The ACML project will support adult people in acquiring and developing high-quality skills and key competences in social media in order to tackle the challenges of the social transformation and foster their accountability towards the correct use of digital technology. Community media labs (CMLs) are becoming significant catalysts in driving knowledge and innovation, decreasing cultural digital-divide. Our project will develop a cooperative effort engaging academic institutions, media and tech organizations for the purpose of adult education and adult empowerment. ACML will create the figure of "social media literacy tutor" promoting active engagement of adults towards children, older adults, and low-skilled adults. Accordingly, our project will improve the understanding of people on digital media, educating a selected group of adults to begin ""social media literacy tutors" and contribute to satisfying the everyday demands of new media and digital services. Moreover, our project will implement innovative learning practices (Content and Language Integrated Learning, Participatory Online Learning, Social Learning) and will contribute to implementing an effective nonformal and informal educational environment. The literature (Haight, M., Quan-Haase, A., & Corbett, B. A. 2014; Scheerder, A., van Deursen, A., & van Dijk, J. 2017) shows that digital media play an essential role in our society. However, it is necessary to invest in educating people in the correct use of digital media. Recent research also indicates that people empowerment in digital media shall decrease the cost of social services as well as create new job opportunities. The ACMLproject is directed to adult people and will create for the professional skill for the figure of the "social media literacy tutor". The social media literacy tutor will collaborate with schools, NGOs, consumer associations, and local government institutions. Furthermore, the ACML project has been designed taking into account the recommendations by the Committee on Consumer Policy (2006) and European Commission (2012), such as: • Programme design should be based, when possible, on research into the educational needs of the affected consumers. • Stakeholders, including consumer organizations, teacher and parent associations, and other civil society groups, should be encouraged to assist policymakers in identifying educational needs. Finally, the ACML education program will provide: - New TIC skills for adults, training them to educate children, older adults, and low-skilled adults to use digital media in their everyday life. - Didactic material for organizing information/communication initiatives for improving "social media literacy tutoring". - Instruments to evaluate the results achieved. - Youthpass certification. The ACML Strategic Partnership includes 5 countries, Turkey, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Croatia, and is motivated by the following main factors: - Digital media competencies go beyond local/national borders; - The engagement of people in supporting social needs requires a transnational approach - Our project wants to create the figure of "social media literacy tutor" at a European level enhancing the cross-sectoral dialogue and international cooperation.
Our project aims at realizing an innovative training program on digital social media. It is based on an "open smart learning environment," which integrates a set of contextsensitive learning solutions that accelerate, motivate, and enhance the learning processes. Our open smart learning environment provides adult learners with the opportunity to choose from different service options at various learning stages. Accordingly, we also wanted to provide low-qualified adult learners with further didactic materials to fill their gaps. We aimed at training adult learners to become a "tutor for digital media literacy", namely a new figure who is able to support children, older adults, and low skilled people in the use of digital media. At the end of the project adult learners would be able to: • be taught on the significant challenges of digital media and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in contemporary society • be trained on three crucial soft skills: online creative thinking, collaborative online behavior, and critical analysis of digital media • be trained to learn, design, and work with the Internet and other digital media • be trained on cyber threats preventions, such as cyberbullying and cybercrimes.
The use of digital media plays an active role in spreading opinions and connecting people with a broad, mostly unknown audience. However, digital media can also provide an individual with the opportunity to improve their knowledge and competences. Digital media are shaping professional and working life today. Learning to master digital media in society is, nowadays, essential both for daily and working life. The need analysis carried out by partners in their countries showed that many people are attracted to work in digital technologies but, often, they don't have a deep knowledge of them. Most adult people are only consumers of digital technology. Accordingly, the ACML project aims at training adult people not only to acquire advanced digital competencies but will also increase their accountability toward the societal changes. Indeed, our project aims to create a new figure who, exploiting their competence, can collaborate with schools, social services, consumer associations, as well as local government institutions, to help children, older adults, and low skilled people in the use of digital media. In this project, we paid special attention to cyber threats preventions (cyberbullying and cybercrimes).