Thank you. like to call these gathering, not so much webinars, but meeting of minds, because it's in the meeting of minds that we really create knowledge and bring about change. And that is to say that the knowledge is not only with the presenters or the moderators, but the knowledge is among you also, the different audiences that are connected, that's connected, persons that are connected. I see that it's a very diverse group, from different age range in terms of diversity. So it's quite a intergenerational dialogue as well. And that is also very positive and important for media and information literacy that we have, you know, it is a topic for all ages. Voila. So let me thank so much Helmut, Pezel and Komit for inviting UNESCO to speak to this very important webinar. In fact, I don't want to bore you too much with the details of UNESCO structure and all of that, that as Elmer asked me to speak, but just to say that I'm from the communication and information sector. There are five sectors within UNESCO. UNESCO is a specialized agency. We work very closely with the European Commission on this particular topic of media and information literacy. You know, we have gone through recently a restructuring of the sector of the organization. And so the work that we're doing in the communication information sector is quite integrated. And you'll see some of that coming out as we talk about media and information literacy, whether we're talking about technological innovation or access to information or freedom of expression or gender equality or community radio, that is gender equality in media, community radio, the development of the information and communication ecology in general. This is what we do in the communication information sector. I said, it's integrated work. It's, I think earlier the representative from RTR, I believe it was spoke about the convergence, you know, of the information media and the communication ecology. And that's the approach that we take in the sector that, you know, all of these interventions and these knowledge areas are converging. And not only within the sector, but also across sectors, you know, and I think Elmoth mentioned that earlier, across sectors, you know, and I think Elmoth mentioned that earlier, how communication intersect with education for all and global citizenship education, cultural literacy in our cultural sector, intercultural dialogue and diversity in our social human science sector, empowering young people, you know, the link between media and information literacy and basic science literacy, climate change, disinformation, for example. So all of this is all connected. So with that background, I think I will get started with the presentation and hope that those few minutes of general information will not count against the 25, 30 minutes that Helmut gave to me. See that I didn't plan to speak on those things I was asked. I'm joking around. Okay, normally I'm going to share my screen now. Voila. Okay, I hope you can see my screen now. Can you? Okay, voila. So I will be talking to you for the next 25 minutes or so on the topic, the urgency of media and information literacy as a new normal. I repeat, the urgency of media and information literacy as a new normal. We are still in the COVID-19 context, and many countries are talking about the third wave of the virus that is hitting us, and it has transformed the way we live, the way we work, the way we interact and socialize. And many are talking about a new normal or a next normal. UNESCO is proposing that media and information literacy should be a part of that new normal or next normal. It's not that media information literacy is new. It has been with us, as Elmott and other speakers pointed out earlier, for some time. But could it be that for the past 40 years the world has not been paying attention to the clarion call of many stakeholders around the world, many parents and grandparents of media and information literacy. I will not call Elmuth a grandparent if he doesn't permit me of male. But many parents and grandparents of media and information literacy that have invested their lives, literally, decades in promoting this particular field and saying to the policymakers, this is important. We need to integrate mail and it needs to become a part of formal and non-formal and informal education. It needs to, you know, to be a part of the fabric of literacy and competencies. Could it be that the world has not paid attention to this clarion call and what changes we should have moving forward? UNESCO is very much encouraged to see that this webinar is being led not only by the National Commission for UNESCO there in Austria, but also by COMMIT and other media organizations because we have not had that success in having the media be playing a central role in promoting media and information literacy. And as we move to the next normal or the new normal, we are hopeful and we're seeing that change. And we are, again, encouraged to see that Comet as a community media network and other national media organizations are a part of leading that process. The new technological landscape has been completely transformed. We see the rise of digital communication companies that are very powerful and they brought with them the hope of the democratization of media more access to information giving more people voices to communicate and this has happened you know some of this has been achieved and this hope is alive it's mind-boggling to see what happens on the internet in one minute. If you look at the slide and I show you a comparison between 2020 and 2017, 19 million text messages only in one minute, 4.7 million videos viewed, 4.7 million viewed in one minute. It's literally amazing in terms of messages sent on WhatsApp, you know, 59 million messages sent on messages platform. It's just literally mind boggling. And if you compare 2017 to 2020, you will see an average of a 30% increase you will see an average of a 