The culture of images and the culture of new technologies are dominating the culture of today’s fragmented and globalised world. Therefore, digital images equipped with explanatory text or without explanatory text are a good tool universally understood when used in the process of adult education. They facilitate the education of everybody, particularly the education of the generations of older people who, unlike younger generations, were not born into the world of images or of those whose media literacy may be qualified as lower.
Teaching and learning about the nature of images, teaching and learning about the use of ICT tools encourages simultaneous acquiring pictorial and technological literacy so much needed in today’s world while enabling adult educators and learners to discover their psychological, cultural and social selves. Images are closely related to the technological evolution. They have their “grammar, syntax and semantics” Images combined and developed into a text enable older learners to learn more in their own way and interpret the meaning more freely. Finally, they lead older learners to the comprehension and construction of their individual, social and cultural identity. Through stories, from different European countries, sharing the same cultural code, the direct beneficiaries of this project (adult educators) and the indirect beneficiaries, older people have discovered bits of their common European identity and hopefully have raised their European awareness. (Source: Maria Giovanna Romaniello, Libera Università Europea Terza Età Campania Luetec, Naples, www.luetec.org )