INTEGRATION OF MEDIA LITERACY AND LIFE SKILLS IN SCHOOL EDUCATION: A NURTURANCE OF 21ST CENTURY SKILLS

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” ― Nelson Mandela.
Education is a powerful tool which helps an individual to be equipped with certain important skills to thrive in.
These skills supports for a better adaptive societal life. These skills are popularly known as Life Skills. Life Skills
are essential 21st century skills use to deal with daily situations, make important decisions, and enhance their
quality of life. The schools should integrate life skills to equip the future citizens of the country through Life Skill
Education (LSE).Life skills education is a training program which focuses on cultivation of personal life skills
and support children to reach their full potentials. In order to enable the child to overcome the challenges of the
21st century life, the NEP enlists a few fundamental principles to guide the education system of the country.
Some of these principles highlight the importance of soft skills which can be broadly classified as “life skills”
that form an integral part of modern education. NEP also emphasizes the importance Media Literacy as a 21st
century approach to education. It provides a framework to access, analyse, evaluate and create messages in a
variety of forms - from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media
in society as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy. The
present study intended to equip the in- service teachers with knowledge of life skills and Media literacy, how
they complement each other and how to ingrate these skills through Problem based learning.
Problem based learning is an activity based learning which comes under the realms of constructivist approach.
This approach can be effectively used to cater media literacy and life skills.
A seminar cum workshop was conducted in a CBSE school, Notre Dame, Vasai West on integration of Media
Literacy and Life skills in teaching learning activities through activity based learning in daily practices. Hands
on practices given to the participants on writing lesson plan. The feedback was taken in the form of open-ended
questions from the sample of 26 in-service teachers of the school. Maharashtra and data collected is analysed
qualitatively to find out the outcomes of session.