30% increase in what happens in the internet in one minute. In some cases, you'll see a 400% increase of what is happening on the internet. And this is not surprising. In the last two to three years, the number of people around the world who have access to the internet has grown by 32%, where we have close to 59.5% of the world population online. That's close to 60%. It's really growing rapidly, really growing rapidly. And so we're living in a mediated world is the point and the message that I want to get across to you, that we're living in a mediated world. And in that mediated world, we have many opportunities, but we also have challenges. And if you look at the screen of this newspaper clip, you will see one heading that says upper atmosphere pollution. Indeed, the information and media ecology has been polluted. The opportunities have come. More people do have access to media and information and to technology. But unfortunately, we did not anticipate and to give all these people the competence they need to more meaningfully, all these people the competence they need to more meaningfully, critically, and ethically, and discerningly engage with information, media, and technology. So the information ecology has been polluted. And what do we need to do when there's pollution? Then we have to depollute. And so you see the next headline in the clip that says what needs to be done. What needs to be done is clearly that we need to accelerate the promotion of media and information literacy for all. Someone said it earlier, Elmott or someone of the other speaker, that media and information literacy concerns all of us, all age group from children to older persons alike, from the educated to the uneducated, from those who have access to technology to those who don't have access, from those who are in the central center of development to those who are marginalized. We all need information, media and information literacy. We see many challenges, as I indicated before. Hate speech and racial bigotry is on the rise. Misogyny, that is hatred towards women and harassment towards women and women journalists is on the rise on the internet. We also see disinformation on the rise on the internet. We also need to see disinformation on the rise. You know, 30, 20 years ago, even 40 years ago, we'd be more concerned about censorship. And as you see from the screen, you know, depicting what happens when there is censorship. But the question is, how different is this information from censorship? Is it different? What is happening with the information that we access because of a polluted information media and digital ecology? What change we need to bring about. Getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant. The point here is that we, and perhaps all of us, we are faced with information overload. There's a flood of information that is too much for us to digest, too much for us to assimilate in the time, the rapid time that we need to assimilate it. And this is so for those who are media and information literate and those who are not media and information literate. But can you imagine how much more difficult it is to assimilate and dealing with the information overload for those who are not media and information literate. This whole concept of gatekeeping theory. So we are faced with a flood of information and what needs to happen, some will argue, all right, is that we need help to filter this information, to organize this information, all right? But there are implication to this filtering process, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, it was the news editors that were taking the responsibility for this filtering process. Some of you might be familiar with the famous video that is called Filter Bubble, all right? Today, with new technology, it is AI systems that are doing this gatekeeping. And so there are important implications because we see many different sources of information, many types of information. But when this is filtered, as you can see in the gate, that icon that looks like a net, we have reduced number of sources of information. So the question that a media and information literate person should be asking is, what is left out? What information is missing from what I am receiving? Who is taking this decision as to what to be filtered or not to be filtered. How are these decisions being taken? Who's being affected and being benefited by the information being filtered? And the question is that now that we have moved, the editors are not only ones filtering, we have social media platforms, as I said, and AI systems. And we have a situation where people who were once consumers of information, they're also become creators of information. And they themselves are doing some of the filtering in terms of on social media, where you receive information only that your friends share with you sometimes. And you have to look outside of your network to ensure that you don't get locked into an echo chamber. These are important questions. We need to look to the future that we want. And this image that I created depict the flood of information, a great river that we need to cross to get to the future that we want on the right side of your screen, or maybe on the right side of my screen, maybe it's left for you. And what we have on the left is citizens, media, technology, different content providers, media technology, libraries, social media platforms, digital communication company. What media and information literacy does is that it builds that bridge between the future that we want, all right, the purposes that we'd like to see media and communication technology achieve, all right, it builds that bridge between those purposes and the future that we want. With media and information literacy, it is easier for us to cross the turbulent flood of information that we face in the world. We want to move to a future where we can live in solidarity and peace. But to get there, we need to