Following the success of the first edition that involved 470 teachers, the Fondazione Mondo Digitale launches a challenge to 5 super teachers: train over 500 colleagues in 5 Regions to use Google Computer Science First to teach coding in class. In collaboration with primary school teachers, there will also be a curriculum mapping drive and the platform will be tested to teach traditional subjects.
In 2019, the Fondazione Mondo Digitale collaborates once again with Google to attract Italian teachers to computational thought through Computer Science First, the free, simple and intuitive, platform that can be used to teach and learn new coding languages and rapidly acquire digital competences to integrate didactic activities with more efficient and transversal activities.
After the success of the first edition, which involved 470 teachers and 9000 students, the Fondazione Mondo Digitale launches a challenge to 5 super teachers to train 500 colleagues in Lazio, Campania, Sicily, Veneto and Piedmont. The “peer” teaching model with guided activities, games and videos, will help teachers who have no experience to introduce coding in their subjects and create vertical curricula, from elementary to high school, that respect how students learn individually, including those with special needs.
The platform, which is based on the Scratch intuitive coding language developed by the MIT Media Lab Lifelong Kindergarten, was not only conceived to allow learners to rapidly acquire programming skills, but also to help teachers integrate traditional subjects with coding. In fact, the work of primary school teachers during the first edition of the project, allowed the Fondazione Mondo Digitale to test with an initial mapping of curricula and create connections between CS First activity areas (Storytelling, Fashion and Design, Art, Friends, Social Media, Game Design, Animation, Mathematics, Computer Science) and traditional school subjects. The result was a series of transversal activities that any teacher can implement and custom-tailor to his/her needs to devise new and interesting pedagogic solutions, ranging from science animations (water cycle, origin of Planet Earth) to storytelling projects for History and interactive games for Geography, Mathematics and English. In October, the CSF League will present awards to the best projects developed by teachers and students.
“The results achieved by the first edition of the project have confirmed that there are many innovative teachers and school administrators who are ready to experiment with new didactic methods. Our commitment with Google is to provide training and tools to make them the protagonists of change and conscious actors of digital transformation in schools,” explains Alfonso Molina, Scientific Director of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale.
“At Google, we wish to inspire young men and women around the world to use technology, but also to create it. We wish to prepare students for the future and increase access to computer science education. This is why we are enthusiastic about collaborating once again with our partner, the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, to train 500 teachers on Computer Science First Modules,” states Verónica Gebhardt, Google Education Program Manager.
To book Google Computer Science First Courses: https://forms.gle/uR5Q4hbHPMWqGxmY8
