SIMaging the City. The Educational Use of Video Games in a Youth Club of Palermo (Italy)

This module starts from the basic assumption that Media Education (Media Literacy, Media Literacy Education) has a great potential in informal education contexts. As with schools, in these contexts too media can be adopted both as a tool of expression/communication/information retrieval and as an object of study in and of itself, with multifaceted - and often contradictory - implications (social, cultural, political, economic, etc.). This double level of media use in educational contexts (either formal or informal) is crucial for the development of the citizenship in the digital era, for fostering social inclusion and promotion as well as cultural and intercultural growth and exchange. Media educators operating in these contexts play the fundamental role of facilitating processes of self-reflection, dialogue, collaborative work, problem-solving and so on.