An Innovative Approach Using Picture Books to Empower Critical Information and Digital Literacy in Primary School Education #ECIL

A workshop at the ECIL Conference today, which I'm liveblogging (Sheila here) was An Innovative Approach Using Picture Books to Empower Critical Information and Digital Literacy in Primary School Education, with the material prepared by Dora Sales, Serap Kurbanoğlu, İpek Şencan, Sarah Pavey, Stéphane Goldstein, Konstantina Martzoukou and and Heidi Enwal. Not all authors were able to attend the conference.
They were presenting on the international BRIDGE project involving 6 countries, funded by the European Union. The website is here https://bridgeinfoliteracy.eu/. The project goal was " to create a transnational cooperation network for the exchange of good practices and resources for the joint promotion of information and digital literacy as a way of underpinning education in equality values in primary schools" and they have created learning and teaching resources which can be downloaded and used freely (at the above link), including some picture books for each country that can be used in teaching 8-11 year olds.
The focus of the workshop was presentation of the online training material for educators that supports them in using the materials. It is available in English, Finnish, Italian, Turkish, Spanish, Greek and  Catalan. The project uses picture books as part of inquiry based learning, to encourage critical questioning. The booklet for educators explains the underpinning pedagogic approaches and models, such as dialogic reading and critical information literacy.
The process starts by asking learners to ask questions prompted by the book cover (what does the title mean? what is happening? how do you feel?) Then there are prompt questions for the inside cover and prompt questions while reading, and after reading (e.g. what do you now know about the topic, what more do you want to know?) This can lead to art activities, searching, question forming, organising information etc. A goal is stimulating learners to reflect, question and communicate. The example of the Finnish picture book which is "silent" (with no words, but pictures) was used. The books have been chosen to provoke discussion on topics such as helping others, economic difference, refugees, nature etc. The books are mostly ones would you would have to get from your library or buy, but there are some which can be downloaded. One of the researchers, Dora Sales, was author of one of the books!
The workshop part was discussing how one of the books could be used - my group had fun discussing and critiquing this one.