As promised, here are my reflections from the final day of the recent conference.
Minds Over AI 2025: MIL in Digital Spaces UNESCO Conference
Friday, October 24, 2025
8:45 a.m. = Cultivating Critical Minds in a World Influenced by AI
Summary:
Members of the North America and Europe Chapter of the Media and Information Literacy Alliance shared the time slot to share ways their various countries and affiliates cultivate critical thinking.
3 Key Points:
1. Canada offers the Digital Citizenship Contribution Program, which funds work by different organizations to help combat disinformation. I did some analysis on who receives funding and provided a quick overview of five recipients (CIVIX, York University, Simon Fraser University, Metropolitan University in the UK, and Media Smarts).
2. Anna, Estrella, and Irene shared their 3-country research project related to AI-related lessons and the insights from the participants. (This project was also described at the IMLRS Conference in the Azores.)
3. Sherri described the fun ways children interact and play with AI, and mentioned her Kids Talk Media podcast
So What? Now What?
We were concerned that no one would show up to our early morning session. It turned out that it was a full house! I was mostly satisfied with my portion of the presentation, although I regret not providing a timely segue between our sections by mentioning that AML had applied for a DCCP grant to attempt a Canadian replica of the study that Anna, Estrella, Yonty and Irene had conducted. That would have tied things together nicely. I also didn't have the chance to mention that this year is the 20th anniversary of celebrating Media Literacy Week in Canada (ahead of both the US and the UN). I was pleased with my timing and my pace. Each of us in the group had ten minutes to share, and I finished my contribution in eight minutes.
Yonty was a fantastic group moderator. He had the challenging task of ensuring that we all respected our time slots and managed questions from the audience during the Q&A.
Neil Andersen, the president of AML, often tells of how the richest learning in conferences comes in the "liminal spaces", outside of the formal presentations. This was even true in our session. I was rather impressed with the live translators who handled our session, so after the talk, I went to go speak with them and thank them for their service. I learned a lot about live translation by speaking to them. I was absolutely delighted when they told me that I was the perfect speaker for them, because I spoke at 80 words per minute. How could they tell? They explained that most people speak at between 80-150 words per minute but the way I spoke was ideal, because at my rate, they could easily capture all the ideas shared. My other question to them was whether AI was a threat to their profession. They shared that AI cannot yet do what they provide, because for an "immediate" translation such as the type they provide, it takes an AI bot about 20 seconds to produce, which has too much of a time delay. However, they shared that they use AI to help hone their own skills and they realize that with this use, it results in teaching the AI to improve itself.
There were several questions posed to the group of us. I fielded a question on protecting students and my answer dealt with two pivotal philosophies of the Association for Media Literacy: the tendency not to label media texts as good or bad, but rather as interesting, as well as teaching through and about. I said it was important for educators to teach students how AI works, and reiterated a point made by Dora the day before about even demonstrating how AI works without the use of technology.
Media Artifacts
Link to Day 2 Program of Conference
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| Our title slide |
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| Yonty begins the session |
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| Introducing the panel |
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| My talk (thank you Estrella for taking this shot!) |
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| Anna describes their collaborative project |
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| Estrella outlines one of the tasks |
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| Irene introduces herself |
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| The room became even more full than in this shot! |
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| Sheri providing examples of AI |
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| The translators and I pose after our work was done |
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| The whole team |
10:10 a.m. = Connecting AI Literacy and Content Provenance Technology for a Safer Digital Information Landscape
Summary:
A panel, featuring BBC Media Action and other groups, talked about AI use in the news.
3 Key Points:
1. Informing the audience when AI is used in news production is another form of literacy. Content creators in Latin America are reluctant to use AI in their work because they feel it undermines their relationship with the audience.
2. C2PA is a solution used for misinformation related to the Ukraine situation. Ukraine is on the frontlines of fighting disinformation, because there were 191 Russian operatives detected in 2025 that reached 84 million views.
3. Digital replicants can still sway opinions, even when viewers know that it's not real.
So What? Now What?
The Latin American representative (whose name I don't recall) on this panel made some good points about the use of AI in meme culture. I will probably use some of her comments in my own talk on memes at a future conference (if my proposal is accepted).
To be honest, I learned more during the small group discussion portion of this talk. One of the people that was in our group was Lisa Reppell, who works for Microsoft. She explained to the rest of us that C2PA is about content credentials. We possess the ability to embed in images data such as whether it is original, doctored, or completely generated by AI. She said that this has real-world implications, such as if insurance companies need their clients to send images of their insurance claims; with C2PA and cryptography, it's easier to check for authenticity.
Media Artifacts:
Websites Lisa shared about understanding Content Credentials.
