The Development of Digital Competences and Emotional Skills Through the Use of Audio-Visual Technologies

Introduction

The use of digital technology is extremely widespread in schools today. However, diffusion does not mean understanding the potential and limits of new media. Digital literacy, moreover, involves more than the mere ability to use software or operate on the digital device; it includes a large variety of cognitive complexes, motor, sociological, and emotional skills, such as the ability to evaluate digital technologies critically, and the motivation to participate and commit in digital culture (Ilomäki et al., 2016). In order to fully understand the social context in which they live, students need to learn also how to manage digital content and, in particular, how to decode and consciously use the thousands of images they come into contact with every day. The inclusion of cinema and audiovisual media in schools of all levels, as envisaged in Italy by law 220 of 14 November 2016, meets this primary cultural and educational needs. The relationship created between movies and education during the last ten years is considered, by the science of pedagogy, of great interest. Nowadays, using audiovisual equipment in a classroom (and the following analysis of films), has become very common: for this reason, it will be necessary the elaboration of a theory of the vision of a film entailing the study of history, technology, pedagogy and psychology. These studies and analysis will develop dynamical skills, without excluding the ethical-educational responsibility. Also, the science of pedagogy must evaluate a film as the possibility to employ the experiences of the life of an individual. The symbolic importance existing in the relationship between movies and education will be so evaluated through several purposes having a prescriptive peculiarity. The importance of movies can be connected to four basic educational values: 1) creating, in the human beings, the capacity to classify their knowledge; 2) teaching the human condition; 3) learning how to live; 4) building up the culture and the school of the people. Film making has got an innate richness which makes it able to do many different examinations in the category of the science of pedagogy. From an educational point of view, it has at least three ways to be used: 1) the first one will be semio-educational; that means analyzing the linguistic structure of a movie and its symbolic content and pragmatic capacity; 2) Its use as a socio-educational medium. From this point of view, the movie will be used as a system to focus on any subject, to start a discussion, to find any system capable to create a critical confrontation; 3) one model clinical-psychological, which will start from the film, in order to favour, in the individual psychological projection and in the activation of processes of group appropriation of the meanings, the elaboration of different forms of awareness or the acquisition of new psychological and relational skills. In this article, will be analyzed the movie from a psycho-pedagogical perspective, and its educational capacities. Besides, we will explore the use of the movie as an instrument to improve the participation in the digital culture and to help the socio-emotional education.