Visible design

Abstract

The presence of digital artefacts in the surrounding world holds both a structured and a structuring role that has an impact on the rationales with which we act and organise our behaviour and knowledge. The process that leads towards a major subject’s agentivity and towards a primary role of the design, useful to act in a complex context, is supported by digital technologies. Media Education takes us to new operative and cognitive modalities and promotes a critical attitude. Also at school, the design process plays a central role since the complexity of contexts, their fragmentation and the lack of “meta narratives/grand narratives” (Lyotard, 1987) requires that the teacher build situated rationales. Digital technologies can support the design process. Thanks to digitalisation, the design artefact becomes a fluid object that comes from the design, which can then be used in the classroom as a mediator and make students visualise the path. It supports the teacher and the students in their actions and it is completed in the documentation. The design artefact replaces the teacher in some routines, that is, the activities of the teacher to frame the class, to connect the present activity with past and future onesand to build a net of meaning that provides a comprehensive vision of the path. Those aspects affect the students’ guidanceand their motivation, but the presence of the artefact in the classroom also supports the teacher by fostering self-confidence. This is the proposal that the present article aims at deepening