Abstract:

Media educator is a new professional figure that performs an educational and pedagogical activity that aims people to understand mass media (their nature, their techniques and their languages). Nowadays, in many Italian and foreign universities, new teachers’ training includes one or more exams related to media education.

Some pertinent research questions are therefore:
1) What does a media educator need to know?
2) What are the differences between a media educator and a computer programmer?

From the international literature emerges some differences from a media educator with a computer programmer include that It is not required to: know how to program devices (typical of expert programmers), know how to perform complex configuration (typical of network system administrators). In conclusion, media educators won’t be focused mainly on understanding devices and codes as computer programmers, but they will be focused on other peculiar elements of the media such as social, cultural, linguistic and semantic aspects (axes that generate the skills of a media educator). The Italian parliament, as well as other EU countries, promotes the development of digital culture, and it defines new policies (Italian law 107/2015 and further integrations) for improving digital services and favours computer literacy. Consequently, in the European Community it will be necessary to have digital-skills and media-education specialized teachers able to use these knowledge in every kind of school. Agreeing with these premises, Italian and European teaching-training systems should include a course, and an exam, of media education to include these skills in future teacher curriculum. For these reasons the University of Salerno is evaluating a possible implementation of courses for media-educators to include inside the teaching technologies courses provided for 24 CFU (university training credits) necessary for access to the “Formazione Iniziale Tirocinio” (initial training internship) pathways for new teacher’s recruitment (in according with new Italian Law D.M. 616/2017).

Keywords:

Media Educator, open-the-box approach, ICT forecasts, didactic, pedagogy.