Voices and Faces of the Teachers at the Scuola del Noi

In this new episode of Voices and Faces of the Teachers at the Scuola del Noi, we feature the testimony of Daniela Pieraccini, a technology teacher and trainer specialising in digital teaching, robotics, STEM and active methodologies. In her words, the community emerges as a space for research applied to teaching, where peer discussion serves not only to exchange tools and experiences, but also to jointly build learning environments that are more inclusive, creative and guiding. Her reflection centres on a powerful idea of innovation: not something imposed from above, but a process that can emerge in the classroom, grow through sharing and become common practice. Within this framework, the Scuola del Noi gives teachers back the opportunity to be creators, capable of imagining, experimenting, documenting and rethinking their own work, tackling complex issues such as artificial intelligence, ethics and digital citizenship with greater awareness and responsibility.

What professional or personal need prompted you to join the Scuola del Noi teaching community?

The driving force was the need to find teachers who shared my outlook. I come from the world of research, and there I learnt that nothing truly meaningful is built alone: teamwork, constant dialogue and the mutual review of ideas are, for me, an attitude even before they are a method. When I joined the school, I sorely missed that aspect. I was always on the lookout for colleagues capable of offering pupils exciting and inclusive learning challenges, but I lacked a structured framework to do this alongside others. In the community of Scuola del Noi teachers, I found exactly that: an environment that functions like a research group applied to teaching, where we plan, experiment, share results and build on them. It was a bit like coming home.

How has being part of the community changed the way you view your role as a teacher?

It made me realise something fundamental: that designing a meaningful activity means creating a context where every pupil can discover something about themselves. The question I ask myself before every lesson has changed: no longer ‘what do I want to teach today’ but ‘what will I enable them to discover today’. It may seem like a subtle difference, but for me it has changed everything. And then there’s another aspect, perhaps even more valuable: engaging with teachers from other schools and other regions, with backgrounds and contexts completely different from my own. Before, I used to think only within the confines of my own school. Within the community, I’ve discovered perspectives I would never have encountered on my own: a colleague in Sicily who tackles inclusion using resources very different from mine, and a colleague in the North with an approach to robotics I’d never considered. And yet, despite the distances and such different contexts, I’ve found teachers all driven by the same aim: to create learning experiences that are truly guiding and motivating for the pupils. In short, I’ve found a community of dialogue that’s always open, which has become a constant source of inspiration for me.

What do you think is the most important aim of the Scuola del Noi?

To demonstrate that innovation can come from the grassroots. It doesn’t necessarily have to come from a ministry, a reform or a major publisher. It can emerge in a classroom with a programmable board, a computer and plenty of imagination, and then become something that other colleagues, in another region, take up and make their own. For me, this is the heart of the project. But there’s also a second level, which is perhaps even closer to my heart given where I come from: Resnick’s creative learning spiral: “Imagine, create, play, share, reflect…” We usually apply this to pupils when they’re working on a project.

Well, at the Scuola del Noi, I’ve seen that very same spiral applied to us teachers, in the design of our activities: we imagine a learning pathway, we create it, we ‘play’ with it by trialling it in the classroom, we share it with the community, we reflect on it together, and from there the inspiration for the next cycle is born – perhaps in a colleague’s classroom a thousand kilometres away. It is no longer just the pupil who is part of an iterative creative process; we, as educational designers, are too. And for me, this is a huge achievement: making the teacher themselves the protagonist of that spiral, not just the one who proposes it to others. And then, I would never underestimate this: restoring to teachers the dignity of being creators. Not merely implementers of ministerial programmes, but people capable of imagining, experimenting, making mistakes and starting afresh – just as we ask our pupils to do. If I had to pinpoint the deepest aim of the Scuola del Noi, I’d say it’s this: to make every teacher feel part of a community that practises on itself the very same method it teaches.

In what way does the project help you prepare your students for the present, not just the future?

This whole ‘preparing them for the future’ thing makes me smile a bit, because my pupils already have the future in their hands – literally – with their smartphones. They use artificial intelligence, chat with virtual assistants, often without any critical awareness. In the workshops I organise, I try to start from there: what are you already using? How does it really work? What could go wrong? It’s work focused on the present, but it will certainly help them to be more competent in their future

Have you changed any teaching practices thanks to the community?

