Collecting information about the world in general and about certain people, subjects or any fields of interests has always been an important part of learning,  not only for children and teenagers, but also for life long learning as an important part of adult life. However, collecting data and information is just the first step. The crucial, and rather challenging part is then to evaluate the information and decide what is relevant, reliable, meaningful – maybe even differentiate between true and false.

In a world that is developing so fast, new technologies affect nearly every part of our daily as well as our professional lives and we are flooded by information. Therefore it is a crucial task of parental and formal education to make sure that children and teenagers learn how to collect, process and evaluate information – in other words, develop a critical thinking, media literacy and media maturity.

This course is designed to help educators as well as parents to understand the crucial steps that children and teenagers have to take in developing the necessary competences. At the same time it offers examples of how grown ups can open spaces and create learning situations in which children and young people can collect experiences which will enable them to take these developmental steps, enhance their media literacy and learn how to handle data and information in critical ways.