Digital and media literacy in Teacher Education: Preparing undergraduate teachers through an academic program on digital storytelling

Media and digital literacy are being increasingly recognized as a fundamental competence for teachers of the 21st Century, but academic training of future teachers is still far from coping with this emerging need. This chapter aims at exploring how media and digital literacy education can be integrated into teacher education courses through the presentation of the results of a program on digital storytelling implemented at the University of Florence (Italy) within the framework of the European project e-MEL (e-Media Education Lab, 2014-17). The overall learning process was monitored and evaluated ex-ante, ongoing and ex-post. This chapter illustrates and discusses the main findings of the experimentation focusing on the effectiveness of the educational activities, the sustainability of training in a blended modality, students’ participation and satisfaction, and the transferability of acquired skills. It concludes with some considerations about the experience and more general reflections on future research directions.