SUGGESTED TITLES

1. Didactic practices of Italian teachers: please don’t bore your students to death!

2. Focus on Italian didactic approaches - web-wide study  on best practices 
   

3.  Interdisciplinary didactic approaches of the public Italian school: studies of best practices 

4.  Italian teachers and society are committed to school renewal 

5.  Italian school dismisses tradition: teachers and best practices in the new interactive lesson

6. Report about an italian grassroots movement of good educational practices

INTRODUCTION TO THE SUBJECT AREA

While government's cutbacks to public education and culture are getting heavier and heavier, thus limiting the possibility that citizens achieve their ambitions, all the people involved in education are realizing that young-adults relationship in schools are degrading.

Because of various interests and attractions coming from the outside, the traditional classroom can’t meet students' actual needs any more. Teachers are definitely aware that something has to change if they want to catch kids’ and boys’ attention; they see the benefits of building web communities focused on active partecipation to cope with todays' challenges and they realize that the valuable support of the ICT can be effective only if they are carefully selected and mastered once the solutions to solve pedagogical problems have been sketched out.   

Yet, overcoming all the troubles and conceptual difficulties that arise in practice is not an easy task for lonely educators. Here is the importance of the pioneering attempts, that can open the way to new views of the educational system, thanks to the exchange of practices and the analysis of scholars to develop exportable models.

In fact, recently, the Italian society has witnessed a growing number of   scattered  efforts to improve and make more inclusive the educational system, at a local level, that often remain unknown to most of the other schools.

 Experimentations have come up from the grassroots: teachers, cultural associations and the whole society have joined schools to creatively work out new methods, exploiting the spreading of mobile communication devices and social networks.
Contrary to the usual top-down relationship, in which institutional experts committees devise didactic experimentation plans to be proposed to well-intentioned teachers, the opposite is occurring here. People are eager to give response to those specific issues they are going through and they do the best they can. Only subsequently scholars are involved to refine the implemented strategies.

OBJECTIVES AND MISSION

Taking a picture of the refreshing changes in the Italian society, this report has been written both for all the people involved in education, as a user guide of workable practices, and for local administration and for policy makers, who might foster this kind of innovation. Using this book does not require to be an expert. It assumes  having a basic experience in navigating web sites.

This project, which has been framed within the “la scuola che funziona network” (the effective school network), www.lascuolachefunziona.it,  is the first attempt to account for this phenomenon and to provide the essential knowledge for anyone to effectively use web 2.0, podcast, virtual world, paper technologies, science lab and other instruments and strategies in didactic practice.

KEYWORDS: school, didactic practices, web 2.0, podcast, virtual world, paper technologies, science lab, cooperative learning, emotional intelligence, metacognition, evaluation of teaching, learning on the web, Youth social engagement

PROSPECTIVE AUDIENCE: teachers, deans, trainers, sociologists, psychologists,

educationalists and all those working in schools  (Pol) Nuovo pezzo: 

• The Handbook will prove to be a valuable help to teachers and educators already involved in didactical experimentations and to all those who will be prompted by new ideas and lead (guided) through possible troubles.
• School managers will find out a variety of successful acitvities involving both teachers and students to improve education quality indicators and stregthen relationship with local insitutions,
• Pedagogists will be interested in analysing the original solutions that educators have devised as a resnpose to peculiar issues and to abstract general models from that
• Sociologists will be interested in analysing those special relationship, weaving together young people and local educational institutions, that can be set by the school open to the world.(Qui bisognerebbe dire di più ....)

TENTATIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS.

In each section,  chapters already available to be submitted to the Board of Editors have been mentioned.   (Pol) modificata questa riga.    (Pol)  Mi sembrerebbe il caso di stringere un po' le descrizioni delle sezioni)

