Producing Media in the Classroom to Struggle Digital Educational Poverty: A Research in Lower Secondary School

The article presents the results of a qualitative research that tested the effectiveness of the PRODACT tool (PROmote Digital Analysis and Competences in Transmedia), in the analysis of different digital formats produced by second and third year secondary school students, in a project to combat digital educational poverty in the civic education curriculum, promoted in 99 Italian schools between 2021 and 2024 by Save the Children, Cremit – Università Cattolica Milano, EDI Onlus. PRODACT is structured by intertwining the indicators of the aesthetic, critical and ethical dimensions of digital competence, typical of New Literacy (Rivoltella, 2020) together with the references of DigComp 2.2 and the four areas of Digital Educational Poverty. The analysis shows that the development of digital communicative practices implements not only students’ digital skills but also teaching practices that combine formal and informal skills and facilitate participation and protagonism.