contemplate and to consider not only the social challenges. And sometimes when you listen and hear about media and information literacy, it's always linked to negative stuff, you know, to privacy violation, to disinformation, to false information and other negative experiences and risks online. These are valid and important and must be promoted and addressed and they're equal important part of media and information literacy competencies. But we also need to contemplate the flood of opportunities that the new information and communication technology bring to us. And we need to ensure that we're focusing on how mail can enable lifelong learning, governance, democracy dialogue, how Mill relates to the Sustainable Development Goal, which I believe the Secretary General of the Austrian UNESCO National Commission mentioned earlier, that Mill can enable more participation in the Sustainable Development Goal. Mill can be an important tool to build trust in media and to promote peace. But to do this, we need an active fourth estate. All right. You can interpret this image on the screen as you like. But the media, the fourth estate, for those younger persons who are connected. So in most societies, we have three, they talk about the three branches of governance, the judiciary, the legislative, and the executive. And the media is known as the fourth branch of governance, the fourth estate. We need a working fourth estate. The media exists to promote access to information, to promote truth, to promote freedom to information, to promote truth, to promote freedom of expression. It exists to educate and to inform and entertain. But the truth is that the media do not always live up to these normative ideals and our media. In fact, in this COVID context, they're under much attack that needs to be addressed through building trust again in the media. But we also have the fifth estate. I don't know how many of you have seen this movie. Sorry, seen this movie. I have not seen it, but I've heard of it, the fifth estate. But what I like about it is the tagline that is present, as you can see at the top, that you cannot achieve exposing the secret of others and ensure transparency, I'm paraphrasing now, without exposing your own secrets. And so in that fifth estate, which is the citizens, us, the common people that are important in the governance process, we need to start with ourselves if we're going to depollute the information ecology. We need to start with ourselves if we're going to make more commonplace the importance and the opportunities that the new information media and communication technology bring to us. And it's on this basis that UNESCO promotes what we call knowledge societies founded on four principles, quality education for all, freedom of expression, universal access to information and multilingualismism or cultural diversity in cyberspace. And it's through this that UNESCO talks about transforming minds, building peace, the bastion of peace in the minds of women and men all over the world. And these four pillars form the basis of what UNESCO call media and information literacy as an intersectoral and interdisciplinary field as we have established earlier. I want to share this controversial quote with you from Vargas Losa, a Nobel laureate, in his book, Notes of the Death of a Culture. And he says, when a culture regulates critical thinking to the attic of items no longer in fashion and replaces ideas with images, then literary and artistic products are promoted, accepted or rejected through advertising techniques. And the conditioned reflexes of a public that lacks the intellectual and discriminator antenna to detect when it's being duped. This is what we need to change. Very controversial competencies. In a research that was carried out for UNESCO, we looked at a research that was done by Rob Lynn on 21st century competencies, frameworks in Europe, in Africa, in North America, about five or six different competency framework. And you can see on the screen some of the competencies that are highlighted in these framework. competencies that are highlighted in these framework. So on the first two columns, you will see the competencies that are mentioned in all the frameworks that were assessed, and the second mentioned in the first, most of the frameworks. You will see that critical thinking is not mentioned in all the framework. It's mentioned in most, but not in all. ICT literacy, another important observation, is mentioned in all the competencies. So, looking at the technological competencies, the hard programming skills, important aspect of media and information literacy. But the softer skills you will see is not highlighted a lot in 21st century competencies. And again, we have to change that if we're going to have media and information literacy a part of the next normal or the new normal going forward. We have to ensure that we don't make the error that we have made in the past 40 years in ignoring this field and know that this information has hit us in a frightening way and is here to stay with us, we're just now realizing, but wait a minute, we have had this solution 40 years ago. We need to make that change going forward. And so for UNESCO, media and and digital competencies. We see them as interrelated. And it looks at the competencies that enable people to be able to access, use, critically evaluate, and store information, being able to know their rights online, to use technology and media information to promote democratic processes, to participate in government processes, promote gender equality. These are type of competencies. They're all integrated. They're all converging. And so we have developed important competencies framework on this particular area. On the screen, you can see 10 of these broad competencies. You know, we have expanded these significantly and you'll learn more about these in our media and information literacy curriculum that will be launched, you know, very