakes involve video manipulations in which a face is swapped with someone else’s using neural networks. Detecting whether a video has been manipulated differs from determining whether it contains false information. Deepfakes are a public concern, so developing methods to catch them is critical. Besides potential misuse, these tools can be used to defame someone. This session will provide an in-depth understanding of how far misinformation and disinformation could go and suggest strategies for teachers to detect a seemingly-perfect deep-fake video so they won’t fall into the trap of sharing manipulated content.