Digital Technologies and Socialization. Notes from the SMILEY Project

The lively debate about the socialization and in specific way about the exclusion practices in schools all over Europe Union imposes the necessity of framing new forms of peaceful interactions between nonhomogeneous social groups. Starting form this core issues, this awareness has been rooted into an actionresearch project named SMILEY, (Social Mindedness In LEarning CommunitY, funded under the Lifelong Learning Programme-Comenius, and carried out from January 2011 to December 2012). SMILEY wants to present an “exit strategy” based upon the centrality of the social dimension of development, expressed by values, social cohesion, solidarity and respect for gender equality: examples of what “social mindedness” means for the European society. This target was achieved through an integrated system of “online” and “offline” activities catalysed by an elearning platform hosting an ERPG (Educational RolePlaying Game) named “YourTown” connecting students and teachers from the partner countries: Italy, Turkey, Poland, Romania and the United Kingdom. SMILEY project shed a light upon some interesting remarks in order to better understand the