soon this Friday. And we're really thankful again to Comet and the Austrian National Commission for this event, which really comes on the heels of the launch of this important media and information literacy curriculum resource that is coming out next Friday, as mentioned. In that research that UNESCO did, we asked experts all around the world, experts from information and library sciences, from media, from digital technology. We asked them to rate competencies. We gave them about 16 broad competencies and asked them to rate the importance of these competencies. And you can see the eight top competencies that were rated by these experts from all over the world. Critically evaluating information, number one, engaging with media for different social interaction, intercultural dialogue, interreligious dialogue, and so on. Importantly, number three, understanding the functions of media, our content providers in economic and social life. And you can see the other eight top competencies that the experts rated. We also asked them to rank. There's a difference between rating and ranking. We asked them to rank the same competencies. And you see that most of the competencies that were under the top rated came back when they ranked, all right? But we see ICT skills coming in at number eight, being able to apply ICT skills to create products came in when they started ranking. We did further, we also asked them, so okay, that's ranking. We also asked the experts to tell us what are they, to rate the different social context factors that are driving meal policy development in different countries. And you can see on your screen the top eight rated social context factors driving meal policies from diversity and respect and tolerance. Very important. That came out at number one. Diversity, respect, tolerance, dialogue, peace, and global citizenship came out at number one. No wonder, because this research was carried out in 2018. But it's so relevant now in 2021, especially in this context of COVID-19, that is creating a lot of intolerance and in a lot of polemic and polarization. But this was one of the top social factor that came out in the research that was ended in 2018. Freedom of expression, access to information. Number eight, promoting technological development and ethical use of information. These are the social context factors. We did some further analysis, and what we found was that there's a combination of divergence and convergence happening among the experts on the broad competencies. But there's a lot of convergence happening. competencies, but there's a lot of convergence happening. Yet, there's also some divergence where some experts want to defend certain subject areas based on their expertise and the discipline that they have been in for a very long time. But that is slowly changing and, in fact, rapidly changing based on the research. All right. In terms of the social context factors, we are also seeing a lot of convergence from the experts, some divergence as well, but more convergence in terms of the social context factors that are driving meal development. There's a lot of hope because in the research, we saw that a lot of the experts and practitioners, they weren't all experts, but some were practitioners in male, are under the age of 40. And so we anticipate that with these young, youthful, vibrant, more youthful, vibrant practitioners, and some of them are experts who are involved in the field, we will see more convergence to treat media and information literacy as a holistic approach and an integration of information, media, and technological competencies. As we move rapidly forward, we need to bring together the different pieces of the puzzle. And this is what UNESCO is about. Consider these different concepts that you might have heard. Many different concepts from news literacy, privacy literacy, critical literacy, visual literacy, social media literacy, film literacy, now we're hearing about AI, artificial intelligence literacy. So many different literacies that sometimes bring about confusion to the policy makers. It brings about confusion to the educators as to, okay, what are we talking about here really? And from UNESCO standpoint, all these literacies interrelate and intersect. All right? And so we use this umbrella term, media and information literacy, to bring all these different notions of information, media and and technological competencies together. For UNESCO, we look at the purpose for which people use information, the understanding that they need through media and information literacy, the process through which they should go to have that understanding and to be able to evaluate content and evaluate the functions of media and content providers. And for us, ICTs and digital skill is cross-cutting. That's what is driving the convergence between information, media, and technological competencies. We need common objectives and common purpose to bring together these different contexts of media literacy, education, communication, information literacy, ICTs, or digital skills. And we need to bring in all actors working together. And to do that, UNESCO started an important research that we're calling mail expansion. In the interest of time, I'm not going to explain all these slides, but essentially what we are calling mail expansion is an approach not only to bring together the different subject areas, information, media, and communication competencies or digital technology competencies, but to develop competencies for groups, it is through groups that this information goes so viral so fast. All right. It's a good group dynamics that is at work. But yet we have not been developing or attacking or addressing male for certain social groups, certain marginalized groups, for example, for migrants or for women or for certain racialized groups, all right, indigenous communities. We have not been thinking about, you know, male for particular age groups, you know, on