Rather than talking about a real change, I’d say that the community has reinforced a belief I already had, but which I was in danger of losing in the daily rush of lessons: how important the process is – the learning journey – not just the end product. In schools, there’s always the temptation to measure the success of an activity by its outcome – such as a robot that works or code that runs without errors. Through discussions with other colleagues in the community, I’ve found confirmation that true learning lies elsewhere: in the moment when the pupils describe their journey – where they went wrong, what they changed, and what they’d do differently. That narrative of the process, for me, now carries the same educational weight as the finished product, if not more. And knowing that other teachers, in contexts very different from my own, had reached the same conclusion gave me the confidence to no longer treat it as an ‘extra’ to be cut when time is short, but as an integral and non-negotiable part of every activity

How important is it to be able to share doubts and experiments with other teachers?

For me, it’s almost a physiological necessity, if I’m to be honest. In research, you never work alone: you put a hypothesis to the group for testing; you let someone else look at a piece of data before trusting it. In schools, however, it’s often the case that you work in an almost absurd isolation, without any external scrutiny. Within the community, I’ve rediscovered that dynamic: a doubt I share with other colleagues becomes a question for us to tackle together; it doesn’t remain a private source of anxiety. And above all, a mistake in a teaching approach isn’t a personal failure; it’s a piece of data, and as such it should be analysed and made available to others.

Do you feel better prepared to tackle complex topics such as AI, digital technology and digital citizenship?

‘Prepared’ is perhaps a word I use with caution, because AI is changing so rapidly that anyone who claims to be 100 per cent ‘ready’ has probably failed to grasp the scale of the phenomenon.

That said, I’d be dishonest if I described myself as unprepared: I’m a trainer on courses such as Ital.IA Lab for School and Vivi Internet al meglio; I’ve taken my work to MIT and to national conferences such as Meet School, so over the years I’ve built up a wealth of expertise – not on my own with a book, but in the field.

What the community has given me is not so much technical expertise; I build that up through training and personal research as well. It has given me a replicable method: I experiment in my workshops, always paying attention to ethics and inclusion; I document what works and what doesn’t; I share the results with the community; and from there I adjust my approach – not just once, but in continuous cycles – until I arrive at strategies that truly stand up to the test of the classroom and which I can in turn make available to other teachers, perhaps within the very training programmes I run. It’s an approach almost like a research laboratory applied to the school, and this is what relieves my anxiety when faced with new developments.

What sort of school do you want to help build?

A school without boundaries, in every sense. Boundaries between subjects, which don’t exist in real life; boundaries between those who ‘already know how’ and those who need more time. For me, true inclusion arises precisely when technology becomes a tool that opens doors, rather than closing them to anyone. I’m always reminded of Seymour Papert and Mitchel Resnik’s idea on educational technology, which should have ‘low floors, high ceilings and wide walls’: low, because anyone must be able to get started, even those starting from scratch; high, because those who want to go further must be able to go far; wide, because everyone must find their own path, their own pace, their own way of expressing themselves. That’s exactly what I look for in every activity I design. And then there are the boundaries between school and the wider community: the best learning journeys always emerge when pupils see that what they’re doing serves a purpose outside the classroom.

What responsibility do you feel today as a teacher in the age of AI?

I feel a responsibility to be a critical guide. Not one who demonises technology, nor one who uses it uncritically. Young people will use AI anyway, with or without me. My job is to teach them to ask questions, to recognise the limitations of these tools, to become masters of them rather than passive users, and not to delegate their own thinking. It’s a responsibility I feel is deeply ethical, even before it is educational.

If the Scuola del Noi didn’t exist, what would be missing from your journey?

I’d be missing the confirmation that my work has meaning beyond the walls of my classroom. On my own, I might have thought, ‘I do nice things with my pupils’, but in isolation. Within the community, I’ve discovered that what I do is part of a wider movement, and this gives me a sense of motivation that, honestly, I wouldn’t have found on my own.

What would you say to a teacher who thinks they ‘don’t have time’ to join a community?

I’d tell them that the time you invest in the community isn’t time taken away from the classroom; it comes back to you multiplied. Every idea I pick up from a colleague saves me hours of planning my workshops on my own. It’s not an extra commitment to add to your day; it’s a smarter way of doing the work you’re already doing.