Tour of the Guguță Municipal Puppet Theater in Edineț: 240 children were warned about the risks of the online environment
In November, the Guguță Municipal Puppet Theater continued its tour with the show PikPok.online@guguta around the country. On November 5, the theater team arrived in Edineț. About 240 primary school students from the Vasile Suhomlinski Theoretical Lyceum and the Dimitrie Cantemir Theoretical Lyceum, both institutions teaching in Russian, had an uncommon lesson. Through the theater show, children learned about some of the risks they might face when surfing the Internet, as well as what rules of behavior they must observe in order to be better protected online.
The actors made their first stop at the Vasile Suhomlinschi Lyceum, where a show was played for the first time this year.
“The Internet captivates you more and more every day. It seems that you can no longer imagine your life without the Internet. However, in addition to the enormous possibilities that it offers you, you need to know how to prevent possible problems, because the online environment has many pitfalls that you need to be informed about,” Gabriela Lungu, director of the theatre, said in the opening speech. She urged children to pay attention to the content of the story the actors were going to present and to try to understand if what happened to the characters in the play can happen to them, too.
The children watched the play with interest, reacting to the thoughtless actions of the characters and responding with applause when things took a nice turn. In the end, we saw the students of Grade 3 “B” discussing the show they watched together with their class teacher:
Varvara Sanduleac, pupil: “My parents let me use the mobile phone and computer as much as I want, but I understand it’s not quite good. I must use the Internet skillfully and with a time limit.”
Igor Dimov, pupil: “My parents let me stay on the Internet, too, but the conclusion I made is that we shouldn’t watch everything and waste our time. Some things can be false, untrue.”
Dumitru Focov, pupil: “I used to spend a lot of time on the Internet, but now I don’t. I only watch TV. I have favorite shows and I only watch those.”
Olga Focov, pupil: “The Internet helps us communicate with those who are far away, quickly search for information we need for lessons or do our projects for school. But too much computer / tablet / mobile phone makes our eyes and all the muscles of the body tire. I prefer to play a little on the phone, but more with my friends outdoors.”
Elena Litovșciuc, teacher of Grade 3 “B”: “The show is very relevant these days. Many of you use the Internet at home, and, as far as I understand, not all parents pay attention to how much time you spend online. At the lessons of digital education, we often talk about the benefits and harms of the Internet, but, as you can see, much can also be learned through such methods as theater. The Wolf brought you an example of how a fake is made on TikTok, but there can be lots of people like him. And on various networks. You need to be careful about what you watch on online platforms, because not everything you find out there may be true.
The tour of the Guguță Municipal Puppet Theater continued at the Dimitrie Cantemir Lyceum, where about 100 primary school students came to watch the play PikPok.online@guguta.
After watching the play, we talked with several children from Grade 4, who shared opinions with us:
Xenia Cebotari, pupil: “I liked that in this story the Wolf admitted his guilt, asking forgiveness from his friends for the ugly thing he did. It was a nice gesture. I think we should act the same. It is not nice to lie, and if we happen to make a mistake, we should not be afraid to admit the mistake and should not repeat it.”
Kira Coman, pupil: “The Wolf wanted to gain popularity on the Internet and ended up without friends. He published fake videos, tricking them, and that is bad. Some people, young people, children may be like him. We have to be careful with what we watch. I like computer games, but most of all I read books and cooking recipes on the Internet. I want to learn to cook tasty food.”
Eugenia Ardelean, pupil: “I understood that we have to value the friends we have by our side and not accept all friendship proposals on the Internet, if they come from people we don’t know. It is a great educational show for children.”
PikPok.online@guguta is an adaptation of the educational fairytale titled “A Click of Fangs or the Manipulative Wolf” written by media researcher Solvita Denisa Liepniece from Latvia.
The show lasts for 45 minutes and is included in the repertoire of the “Guguta” Theater both in Russian and Romanian. In partnership with the Independent Journalism Center, the “Guguta” Theater launched the Romanian version of the PikPok.online@guguță show in November 2022, and the Russian one in February 2023.
The show an educational and entertaining story intended for kindergarten children and primary school pupils. The play helps the little ones comprehend how the online environment functions and encourages them to analyze what they see or hear, especially on social media.
The PikPok.online@guguta show tour is organized within the framework of the project “Media Education and Literacy and Optimisation of Newsrooms” (MELON). This project is financially supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Moldova.