social media. We also have not been thinking about and addressing male-winning institutional approaches, where most institutions, they have internal training and internal policies on information, but they're not having mail and mail training as a part of their internal training packages. All right. And so for UNESCO, this mail expansion really is to reach more people with media and information literacy, focusing on the group approach and the institutional approach, combining that with the individual approach, and then to link that to other social competencies, to link male to intercultural competencies, global citizenship, research, health literacy, financial literacy, science literacy, and many other social competencies through what we call value proposition, value enhancement, and value expansion. That happens in a group dynamics, all right? For UNESCO, what we are putting forward is to move from the present area that we are at right now with mail, where the correlation between people's knowledge of mail and their behavior and the things that they do is now at about 0.5. But if we were to apply the meal expansion approach, then we go closer, you will see in this diagram, we're going closer to a more perfect, you know, positive, you know, correlation of one. One means a positive correlation, a stronger correlation from 0.5 to one. And this is what we need to be, needs to be happening as we're moving forward. We have a lot of information on this, the concept. We have, you know, published some information and that we encourage you as you develop your research around the work that you're doing to consult some of that. Also to support this converged approach, UNESCO has articulated what we call the five laws of media and information literacy as principles that information, communication, and libraries, media technology, and the internet, they are for civic engagement. Every citizen creates information. Law 3 says that information and knowledge and messages are not always value neutral or always independent of biases. Law 4 looks at every citizen wants to know and understand new information and knowledge. But we should always respect their rights. We cannot compromise their rights. We cannot impose certain information on them. And finally, importantly, law five talks about media and information literacy is not acquired at once. experience. It's not a once-off acquisition of male competencies, but it has to include the different dimensions that I've been talking about for someone to be fully media and information literate. As I come to a close, Elmuth pointed it out that UNESCO, we have been leading this global charge on developing media and information literacy competencies, working with many stakeholders across the world, including the European Commission. We have developed many resources, not just resources that are on the shelf, but we're actually using these resources with countries in all continents of the world, policy guidelines, supporting countries to develop national media and information literacy policies. And in Austria, this is a direction that I'm sure Austria will be going soon. There are quite a number of countries in Europe that have developed national policies on media and information literacy, and UNESCO is supporting that. We have developed resources for media, media and information literacy in journalism. It's a handbook for journalists and journalism education. And what we are trying to do through that is exactly what this webinar is doing and what COMET and RTR is doing, where the media in Austria is playing a more central role in promoting media and information literacy. We have actually developed a tool for that that and we're looking forward to cooperating with RTR as they take on their role and more would commit to promote media and information literacy in Austria. We have developed an assessment framework and we are piloting and supporting countries to carry out scoped assessment of country readiness for media and information literacy. Importantly, we have our media and information literacy curriculum for education and educators and learners. I mentioned it earlier. This is a sneak preview of this particular resource. That is the second resource you're looking at on your screen. All right, it's marked Think Critically, Click Wisely, is the topic of the second edition. It's going to be launched by the UNESCO Director General, the Vice President of the European Commission, the Prime Minister of Serbia, and other high-level officials and partners will be joining together and joining forces this Friday to launch this important resource. And so you will see from that a lot of what I've been sharing with you, this resource is not just our middle curriculum, it's not just a framework, but it's a foundation to live by. Other resources that we have developed, as Elmont pointed out, and I'm coming to a close, we have developed a lot of resources. I invite you to go to our website. But we have a suite of massively open online courses on media and information literacy that you can, in fact, visit if you want to learn more and sign up for one of these courses. Visit if you want to learn more and sign up for one of these courses. They exist in Spanish, in English, in Portuguese, in Uzbekistan, you know, and we're also developing MOOC that we're developing for policymakers and government officials. So we're actually working on this now to be launched in about two months. We have really progressed with this massively open online course for government and policymakers. And we're looking forward to working with policymakers in Austria to promote this MOOC. Another resource that is coming soon is a male radio-based MOOC. And again, I'm happy that the media partners are involved in this webinar. As I communicated earlier, over 50%, nearly 60% of the world population is now online, but we still have 40% of the world that's not connected. They depend on radio and television