CS First: training session with Verònica Gebhardt
For the last training of Project CS First, 50 professors from the capital's comprehensive schools met yesterday, Wednesday, July 17, at Città Educativa in Rome. The participants, supported by coaches, connected to the CS First Platform and thanks to the help of explanatory videos and on-line resources created coding projects on one of the subjects of their choice. Verònica Gebhardt, Google Program Manager, also attended the event and commented: “At Google we want to inspire young people around the world, not only to use technology, but also to create it. We want to prepare students for the workplaces of the future and increase access to computer science education. This is why Google created CS First, a ready-to-use computer course for primary and lower secondary school students. The course is designed to make programming more attractive to boys and girls. It is divided into a series of videos that teach students the basics of computer science through the Scratch block programming language. CS First is available in Italian and allows anyone to teach programming, even without having any IT skills or programming experience. Collaboration with local partners such as the Digital World Foundation was fundamental.”
For the first time, students studying Primary Education Sciences at the European University of Rome, the teachers of the future, also had the opportunity to experiment with the platform, with a 100% probability of placement within the three years since obtaining the qualification (Almalaurea data).
According to Project Officer Marta Pietrelli, “thanks to the fact that CS First is a versatile platform suitable to all curricular subjects, we break the equation of coding equals scientific disciplines. The collaborative aspect is important. In the digital rooms, we put teachers from all over Italy in contact to exchange ideas and practices, while with the MOOCs we provided recorded webinars that explain the platform with video tutorials for each subject.”
Two historic CS First trainers were present. Luciana Pitti shared the experience gained over six years. “Amongst the first to experiment with the platform, I consider it an excellent tool for introducing students to coding. In particular, computational thinking accustoms children to reasoning and planning actions before a project is carried out. The materials available for the project are vast, on-line and printable, and help to use all the platform's tools. The anonymous access mode is interesting: each student corresponds to a code that only the teacher knows.” For Lara Forgione “the use of CS First can be guided by the teacher. There is an increasing order of difficulty in the activities. Indeed, an interesting aspect is to always leave the last takes part to experimentation, with the maximum protection of privacy. The updating of the available resources is incessant.”
The working hypotheses presented at the end of the morning included an explanation of polygons in geometry, the composition of words in English, a video game with figures that move along Cartesian axes, and a project on road safety education with a course to complete in the garden.
Stefania Cefalo, a primary teacher at IC Fiano Romano and digital animator for the lower secondary school, referred to his experience using the platform: “I have been using the platform for four years and learned by doing. With the younger children, I worked on the animation of drawings while, starting this year, together with geography and Italian teachers we went through the construction of the story of an imaginary journey among the monuments of Dubai for third graders. I find that CS First is an experience that has no limits in terms of creativity and flexibility, it is suitable for all ages and all levels. It is very inclusive with non-Italian-speaking children and with children with disabilities ... it’s truly exciting."
The next appointment is in September and, for teachers who want to practice, we continue to learn by doing!
