MILES: Piloting the Students’ Toolbox in School Workshops

March marks an important stage in the MILES project, as the focus shifts firmly into classroom practice. After the earlier phases of teacher training and co-design, partners are now implementing workshops with students and piloting the MILES Students’ Toolbox in real educational settings. This is a key moment for the project, because it is where the ideas, methods, and materials developed so far are being tested directly with the young people they are meant to support.

The workshops with students are designed to strengthen critical thinking and help learners engage more confidently and responsibly with the online world. Through these sessions, students explore how to recognize misinformation, assess the reliability of sources, interpret key messages, and respond thoughtfully to misleading content. The workshops also aim to support students in understanding how digital information circulates and how they can make wiser choices when interacting with media and social platforms.

At the heart of this phase is the MILES Students’ Toolbox, a practical set of materials developed to support classroom learning across different subjects and contexts. The toolbox includes activities, exercises, reflection prompts, and guidance for teachers, all designed to make media and information literacy more engaging, accessible, and adaptable. Its structure is intentionally practical, with digital and printable components that can be used in regular school lessons while encouraging active participation, collaboration, and reflection.

What makes this stage especially valuable is that the toolbox is not just being presented as a finished resource, it is being piloted and refined through use. Teachers are integrating selected tools and activities into their workshops, observing how students respond, which exercises generate the strongest engagement, and how the materials can be improved for different age groups and learning contexts. In this way, the piloting process helps ensure that the final toolbox is not only theoretically sound, but also relevant and effective in everyday classroom practice.

March therefore represents more than a project milestone. It is the point at which MILES becomes visible in the daily life of schools: in discussion, in analysis, in collaborative problem-solving, and in students’ growing ability to question, verify, and reflect. As the piloting phase continues, the experiences gathered from classrooms across partner countries will play an essential role in strengthening the project’s outcomes and shaping the next steps.

👉 Follow the project and explore MILES platform here: https://platform-miles.erasmusplus.website/