Migrant Liter@cies is a European project, co-funded by the Erasmus plus program of the European Commission, with the aim of developing innovative practices in the use of ICT for media literacy and integration and digital literacy in the education of adult migrants (refugees, asylum seekers, young people and migrant women).

With the development of 45 workshops and 8 national toolkits to learn languages ​​using ICT and develop media literacy skills, the project aims to create multiple learning pathways, integrated into national contexts of the project partner countries, thus providing innovative tools for educators and teachers working in the sector. The project brought together Adult Education Centers and Institutes working in the field of media education, creating synergies between formal and informal learning in 8 European countries.

Centro Zaffiria is the lead body of the project, in which partner associations from 8 European countries are involved: Mediawijs (Belgium), Tartu Folk Highschool (Estonia), Centro Zaffiria and Fo.Co. Network (Italy), JFF – Institut für Medienpädagogik (Germany), Tilburg University (Netherlands), POLIS (Poland), Proacademy (Slovakia) and SSF – Solidaridad Sin Fronteras (Spain).

Migrant Liter@cies offer teachers and educators a compendium of innovative tools, methods and practices that can be reproduced in the classroom with young migrant adults with a low level of education. The workshops include different dimensions: from the development of the main linguistic skills (listening and production) to digital literacy intended above all as a conscious use of the “Internet” tool.

The activity aims to create a personal visual dictionary that can support the understanding of a new specific dictionary and therefore of a new language. The use of images and audio recordings makes the use of this dictionary more interactive and immediate.

A0 / A1 level adult student migrants with basic skills in the use of smartphones.

Migrants (asylum seekers, young men and women often poorly literate in their countries of origin) and adults and also ignoring the symbolic universe of those who carry another culture.

Groups of 12 students, aged 18 to 25. No particular level of digital literacy is required.

2 teaching units of 3 hours

The working method has provided for the regular inclusion in the toolkit class.

Tools used:

• Computer
• Video projector
• Smartphone or Tablet

Based on the research carried out in the Italian context and also on the direct experience of part of the staff of the project itself, two important gaps were highlighted:

the teaching of Italian as a second language to adult migrants has for a long time borrowed approaches, methods, materials and teachers from primary school teaching, ignoring the double specificity of the target: migrants (asylum seekers, young men and women often low literate in their countries of origin ) and adults and also ignoring the symbolic universe of those who are the bearers of another culture.

ICTs have often and willingly been considered distracting and demonized by hordes of teachers who have not been able to fully exploit their potential.

The project developed the production of an app to support the experimentation in the workshops: Calepino.

The Calepino application allows to create thematic visual dictionaries, in order to have visual, audio and written references always at hand. The proposed activity aims to guide refugees in using the app, to show them how to create personal visual dictionaries. The App is very versatile because it allows you to create various dictionaries thanks to visual, audio and written content. You can create personal and specific dictionaries for various topics (e.g. food, work, city) with your smartphone, which can help in study and work.

In this path, students can design a common visual dictionary linked to the Didactic Learning Units (UDA) that teachers are developing.

Useful Links

Migrant Literacies