Providing Geomedia Skills beyond (Post)Secondary Education. GI_Forum 2013 – Creating the GISociety|

In the last years the way how we communicate and exchange information has undergone significant changes. The relevant processes are increasingly Web 2.0-mediated and enable reflective and participatory practices. As part of this development, the use of geomedia in everyday life (both in work life and private life) has gained in importance. The intrusion of new communication channels and media is closely related to discussions and research on topics such as geo-communication, spatially enabled society and spatial citizenship. A competent handling of geomedia requires everyone to develop new and/or more sophisticated capabilities and abilities. While very recently school education has started to impart geomedia competencies, opportunities for (Geo-)ICT empowerment for adults are rather rare. Suitable activities on adult education and learning should be established for various reasons (e.g. social inclusion, information access). This is in line with efforts of the European Union to address the demand to increase and intensify approaches to adult education and learning. Facing the existing gap between adults’ geomedia literacy on one hand and the promises of a spatially-enabled society on the other, this paper discusses the topic of how everyone in society can become spatially literate, i.e. how adults can develop and strengthen their geomedia competencies. This discussion is illustrated with experiences from the pilot course “Geomedia 55+” (held in cooperation with the “University 55+” at Salzburg University, Austria) that aims at teaching geomedia skills for elderly people