NewsWise Italy

The project

NewsWise Italy is the Italian adaptation of the award-winning digital news literacy project for primary schools developed by The Guardian Foundation. The aim of NewsWise is to help build a generation of young citizens who can think critically, consciously and from an informed perspective.

The educational resources, adapted to the Italian context, can be easily integrated into the school curriculum and include materials for teachers and pupils, such as lesson plans, infographics, posters, presentations and group activities.

The first edition, developed by Dataninja together with The Guardian Foundation, involved 12 schools and 115 teachers. It also produced a very tangible change: before the programme, only 3 in 10 pupils checked whether the same information appeared in other newspapers; afterwards, more than 6 in 10 did so. And the proportion of pupils who said they would trust a piece of information without carrying out any checks fell from 24% to just 2%.

The effectiveness of the programme had already been demonstrated in the UK, where around 4,000 primary school teachers and more than 17,000 pupils have taken part, with the project receiving prestigious international awards.

The NewsWise method provides pupils with the tools they need to distinguish more effectively between reliable and false information, including over the longer term. A positive correlation has also been identified between stronger news literacy skills and civic participation.

Teaching resources

The complete NewsWise Italy learning programme includes 15 one-hour lessons designed to bring News Literacy into the classroom.

The resources include:

• Lesson plans to guide teachers through each topic and its learning objectives
• Activities to use with your class
• Posters and visual prompts to turn your classroom into a newsroom

All resources are available free of charge on the Open the Box website.

The NewsWise Italy programme also includes an initial in-person workshop led by members of the NewsWise Italy team to turn your classroom into a newsroom. During the workshop, pupils step into the role of journalists.

Applications open for the new 2026 edition

The second edition of NewsWise Italy, supported by Compagnia di San Paolo, will take place during the 2026–2027 school year and involve around 10–15 classes in the provinces of Novara, Biella and Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, as well as in the Aosta Valley, with particular attention to schools and areas facing socio-educational disadvantage.

The NewsWise Italy programme will run during the 2026–2027 school year and involve around 10–15 classes in the provinces of Novara, Biella and Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, as well as in the Aosta Valley, with particular attention to schools and areas facing socio-educational disadvantage.

Partners

The first edition of NewsWise Italy was made possible through collaboration with The Guardian Foundation and Reggio Children