During the lockdown, when schools were closed, over 3000 teachers, organised by the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, experimented with the Google Computer Science First Platform and coding for teaching core subjects. Over 1000 support teachers, custom-tailored their activities for students with special needs and disabilities. Moreover, the “Digital Room” format encourages joint development of transversal activities for hybrid didactics. And a collaboration with Prof. Alessandro Bogliolo has led to the first on-line course to help teachers prepare efficient and interesting lessons in different learning contexts.
An interactive tour to focus on the history of civilisation and discover life in a Roman domus, an animated table game for religion and a quiz videogame to illustrate how the carbon cycle works… These are just a few of the projects developed with Google Computer Science First, the simple and intuitive coding platform that helps teachers with little or no experience to introduce new digital languages into their teaching and create vertical, ad ho curricula for students from primary to high school.
The objective of the new edition of the programme, which for the past three years has seen the collaboration of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, is to train 5.000 Italian teachers through webinars and virtual classrooms to promote collaboration between educational communities and the exchanges of good practices. The shadowing methodology allows those with more experience to become a guide and model for others and propose open source transversal activities that all teachers can develop with their own classes. The Digital Room allows innovative teachers to meet together and design and develop new curricula.
The third issue will focus on the concept of diversity in all its dimensions, especially on disabilities and special needs. In fact, the platform allows greater attention to the individual learning needs and times of each student. Visual representation makes it easier to concentrate a solve more or less complex problems, and collaborative work – even at a distance – promotes integration and the participation of all students. During the lockdown, over 1000 support teachers experimented with coding activities for the inclusion of fragile students.
For the first time, the programme will also have a MOOC - Massive Open Online Courses: eight modules held by Alessandro Bogliolo, Professor of Information Processing Systems at the University of Urbino. The courses will also be available at: www.formazione.innovationgym.org.
