Search

The European Commission considers the development of digital competences a strategic action to spread and to develop a more active digital participation of citizens. The objective is to increase the level of digital competence in the European citizens up to 2015 and to reduce the number of those who don't use new technologies and don't surf the net. At the base of an active citizenship there are creativity skills, the ability to support one's own point of view, the ability to quest, to have a critical reflection, communicative, collaborative, problem solving and listening abilities. This paper offers a theoretical definition of the critical competencies starting from the European framework and providing an operational definition from semiotic and linguistic patterns in the scholarly literature, concluding with the compilation of an evaluation rubric. By focusing on the critical dimension of digital competence, it may be possible to create evaluation tools applicable to different contexts and target audiences.

This contribution focuses on one of the three components of the DESI Index (Digital Economy and Society Index), human capital, through the presentation of the CAVE-Communication and Visual Education in Home- schooling project, funded by the European Commission through the National Agency for the Erasmus+ Program to the primary school teachers. The article presents the preliminary evaluation results of the CAVE project related to the digital skills of teachers acquired during the 2022-2023 experimentation. This study makes it possible to frame the type and level of knowledge and skills of primary school teachers in 5 European countries involved in the project (Italy, Spain, Lithuania, Romania and Poland), trying to emphasize at what moment in the professional life of digital teaching it is more domesticated to achieve professional goals than the main six areas of integration outlined in the European framework DIGCOMPEDU (Professional Engagement, Digital Resources, Teaching and Learning, Assessment, Empowering Learners and Facilitating Learners). In fact, this model represents one of the European Commission's main tools for investigating the human capital of educators at a European level, in a comparative key, in line with the criteria underlying the DESI INDEX, contextualised in the specific field of school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Digital Agenda represented a priority of the Europe 2020 strategy for smart growth of the European Union, towards the objectives of Europe 2030. The article outlines the regulatory framework on the digital strategy in Europe and Italy, proposing a theoretical-methodological discussion on the evaluation of policies on digitalization. The national results are presented in relation to the DESI INDEX, the main European tool for the observation of socio-cultural changes resulting from investments in digitalization, in the pre and post COVID period, discussing on the current state of evaluation practice in the implementation of Digital Agenda in Italy. The policy cycle outlined by the EU 2021-2027 programming and by the Recovery Plan on the topic of digital transition leads to a discussion of the main challenges of the evaluation practice, evidence of the structural complexity of the policies on digitization, stressing the need for multifocal and pluralistic evaluative perspectives of programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting with the concept of digital capital in social sciences, this article presents the key findings of the "Global Kids Online" nationally representative survey of primary and high school teachers' digital skills and practices that was conducted in Montenegro with Unicef's support in 2018. Digital capital, as any other form of capital within Bourdieu's perspective, has a sociological validity only in correlation with other forms of capital - such as economic, cultural and social - in a limited context and according to a multi-dimensional approach which goes from a macro- to a micro-social perspective (Pandolfini, 2016). This article identifies and discusses three perspectives of digital capital - macro, meso-social and micro - and their material (technologies, digital services and school experiments with devices) and non-material resources (digital competencies). Analysis of data from the Montenegrin research relating to this perspective shows that the daily practice of using digital technology in classrooms seems to be marginal, even though most teachers have access to the internet in their schools. Currently the majority of teachers are using the internet at school mostly just for checking information online. Their digital competencies are not generally advanced: on average, social and operational skills are the most developed, while their creative skills are least developed. Therefore, to support the development of children's media literacy through formal education, further investments towards the strengthening of teachers' digital competencies need to be made and the research shows that the demand for digital pedagogy courses already exists among most teachers. In other words, the Montenegrin research points to the need to invest more in education and experimentation related to the meso- and micro-social perspectives of digital capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay aims to reflect on the assessment of the informative quality of infographic communication at the time of COVID 19, presenting the results of a survey on transmedia storytelling during the emergency period (January-June 2020), realized in the within of the LM in Design, visual communication and multimedia of the Sapienza University of Rome. Data, like visual data, have implications in terms of perception and interpretation of reality, as well as on the social behaviour of individuals. Evaluating the quality of visual languages is, therefore, important to ensure correct communication information and provide the citizen with adequate cognitive tools for a critical interpretation of reality. The essay therefore intends to provide a photograph of the visual representation of COVID19, using storytelling as a key and recalling a reflection on the quality of visual information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]