as their chief source of information. And so we want to also reach these people with media and information literacy. And so we're developing a sort of an innovative approach to design a MOOC that will be radio-based. It can be used online as well, but it's particularly for those who are marginalized from access to the internet. And we look forward to cooperating with Comet, with you, Elmont, and other partners on this male radio based move. Coming to an end, as I said, we also promote Global Media and Information Literacy Week annually. We thank our partners, European Commission. You know, this year we're aligning the European Media and Information Literacy Week or Media Literacy Week with the UNESCO Global Media and Information Literacy Week. There's a big momentum right now, an opportunity with a resolution that was passed by UNESCO in 2019, but more importantly, another resolution that was passed by the United Nations just March, the 25th of March, making Global MIL Week International and sending the message that it's urgent for all stakeholders to promote mail. We have different networks, the Global Alliance for Partnerships on Media and Information Literacy. It was formerly called, the name was recently changed to the UNESCO MIL Alliance. It's a network of networks around the world and it's a pioneering and the network of networks around the world. We're happy that Austria will be setting up a media and information literacy network in Austria, strengthening what exists, and we look forward to that network being a national chapter of the UNESCO-MIL Alliance. We also have university network on MIL and intercultural dialogue. We encourage universities, if there are professors who are connected on this webinar and you want to get involved with the MILID, Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue Network, we invite you and we ask the organizations that are connected, please join the UNESCO Mililands. Go online and see the form and join us so that we can link up our initiatives just as you're planning to do. Not just looking at the national, but from the national to the regional to the international and to create real snowball and change. We're also online social media platform promoting different social media angles and like think before clicking and think before sharing. And we're developing an initiative that we call Mill Clicks. This information is going viral online. we call Mill Clicks. This information is going viral online and we want more mail learning to go viral online. And to do this, we developed this initiative called Mill Clicks. We invite you again to join us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to our different Mill Clicks platform. It's a way to learn about mail through socializing, connecting, browsing. It's a non-traditional, informal way to learn about mail. How do you put it? It's an organic approach, the way the internet works and the way this information spreads. We also want mail information and mail learning to spread. And for every person on this workshop who are connected, every person who is connected to become peer educators of male, you can do that through male clicks. We know that we don't have a lot of these resources in German, but here is an opportunity for partnerships with all the stakeholders in Germany to translate a lot of UNESCO resources and initiatives moving forward. MIL-CLICS is an acronym that stands, of course, for Maleless Media and Information Literacy, but the CLICS is for Critical Thinking and Creativity, Literacy, Intercultural Dialogue, Citizenship, Knowledge, and Sustainable Development. So again, linking mill to different social issues. We're also working with youth organizations and our work with youth organization is very unique. It's not only training the individual youth, but it's also taking an institutional approach similar to the concept of mill expansion, this is actually a ground zero pilot of meal expansion, where we are working with youth organizations to integrate meal in their organizational policies and strategy. It's for a more sustainable and a more long, you know, a more sustainable and a more long living approach to meal for youth. All right. I wish I had time to talk more about it, but youth organizations, we're working very closely with. I want to end with this quote from the Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Article 1, sorry, of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Article One, sorry, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it says, all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood, all right? It is this reason and conscience that the acquisition of media and information literacy competencies can stir in all of us. Winston Churchill puts it this way, all great things are simple and many can be expressed in a single word, freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, and hope. Media information literacy, UNESCO proposes to you, may be complex, but it's also simple, and it can be summed up in single words, such as truth, the pursuit of truth, freedom, the pursuit of equality, accuracy, the pursuit of equality, accuracy, access, dialogue, peace, justice, ethics, and why not love? Because perhaps if we really have love for fellow men and women, as we saw in Article 1 of the Declaration of Human Rights, then we will not misuse information in the way that it's happening now that can bring about harm to others. With this, I say thank you. UNESCO is very pleased to be here and to participate with you. Looking forward to your question. And again, God bless you all. Thank you. Bye-bye. Looking forward to your question. And again, God bless you all. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you very much, Orton. It was a great pleasure hearing you for this substantial overview about the different aspects, the history, and also the current events and the upcoming events. And many thanks from all of us. So we have around 15 minutes time to discuss. And to everybody, if you have questions, please use the chat, type it in. Das kann auch in Deutsch sein. Ich werde das dann in Englisch übersetzen. Also fühlen Sie sich frei, es auf Deutsch oder in Englisch zu machen. with the questions and the questions were concerning the current efforts of UNESCO. And what you said at the end, please can you give some more details about the current plan? So when is the curriculum going to be launched? Is it this Friday also when we can see it online? Can we download it? And accordingly to the curriculum, what are the plans about the MOOC? And there are some partnerships with radios, especially in Africa. When will the radio-based mill mooc be published and where yes so in terms of the uh the the the um the first question the mill curriculum the mill curriculum as i pointed out will be launched this friday all right it's this friday on the 23rd of April. All right. There is information out on that if you search our website. We have two high-level sessions with high-level officials that I mentioned earlier that will take place from 3 to 4.15 online, all right, via Zoom. We invite you all to connect. It will also be streamed live on the UNESCO social media platform on our YouTube channel and on our Facebook channel. And then the curriculum will be available thereafter, Friday, for download, all right? You'll be able to download the curriculum. Right now it's only in English, it's being translated in French, and then will be available in many other languages. In fact, the first edition is available in about a dozen languages, all right? And so we anticipate that this second new edition will also be available in 15 or more languages. And we're looking forward to cooperate with Austria to have this in German, to translate the curriculum in German. The MOOC that I mentioned, as I said, some of these MOOCs are already available. They're online. You know, MOOC for young people, you can find those online. And for adults alike who want introductory course, you can go and sign up now to those MOOCs in different languages. Not yet in German, but then again, not opportunity for corporation. I'll keep singing that, you know, that opportunity for corporation. The mail radio-based MOOC that is just being developed, we're just getting started with that, all right? And so I think, again, Austria commit can be a part of that process at the beginning because we're just getting started. And we anticipate that this mail radio-based MOOC will be available in the fall, okay, for launch during Global Media and Information Literacy Week in October. That's what we are projecting. I also mentioned the MIL MOOC for policymakers and government officials. That is more advanced. for policymakers and government officials. That is more advanced. We have started a lot of preparation and production of content for that, which is more advanced than the MOOC, the radio-based MOOC. And so we hope to launch the MIL MOOC for policymakers and government officials by about June, July, that MOOC will be launched. So the mail radio-based MOOC is not just for, you know, any one region, all right? We know that in terms of access to the internet, you know, most developed countries have high penetration and it's in developing countries and regions that we have lower penetration but the male-based radio MOOC is for everyone all right focusing on those who do not have access to the internet but because of the convergence the content can also be used as podcasts you know on internet platforms and be used for everyone. So it's not just for Africa, but for everyone, for all over the world. And we hope to have this MOOC in multiple languages as well as we move forward. I hope I got all your questions there. Thank you, Arten. I think, yeah, and we already received a new one. It's from Christian Berger. He asks you, which support UNESCO gives to local and regional activities? Probably you can talk about your experiences and about your plans to connect with regional activities. Yes. So UNESCO, we work a lot at the national level. So we work a lot at the national level, particularly as we talk about mail, you know, and all those resources that I mentioned earlier. We are working with schools, with universities, with local NGOs and different networks and associations to promote media and information literacy. So I give you an example, the middle curriculum that we have spoken about. We are working and supporting schools and NGOs to pilot and adapt this curriculum and integrate it in their training programs, both in formal curricula, in schools across the world, across Africa, Latin America, in many different countries. We're supporting the national development of media and information literacy. The same thing for policies. The policy-making resource that I mentioned to you, we're working with many countries and policy makers in articulating national media and information literacy policies, both in developing countries and developed countries alike. So for example, of course we do not finance, you know, the developed countries. They're the one assisting us. So we have strong cooperation with countries like Sweden and Finland, the European Commission in promoting mail and supporting our mail work. But we do support and partner with these countries to develop national mail policies. So we work with Sweden, you know, for example, you know, with France, we work closely with, let's say, the CLEMI, we work closely with, let's say, the CLEMI, which is the National Media and Information Literacy Center here in France, in their different programs and activities. And so we are really working with many youth organizations, regional youth organizations in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia, and also national youth organizations to develop male programs within their organizations and for these to become a standard part of what these organizations do. We are also