1. Web 2.0 the new learning/teaching environment: In this section it you'll find different projects and outputs, different answers to the same challenge that teachers have to face when they want to stimulate interest. Trough ICT and Web 2.0 all the actors involved in this process access to new practical resources which are effective and attractive. In this respect, information and communication technologies give incredible prospectives in teaching every subject. Chapters 1 - 19 deal with the fundamental knowledge of Web 2.0 learning and teaching environment. This group of chapters includes step by step instructions, figures, tables and examples.
2. One click toward Europe: eTwinning project experiences:  Thanks to Web 2.0 and new learning environments, our classrooms broaden and our students have the possibility to face other cultures just sitting in front of their computer and running projects. eTwinning projects enable students and teachers to share their experiences and skills in an utterly creative way with partners living in countries very far from their own. Virtual words, knowledge and research cross real life. These pages aim to give evidence of the European challenge in the Italian schools.   This second section, Chapters 20 - 22, presents the eTwinning project experiences. Each of these chapters contains an example that will help you to understand how eTwinning projects enable students and teachers to share their experiences and skills in an utterly creative way, with partners living in countries very far from their own.
3. Teaching strategies and practices using interdisciplinarity between knowledge The narrative and the sharing of good teaching practices is crucial, because it is an active meta-reflection and improvement of teaching itself. This section will illustrate teaching strategies successfully applied in different school levels and with different instruments, in addition to the narrative materials that testify to the results obtained. Several common elements that may be found in the strategies outlined here. Develop and / or add  topics of interest for the children is the first key. Learning has no meaning if it's not addressed to what makes sense for students. Importance of the debate is the second factor to best practice: not just feedback, but also as a starting point for modular strategies. interdisciplinary between knowledge is also important, so that students overcome the division between school subjects and can reconstruct their own overall picture. Reasoned and reasonable use of technology is fundamental, used as a complement or extension of teaching / learning. In this section, chapters 23,24,25,26, 27, 28 deals with the use of paper and give didactic suggestions for linguistic and scientific areas. These chapters contain detailed examples and figures. We will discuss how to raise students' interest when ICT resources are not at hand.
4. Learning by doing: the concept of learning-by-doing is here referred to how students can improve their knowledge by doing practical activities, such as making science kits, writing procedures, doing tests . In these didactic practices, the distribution of responsibility between the teacher and the students lead to educational success. Often, by this approach, students do regular and repeated actions that increase self-perfection. These chapters offer several original examples for classroom or science lab. Chapters 29, 30, 31 provides the knowledge needed to work in a science lab with students but not only. These chapters introduce you to project experiments and models that are to be offered even in a normal classroom, without having to go to science lab.
5. Experimental didactic for(Pol)  Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) students in   Italian school. Here we talk about problems connected with learning disabilities (dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, etc.), and we propose strategies and best practices developed by teachers and school operators in order do face and solve these problems. Chapters 32, 33, 34  focus on methods that can be used with pupils with Specific Learning Disabilities.
   
6. Case studies of effective uses of virtual worlds for teaching activities: The definition of virtual environment is born in the nineties and it is now used to indicate three-dimensional interactive worlds that simulate reality (Muve- Multi User Virtual Environment), but do not necessarily represents reality (http://sleducation.wikispa es.com / virtualworlds) The main feature of a 3D environment is to provide sensorial experiences in immersive environments for learning through an experiential approach, simulations and role play, opportunities for collaboration and creating a cooperative, which cannot be easily experienced using other platforms e-learning. Currently there are  educational experiences in 3D environments made by national and international universities and educational institutions. Second Life is often used in an international context. We can mention some experiences: for example Harvard University, Illinois University, Michigan University, Princeton, while in Italy there are the University of Turin, Macerata, Palermo, Catania, Cagliari and former Indire with SecondLearning, and it was created an area where SecondAnitel courses for teachers are provided in conjunction with a platform Moodle Fad.  Other 3D virtual worlds are Opensim, Teleplace, Active Worlds [chapter 1.1 ??? non so se avra' altra numerazione] , Heritage, Blue Mars. Chapters 35, 36, 37, 40   talk about virtual worlds and give some examples currently developed by universities and educational institutions, many national and international educational experiences.
7. (Pol) Nuovo Youth engagement through schools,  enhanced by the ICT: The wide spread of mobile devices can be exploited as a powerful support to the many opportunities that school provides for engaging youth in meaningful ways that will empower them and create processes and structures that ensure greater student involvement in educational decision-making and in society: : 

• instructional strategies such as self-directed and cooperative learning strategies, project-based learning, student webquests and other online learning, formal student leadership programs.
• youth engagement through school-based peer helper and mentoring programs and voluntary student activity programs, where the policy, procedures and practices of the school can emphasize student involvement, fairness and assumption of responsibilities by young people.
• volunteer work, participating in cultural, charitable and sports organizations. A few young people will take a leadership role in these activities, helping to organize other youth in their efforts. 

• September 2010: A scientific council with pedagogists and other members of the La scuola che funziona network will be established and the Board of Editors will be set, to formulate the Call for Contributions
• September 2010: The Call for Contributions will be issued
• December 2010 The Board will be convened to discuss the degree of  circulation and the response to the Call
• May  2011 deadline for submitting proposals
•  
• June 2011 Acceptance Notification
• September  2011 deadline for submitting complete work

Chapter 1 DOMIZIO BALDINI The class beyond the class
Key points for implementing an innovative teaching strategy using mobile devices:
a)"School" is not anymore the only Educational agency in our social context, just thinking of the spread of media and their power of communication / education.
b) Students often use more technology at home than at schools.
c) Mobile devices can also expand the learning process beyond the traditional school space and time, using collaborative learning and creating wider social and educational communities, even in an European and world economy.  

Chapter 1.1 LINDA GIANNINI, CARLO NATI E SCUOLA DI ROBOTICA Beyond the class, beyond the school, beyond... in other words, this is documentation and communication 2.0 for children. The chapter deals with topics from the case study PuntoEdu and  it is focused on educational courses from kindergarten to university and to SSIS (a sort of master school on educational methodology). Moreover in this chapter we analyze different learning environments (like websites, blogs, wiki, podcast, MSN, skype, school in hospital and others) focused on the mediation of tales (like Narnia, Pinocchio, Coppelia,...), on invented tales, artistic handmade, science, and robotics. Obviously in this chapter we have to present our experience about synchronous meetings (3D chat, Skype, MSN...). 

