Professor Costa's experience with Pathway Companion
What happens when artificial intelligence enters the classroom not to replace, but to accompany? When it becomes a tool at the service of educational relationships, personalisation and autonomy? Innovation takes shape in everyday life. This is what is happening with Pathway Companion, the inclusive learning platform developed by Fondazione Mondo Digitale ETS with the support of Google.org, designed to support students aged 8 to 16 with special educational needs. The project is the result of a collaboration between research, technology and educational practice, thanks also to the scientific collaboration of the Fondazione Don Gnocchi and the technical contribution of the Università degli Studi Roma Tre and ITLogiX. But it is in the classroom that Pathway Companion finds its deepest meaning.
From training to experimentation: the teacher's point of view
Cristina Costa, a teacher at the F. Albert middle school in Lanzo Torinese (Turin), is completing her specialisation course for support (TFA). For her, the encounter with Pathway Companion was natural: a concrete response to a real need. Her experimentation began with a dialogue with the platform's chatbot. Not passive use, but a project-based comparison: defining objectives, constructing lessons, simulating tests, adapting materials. “I tried above all to converse with the chatbot: setting my objectives, I asked how I could structure the lesson so that those objectives would actually be achieved”. This is where AI shows its value: not as a shortcut, but as a support for informed educational planning.
Personalising to include: the case of SLDs
When working with a Year 7 student with a Specific Learning Disorder, particularly with difficulties related to dysgraphia, the platform proved to be a strategic ally. Pathway Companion allows teachers, and more generally caregivers, to adapt content, reformulate assignments, and build assessment simulations consistent with educational objectives. An intelligent tutor that does not standardise, but differentiates.
In this sense, technology does not simplify learning: it makes it accessible. And it puts the person back at the centre.
An educational community that shares objectives
Professor Costa's experience highlights a key aspect of the Foundation's vision: inclusion is a shared process.
‘There must be shared responsibility: students must have clear objectives, and this happens if these platforms are shared between teachers and students.’ Pathway Companion is not designed as an isolated tool, but as part of an educational ecosystem in which school and family communicate. ‘The hope is that tools of this kind can be permanently integrated into PEIs and PDPs,’ becoming operational levers to make personalisation a daily practice, not an exception.
Overcoming mistrust, building skills
Every innovation brings with it questions, sometimes fears. Even artificial intelligence can be perceived as something distant or difficult to control. But the classroom experience tells a different story. ‘Digital tools can provide an incentive for what needs to be done every day. We should be curious and motivated to make good use of them.’ This is precisely where the Fondazione Mondo Digitale's commitment comes in: to accompany teachers, students and families on a journey of awareness and competence, so that AI becomes an ethical, accessible and equity-oriented resource.
