School Media Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Limitations and New Opportunities

This paper focuses on the media use for distance learning in Ukraine during the quarantine caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The study found out that during the COVID-19 pandemic the media have a powerful and contradictory influence on education, becoming a leading factor in socialization, social learning, and a means and source of formal and non-formal education. Theoretical methods were used in the work: analysis, generalization of scientific sources and normative documents. To generalize the experience of media educational activities of teachers, the survey was used (830 respondents). Its results were interpreted using methods of analysis, specification and classification. The teachers reported using media-related tasks, such as presentations, watching movies, visiting virtual museums, taking photos and making educational videos, reading popular science literature, comparing fiction and screenplays, comparing textual information from different sources, creating pages of literary characters in social networks, comics, mental maps, news reports, writing fictionalized biographies and annotations, preparing crossword puzzles after watching educational films, sharing life experience, personal life events, drawing after listening to audio and watching videos. The criteria for the responsible use of media by teachers in distance learning are following: preferential use of established professional platforms, or communication groups, verifying the sources, collaboration with colleagues and parents, adjusting information to meet individual needs.