Unveiling Deepfakes: Confronting 21st Century Online Challenges

The technology-driven 21st century calls for enriched modes of thinking, living, and working. Today’s educators face a series of challenges in their efforts to equip learners with new as well as old skills. The paper in question presents activities realized within an English-as-Foreign-Language (EFL) context at a Greek Primary school. The aim of the project was to help pupils identify and respond to deepfakes. Genuine communication, collaboration, critical mind, and creativity were on the agenda along with inclusion and agency. The intervention was based on Information Literacy principles, the Digital Competence Framework, and Bloom’s revised taxonomy. Sixth-graders watched situational videos, got updated on digital deceit, analyzed events, laid out perspectives, and sought motives behind attitudes. They looked for their own examples, suggested ways for self-protection, supported each other, generated multimodal products, assessed them via rubrics, disseminated proposals to a wider audience, and evaluated tactics through an online questionnaire. Outcomes comprise increased impetus, autonomy, independence, dynamic participation, accountability, and knowledge co-construction. The above suggests that school can and should play a role in preparing students for the new information age.