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Not all citizens enjoy equal access to the same media opportunities. It is not just an infrastructural problem.
The results produced by On Air - The European project on Media Education, presented last Friday at the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the Rome “La Sapienza” university, clearly point to the generational gap emerging in the era of the digital natives and teen multitasking.
On Air is an international research project (Comenius), involving six EU countries (Italy, Belgium, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and Lithuania), which aims to analyse the relationship between youth and digital media in terms of consumption, competence, motivation and emotional involvement. On Air has also developed experimental media education packages for schoolteachers in order to promote the scientific integration of new multimedia languages in the school curriculum.
The Fondazione Mondo Digitale has been working for a number of years on the reduction of the generational divide through the use of new technologies. Thanks to the Grandparents on the Internet project, young students and elders share a precious social and educational experience through the intergenerational learning model. School students teach elders to use computers and about new ICT in general. To date, eight editions of the programme, 5000 students coordinated by 650 teachers have trained over 9000 senior Internet navigators.
