DCG students take part in prestigious media event

Derby College Group (DCG) students and teachers had the privilege of being invited to the prestigious annual Guardian Foundation Event in London on Thursday 6th June.  

A Level students Ellie Woodland and Sami Alsadig were chosen to be part of a discussion panel for the event. They joined Dr Gianfranco Polizzi, an academic from the University of Liverpool to for an interactive discussion on ‘The fight against disinformation: why is it vital to democracy, and what does our research tell us?’  

The students were chosen as representatives of the Media Literacy Ambassador (MLA) Programme.  Ellie became an accredited MLA with the first cohort of students to be accredited in 2022-23.  She has since delivered workshops to her peers and trained Business students to become MLAs.

Sami is in the most recent cohort of students to be trained by their peers and will begin his delivery to his peers this academic year. They shared their insight on the impact and importance of the MLA programme (Media Literacy Ambassador) and participated in a Q & A session with an audience of around over 200 media professionals and journalists. 

They were supported by their teachers, Debbie Painter and Amy Naylor.  Members of the Guardian Foundation board and other audience members commented on how articulate and confident our students were.  Ellie and Sami said that they had really enjoyed networking with the journalists who attended the event. Students described the invitation to take part in the event as having been "an honour".  Along with teachers, they are now planning the next steps for the development of the programme.  

Derby College Group would like to thank Margaret Holborn, Misoon El-Gomati and the whole team from the Guardian Foundation for their warm welcome and for offering the students such wonderful opportunities!  DCG are now really looking forward to working with the team in the Teacher Champion Programme.

Debbie Painter, Curriculum Manager commented: “The opportunities the Media Literacy Ambassadors have been given as part of this programme and deliver to their peers has been immense.  They have thrived working across curriculum areas and embedding their learning into their academic lessons, and Ellie and Sami did an outstanding job at such a great event.”