Programma della conferenza

For the European Union «digital citizenship is a set of values, skills, attitudes, knowledge and critical understanding that citizens need in the digital age. A digital citizen knows how to use technologies and is able to interact with them in acompetent and positive way."

However, there remains a strong gap between the technologies available and the actual knowledge of the people who should use them.

Opportunities and risks, in fact, depend on technological skills as much as on the ability to critically understand the means and results that can be obtained.

So building digital citizenship means facing many challenges. What we are dealing with is the challenge of inclusion: the growing presence of technologies in our lives has triggered in many people a real refusal to measure themselves with them. The refusal is causing a real risk of marginalization: from social activities to the rights/duties linked to the digitalisation of the Public Administration itself.

Our project was born in 2010 from reflection on the Digital Divide and e-inclusion. We have already been guests of Si-eL in 2011 at the VIII National Congress with the presentation of the "AlfaCampus - Learn to think digitally" platform, a micro e-learning laboratory with free and open access.

The project aims to involve in digital culture those who have not yet had the opportunity, those who have kept away from it out of fear, prejudice, age, low level of education or other reasons.

We ask now: after ten years and a pandemic, what has changed?

This contribution presents the "License for digital citizens" training course, promoted and coordinated by the USR Umbria in collaboration with EFT Umbra and Corecom Umbria, implemented and managed by a working group: it is aimed to students of primary, first and second level secondary schools, and is accomplished by teachers who make use of a free kit of materials prepared by experts and designed for each school level.

The project involves the parents with appropriately chosen materials and with the sharing of an educational pact between parents and children; there is also the training of teachers in a course on SOFIA: they are currently enrolled 450 teachers.

In the 2023/24 43 primary schools, 80 of first level secondary schools and 30 of second level secondary schools participated from 7 regions. The project supports schools in responding to the regulatory dictate of essential tasks such as digital civic education (L. 92/19), the prevention and fight against cyberbullying (L.71/17), digital skills (European Recommendation 2018, 2.2.2, European Recommendation 23.11. 2023 European Year of Skills). The proposed topics were chosen taking into account these regulations.

Overall, the project constitutes a vertical journey. Each segment, independent from others, includes specific topics suited to the age group of the recipients, organized into modules, each of which is autonomous and complete.

At the end of the course, students who have passed the test, participate in person or online in a regional or local event to receive the license.

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Digital skills are a key point of the European Policy Agenda. However, the digitalization process struggles to catch on and it contributes to the event of social exclusion, that involves persons who live on the edge of society, such as those not included in the work circuit. To support the transition, CEIS Formazione, is promoting Digital Literacy Projects in order to work on the development of active citizenship skills, including the digital form, to overcome the distrustful attitude of citizens and to help the ones without technological instruments to support this literacy. The projects are addressed to unemployed adults, in protected classes between the ages of 40 and 65, through directive-interactive teaching.

Talking about lifelong learning outside school or work contests requires careful and deep reflections about the learning outcomes and didactical strategies to be implemented and support individual learning in adulthood, that is characterized by a strong motivation for self-determination and to became aware about personal characteristics, and how those characteristics correspond to society ideals. Moreover, it is important for the former to establish a relationship that can lead to a climate of mutual trust and respect, emphasizing both the individual’s and group’s characteristics. At the same time, it is essential to find out the individual’s learning possibilities and how these could become learning opportunities in the group, also to put them at the service of the group in a peer-education perspective.

The aim of this paper is to underscore the significant elements of an approach to lifelong and recurrent higher education that enables the best possible response to the impact of generative AI on intellectual and creative professions. For the analysis, reference will be made to professions in digital communication, which consistently experience conditions that tend to precede and extend into other professional domains. For these professions, generative systems are delineating the coordinates of a veritable paradigm shift that impacts the foundations of the professional dimension.

In this perspective, a set of references emerges for the professionalizing higher education of universities, for the design and management of Master's programs, especially those related to digital communication. This approach allows for the growth and testing of knowledge, critical thinking skills, and judgment autonomy along with operational capabilities. The ability to collaborate with systems must grow alongside that within the working group, which remains the key to the success of any design activity, particularly in digital communication. The educational path should prepare individuals for engaging in the most peculiar and innovative forms of on-the-job learning, such as participating in communities of practice. Attention to the concrete dynamics of the professional dimension is an essential tool for intervening in the educational process, the effectiveness of which can be enhanced by foreseeing forms of connection between Master's programs and the Third Mission.