H.E. Hussein
Al Hammadi, the Minister of Education, confirmed on the importance of positive
media in order to confront the misleading and destructive messages invading our
modern-day-media and targeting all layers of society, specially, the youth.
H.E. called for unity between all social institutions in order to increase the
awareness and media sense in all members of society, students, in particular.
This confirmation was during H.E.’s opening speech to the second
session of Media Education that was organized by the Ministry of Education at
the Teachers Training Institute in Ajman, under the title “Positive Media”, and
it was attended by H.E. Hammad Al Kaabi, CEO of the Publishing Department in
Abu Dhabi Media, and H.E. Mohamad Jalal Al Resi, CEO of Emirates News Agency and number of national media representatives in addition to
big audience of teachers and students. The conference talked about many topics
such as; the mechanisms and methodologies of acquiring critical thinking by
students, the methods to benefit from media devices to serve an educational
message, to promote the concept of nationalism among students and protect them
against harmful media, positive media and positive education. The conference
also, seeks to unify efforts among all competent social institutions in order
to entrench the concept of positive media.
H.E., during his speech, stressed on the great importance and
impact of media on societies, where it became in direct contact with many
aspects of our lives, including students, the thing that require us to create
enough awareness among our students in relation to find a way to deal with
media properly. He also added, “the media, recently, do not get enough by just
transmitting news and events; they go way beyond that to cause some sort of
change to the minds of audience and societies and they create some sort of
stereotype which is far from being accurate which results in causing a chaotic
environment that threatens the stability of societies and countries alike”.
His Excellency also added; “we are living in the midst of a true
media revolution. This requires us to protect our children and students in
confrontation to this information flood that sweeps the way they [our
children] think and act in their societies, therefore, reflects their
relationships with their surrounding and their understanding to culture,
customs and traditions. So, we, as educators and teachers, carrying the weight
of enabling our students from dealing with media and social media more responsibly
and with greater confidence”.
H.E. clarified
that critical ideology and critical thinking, besides the media’s awareness to
their ethical responsibilities in their productions form the lifeline to
avoid their [Media] misleading messages that are only produced to
attract more attention and have no logical content or that are only produced in
favor of some harmful agendas. H.E. also stressed that building awareness among
students is a national responsibility that requires exerting efforts between the
Ministry of Education and Media platform with the parents of our students and
society in whole.
H.E. also talked about the efforts of the Ministry of Education to
protect the awareness of students. The Ministry put its efforts to teach its
staff and students new skills on how to deal with open media throughout
promoting the values of patriotism in the minds of students. Also, it [the
Ministry] issued specialized curriculums to enable our students achieving a
positive interaction during the use of social media and any other media.
In the same topic, H.E. Mohamad Jalal Alresi, CEO of Emirates News
Agency, talked about the results of a study conducted by the National Media
Council concerning the sources of news; the study showed that media platforms
and cable channels took the highest percentage of news sources
presented to society. H.E. also talked about (news content course) in media and
how could it help carrying positive messages that really could benefit society
and address them properly.
H.E. mentioned that in accordance with this study, 86% of Emirati
youngsters are using more than one media platform to get news where social
media forms the most of news sources then cable channels, respectively.
From another point, H.E. Al Hammadi, CEO of Publishing Department
in Abu Dhabi Media, during his speech at the conference of Media Education,
stated that the world is now a (one silver screen) thanks to the unlimited cognitive
de-fusion and media boom, in addition to their impact on our
every-day-life; This caused limitless challenges to society and both, media and
education institutions alike. H.E. also stated that Social Media contributed in
the thinking, knowledge and psychological formation of audience which put more
weight on the shoulders of media, education and family institutions to confront
and aware the new generations of the method to deal with all the negative and
misleading contents of such platforms in proper criticism.
H.E. clarified
that we could build a media critical competence among students throughout
having a media specialized curriculum called (Media Education) where we could
define (the citizen journalist); which mean the citizen that receives the
critical media sense from its own patriotism and knowledge standards. The
target of having such curriculum is to develop the critical ability in dealing
with media, search engines and social media platforms; this mission is
achievable educationally and it could be developed by the person itself since
its childhood.
H.E. mentioned the importance of open media on the media platforms
and that there are 19 million subscribers in smart communications in the
country and that nearly 385 million messages are being sent via WhatsApp each
day.
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30 workshops |
The Ministry of Education, in lights this conference, held 30
workshops related to targeting students and field staff in education in order
to enable them to obtain interactive communication and contact and also to deal better with the various media devices. Those
workshops were administered by experts in the field of modern-day media and
social media. |
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The workshops also covered most aspects of media where it talked
about the methodology of producing educational documentaries, it also
discussed the mechanisms of employing social media to serve the purposes of
education, the principals of positive media presence in addition to the
elements of news production, art of photography, TV directing, caricature,
awareness film making and it also talked about the positive media and its
impact on education, the awareness of watching media, soft power, the role of
media in publishing and promoting tolerance, Identity and national values. |
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A workshop
held by Dr. Ibrahim Al Dabbel, Coordinator
of Khalifa Program for Enabling “I Can”, talked about the role of
teacher in providing the students with positive media skills and how to check
the truthfulness of news and how to deal with it, also, it discussed various
forms of positive media in different fields. |
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Youth Panel |
Dr. Habib Ghaloum, Cultural Council at the Ministry of Culture,
participated with Emirati Announcer, Ahmad Al Ghafli, in a youth
panel attended by number of students, discussed the role of positive media in
eradicating misleading news. This youth panel is considered as translation to
the wise vision of our leadership in the importance of planning for the
future and grant the youth enough opportunities to express themselves via
different positive media platforms in order to enrich their experience in media. |
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The panel
contained many rich discussions and many other innovative experiences in how
to deal with social media more positively in way that it would reflect, in a
good way, on all layers of society. |