Tamara Maio is a second-degree secondary school professor of mathematics and physics. Besides teaching, she has also worked as a valuation/self-evaluation coordinator and has been a member of the digital innovation team, PON coordinator, PNSD facilitator and in charge of training the school personnel and students. Ms. Maio employs 3D modelling and both augmented and virtual reality to create a share self-produced didactic material and training courses. Qualified by MIUR for the CLIL methodology, since 2017, she is also a Google educator, and Mie Expert (Microsoft Innovative educator expert) since 2021. Tamara firmly believes that curiosity is the motor that drives research and experimentation to innnovate didactic activities.
Tamara Maio features in our 41st instalment of our weekly Our School Professors. As usual, we share a short self-presentation video (on-line shortly) and then the interview with researcher Ilaria Gaudiello, who coordinates the works of the open source community of professors and educators.
INTERVIEW
Tamara, your experience with the “Our School” community did not involve working in an interdisciplinary team. How did the collaboration begin and how did the community catalyse one of your projects?
Collaborating with my colleagues in other areas and different schools (classic, scientific and linguistic) arose naturally as we shared our enthusiasm and curiosity on transdisciplinary experiments conducted through innovative teaching-learning didactic methodologies aiming to develop and reinforce our students’ soft skills, as well as main core skills. Our reference points are the EU recommendations on the Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, DigComp 2.1, UN Agenda 2030 objectives and the most recent ministerial indications on civic education curricula. What was fundamental for our teamwork was the common work conducted to apply these references to concrete local lab activities. The FMD “Our School” Community provided us with a strong motivational drive, and the opportunity to consolidate our vision, which combines training, testing, innovation, sharing, sustainability and inclusion. The community also helped us to share our tests with other schools. The “Travel in Time” project is our contribution to innovative didactics through an open-source tool. It’s a project that allowed us to connect virtual and augmented reality, STEAM, tinkering, digital storytelling, CLIL technology and public speaking to promote and safeguard local cultural and artistic heritage.
You developed many exciting projects - “CAD and CAM Revolution – Didactics and Modelling for 3D Printing”, “Mathematical and Physical Walks in Art and Reality”, “Physics Lab Experiences: From Poor Materials to 3.0”, “Physics and Sports with Arduino, Smartphones and Tablets”, “INNOV@DIDATTICA: CROWDDREAMING Youth Co-create Digital Culture” – and are now participating in the testing of an interregional MIUR project on “Turning It Over to Ideas: Coding, DBL, CBL and Public Speaking.’’ Based on these experiences, what do you believe are the key factors for inclusive didactic innovation today?
Motivation to learn must be inclusive and sustainable. It must make use of innovative open-source digital tools and involve students in ludic or hands-on activities, such as those indicated by teaching learning methodologies - MLTV (Making Learning Thinking Visible), ‘DEBATE’, ‘CLIL’, ‘CBL’, ‘IBSE’, ‘GAMIFICATION’ – that place the student at the centre of the learning process and encourage self-awareness and the reinforcement of indispensable soft skills. What is more exciting than involving students in projects, challenges and transdisciplinary activities that turn them into school protagonists and citizens of the world.
What project would you like to share with the community in the future?
In thanking FMD for the important “Our School” initiative, I hope to be able to share projects with other schools, too, in a continuous cycle of experimentation and innovation. This is our role as teachers and the community drives us to fully accomplish it!