working with the media to promote male, not with the level of success that we want. And this is why we're excited about this corporation. You know, with Commit, we have also been working with UK, with United Kingdom. Maria is here and she will be speaking later. And she's part of the UK making sense of the media forum. UNESCO is also supporting that from a technical standpoint and cooperating with different networks and associations within UK. So quite frankly, UNESCO is working at different levels whether it's training of teachers, training of policy makers, articulating policies, online campaigns. We've done a lot of work around the COVID-19, this infodemic. A lot of work around that, developed tons of resources to promote media and information literacy, learning online concepts such as meal parenting, media and information literacy, literate parenting, to give parents a type of basic competencies that they need to interact and to help their children, especially that more young people are online now because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So we're working in many different areas at all different levels of society, nationally, regionally, and globally. Thank you, Alton. There's a question by Helmut. Because you talked and used the notion of global citizenship education, do you have some concrete examples for how connecting middle training with global citizenship education? Yes, I mean, certainly, you know, the concept of global citizenship is related to the one of digital citizenship. You know, we're living in a global village. And so our individual actions affect others, you know, across the globe. The things that we do or do not do online have impact not just on us and our country, but on other parts of the world. And so for UNESCO, global citizenship education is about giving individuals the type of competencies to understand how their national activities and priorities connect to the rest of the world, to understand how they can connect to and play a part in promoting the sustainable development goals. Issues to do with, let's say, climate change, what actions you can take in your country as an individual, as a group, and how this can have impact across the world. There are concrete links between global citizenship education and media and information literacy. And take, for example, if we're going to understand the world that we're living in, if we're going to understand how our life is connected at the national, regional, and international level, this also, regional, and international level. This also happens through media and through technology. It is through technology that we learn about ourselves and through media, and we learn about other cultures and the world around us. If we're developing programs, which we do develop programs for people to learn about new cultures, as they learn about cultures through media and technology, there's certain competencies that they need that is different from learning about a culture face-to-face by interacting with someone face-to-face or interacting with people from other cultures within your country. That's one way to do it. But it's happening online, people learning about other cultures online. And so what media and information literates comprise is they need to understand about representation. How different cultures are represented online is not the reality about these cultures. The information and the stereotypical representation that you might see through the media is not speaking to the entirety of the culture. And so people who are media information literate or global citizens will understand that, okay, I need to move away from that stereotypical representation that all Jamaicans are Rastafarians. All right? We see that in the media. A global citizenship will understand that, okay, this is the content that I've been exposed to in mainstream media and through technology that I need some research skills to go deeper to find out more about the Jamaican culture, for example. And the same thing happens for different ethnic groups, all right? There's stereotypical representation, you know, and so representation as an important aspect of media and information literacy is also related to global citizenship education. Gender equality, again, is another issue that is dealt with through global citizenship education. Gender equality, again, is another issue that is dealt with through global citizenship education. What we find that there's a rise and increase of misogyny online, hatred towards women and attack towards women journalists. So a global citizenship approach will look at education in the classroom as one dimension to deal with that. But then also you need competencies online to understand how different genders are being represented online. So these are some practical examples of the link between global citizenship education and media and information literacy. But in some of our resources that UNESCO have developed, in addition to the MIL curriculum, there is a chapter on how MIL is related to global citizenship education. All right. So you will see that. And there are more concrete examples of how even social media can be used to promote male and global citizenship education for social learning. All right. Concrete examples, tables detailing all of that information. So you look forward to the curriculum that is coming out. It will be launched by our director general on Friday, this Friday. curriculum that is coming out will be launched by our director general on friday this friday yeah yeah alton probably you didn't see it so the reaction of helmet was very positive at the end so you gave enough examples yeah it's very satisfied and i think we are all satisfied so thank you very much alton it was really a great pleasure to hear you. It was my first time that I got an insight into UNESCO's mill directly from UNESCO and I was really impressed. Thank you very much again. We'll be right back. Thanks for watching!