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| The speakers from this session |
11:50 a.m. = Media Literacy and Artificial Intelligence: A Critical and Creative Approach for the K-12 Classroom
Summary:
Daniela and Mariana from Program De Educacao Midiatica / Instituto Palavra Aberta in Brazil shared their work with elementary and secondary school students.
3 Key Points:
1. The NGO was originally focused on promoting and defending press freedom (Educamedia) but have expanded their reach, to include shaping public policy and providing professional development for educators, with impressive statistics.
2. Media literacy comes in many shapes and forms. It goes beyond fact checking. There is not a single right way to "do" media literacy. They tend to take a holistic approach.
3. Their program considers things like confidence, safety, balance and ethics. Mariana took us through several activities and lessons similar to the ones they've offered, such as "generate an image of a Brazilian adult person of indigenous origin", or searching for Mogadishu vs Muqdishu (Somalia's capital city, using the English vs local spelling). In their program, they decided to have media literacy instruction reside with the computer science and social studies teachers. They also have teachers who take their certification program create and share ML units, like the teacher who made the "Slightly Impossible Animals" project.
So What? Now What?
I had been looking forward to this session for the entire conference, and they did not disappoint. I was very excited to see how Brazil framed up its AI literacy / media literacy approach, because Canadian School Libraries just launched its Digital Media Literacy Toolkit this week and there are some similarities (but not enough to look like we "copied" each other).
It made me happy to see that some of the AI related tasks resembled some of the tasks I've done with my students or developed on behalf of my school board. The indigenous representation task was very similar to the one I did with my Grade 6 Social Studies students related to Canadian identity. I found it fascinating that in Ontario / Canada, we situate AI and media literacy within the Language Arts / English / Literacy domain, whereas Brazil chose Computer Science and Social Studies.
Mariana provided some great prompting questions on the "Pope slide". I really like how she suggested that some things need new vocabulary so that they can be shown to be not "all evil", such as "synthetic AI" vs "deep fake".
I appreciated how generous the presenters were with their resources. They gave us the link to open resources in English, such as an eBook on AI fundamentals, teacher-facing materials like four mini-courses, and student resources that integrate into curriculum. I will need to email Mariana to thank her and continue the conversation.
Visual Media Artifacts:
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| Their framework |
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| Digital autonomy |
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| Fits perfectly with "through vs about" |
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| The Somalia example |
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| Great probing questions |
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| Who teaches this, when, and where? |
2:25 p.m. = Shaping a Digital World for All: Peace and Inclusivity in the AI Age
Summary:
The "Your Brain on ChatGPT" talk was rescheduled for just before this panel. On this panel, Zareen Ali, Endy Bayuni, H.E. Mauricio Jaramillo, Edna Sorgelsen and Danielle Boyer shared how AI can worsen or fix inequalities.
3 Key Points:
1. The brain demonstrates the least about of connectivity when using ChatGPT. There is less ownership felt by people when they use ChatGPT to complete tasks, and 80% of participants in the research study that were in the ChatGPT groupo could not provide a quote from the essay they wrote 60 seconds after completing the essay.
2. Zareen quoted Audre Lord with "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house", but she said that there are attempts to try to optimize these tools of bug US colonial corporations for social good.
3. Danielle Boyer is a youth robotics inventor who is working to save her Indigenous language. She said that AI should only be used with Indigenous language with extreme care. She says that regular AI bots are trained by data scraping and that they misrepresent things because ChatGPT will write fake words and definitions for Anishinaabe. Her bot was developed with a team of elders and she got consent from her community; her bot is neither a translator, nor influenced by corporate interests because she uses voices from her own community. Ethical technology is possible if it is done "with us, by us" (us being Indigenous groups).
4. Representation is very important because it brings stories into the mainstream. Drag queen Edna described the importance of the TV show Drag Race, because it was a source of queer stories. Edna reminded us that when things are flattened, it distorts reality. AI can amplify misinformation, causing harm to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
So What? Now What?
I'm glad that they were able to squeeze in the ChatGPT talk. She dispelled several myths, such as that AI eases the cognitive load, AI saves time, and AI enhances people's skills.
I didn't realize that Anishinaabe was considered an endangered language. I recognized Danielle's greeting and closing (Anii / Miigwetch). I would love to speak to her to learn more about her bot, and if there's anything we can do to support her work.
Visual Media Artifacts:
4:15 p.m. = Closing Ceremony
Summary:
Many important dignitaries took to the stage to give speeches and youth awards were distributed.
So What? Now What?
The president of Colombia was scheduled to appear, but didn't come. After the closing ceremonies, I attended an informative tour of the city thanks to Gerardo Nieto, the director of Fundacion Festicine Kids. I need to email Gerardo to thank him again for everything.
Visual Media Artifacts:
Big thanks to everyone for making this conference possible!