Chapter 2: ANTONIO SACCOCCIO: School and the net: how using the web can change your school experience. The autor talks about his experience with webquest, LIM, wikipedia and blog.

Chapter 3: ANGELA DI BURRA: INTERACTIVE WORK. Using the innovative cooperative learning model with ICT in primary school students. ICT and E-learning can facilitate knowledge creation and sharing. Through the creative cooperative learning model, the interactive whiteboard assists students’ learning because of the interaction between students and teacher.

Chapter 4: TERESA RUSSO:  Educational activities for digital natives. This chapter focus on open source to create and manage didactic units in several disciplines of primary school.

Chapter 5: PATRIZIA BOLZAN , ELISA FONNESU & MARIA TERESA CARRIERI: Liquid publication. This is an experience of collaboration between several Italian schools. By using the tools of Web 2.0 (blogs, wiki, multimedia technology) students told their experiences, communicated their knowledge and learned from others. Particularly significant was the establishment of a blogosphere that is, a network of blogs of different schools, that gave students better understand the geographic reality of the schools partners  (history, landscape, traditions, food, songs, local culture, etc. ..) and learn from their school experiences.

Chapter 6: STEFANIA CARIOLI: Keeping changing: blog technology to improve a difficult class. We report about the improvements achieved using web 2.0 technologies in a very difficult K12 5th grade class presenting learning disabilities, Italian used as a second language, poor family conditions. The key element was the blog in which kids contributed to keep track of their joint activities. Their families could access to this blog too. The activities involved topics on history related to the local environment, collaborative writing experiences and visits to high tech facilities and science history museums. 

Chapter 7:  MONICA DELLA CRISTINA: Podclass. Podclass, a multimedia opportunity of an primary school: to share experiences and emotions; to learn enjoing themselves: chants, music and songs, stories and other else with podcast. Podclass is a website of Como Scolastic Office that collects and shares experiences of the territorial schools. After preparing a topic each class gets to the Podclass Center for a multimedia record that will be published on the specific website. It’s a way to bring ICT in the daily didactics and overall to open the school to the world thanks to the web 2.0 instruments.

Chapter 8: BARBARA BEVILACQUA:

"3T project: Tessere Tanti Testi (composing a lot of texts). Learning object web 2.0
A meaningful learning experience with technology" It’s a collaborative wiki (3T wiki) of learning object web 2.0, defined “learning seeds”, created with web 2.0  philosophy, through FLOSS application and according to co-construction and sharing knowledge bottom-up process. “Learning seeds” are meaningful learning paths built with and for primary school students. They concern in different textual typologies (scientific text, subjective or objective descriptive text, poetic text, creative writing, calligrams, expositive-informative text etc.). Using different languages and codes: text, images, interactive images, audio and video record produced with the LIM; and also: podcast, interactive games, e-books, simulations, laboratories etc. planned and realized by diverse webtop applications. Students and teachers have narrated and documented the whole learning path in ship’s log (3T blog).

This project won the first prize in "A scuola di innovazione" national competition.

Chapter 9: ALESSANDRA CANNELLI: Il progetto Netbook Educativi- pedagogia 1 a 1. Un progetto pilota di Acer ed EUN Schoolnet. This is a pilot project that involves ten Italian schools and other schools in Germany, UK, France, Spain and Turkey. It includes the use of netbooks in the classroom for teaching 1 to 1. In collaboration with networking with other European schools.

Chapter 9.1 LINDA GIANNINI Europe for children offers different educational methods and paths from EUN projects in network with other schools of the community. The chapter is focused on:

- eTwinning projects (from 2007 up to now, and still in progress;

- Spring project (from 2002/03 up to now. 

Chapter 10: LUCA PIERGIOVANNI: CHOCOLAT 3B

A didactic podcast to make radio and cinema at school, with interviews to the world leading experts in the ICT learning employement; comparisons between poetries, songs and works of art,networked literacy classes for elderly people, European e-twinning, podcasting lessons for teachers.

Chapter 11: ELENA FAVARON: Scientific training through the web, not only school books. Online databases to help teens in scientific information verification. Critical analysis of news.

Chapter 12: MIRKO LAMBERTI: “Conversion table”. Analysis of class practices and resources actually used. From Join classroom to lesson presentation using Skipe videoconference, Muve, Second LifeAfter, Open SIM, e-Logbook, LIM, sw Smart/Interwrite, Tablet PC, Voice Thread, ecc

Chapter 14: MAURIZIO MAGLIONI: E-Learning and E-Teaching - Collaborative work using the new technologies in Higher Education. When technology works in the classroom and when it doesn't work

We often forget that technology has revolutionized the human existence making available the universal knowledge. In the school this revolution has not modified the didactic sciences. The most careful teacher easily understands that if sciolism (?) in the science had little meaning 15 years ago, today to have it as objective for  students is substantially insane.  Yet he keeps on asking to the students to do researches as if they still need an encyclopedia and to recopy everything.  You need therefore to continuously review the methods and the new opportunities of the net without never forgetting again that the information is now easily always available but the ability of criticism and elaboration of the data are acquired only with the hard job.

Chapter 15: CARMELA TETTA :  LEARNING WITH ONLINE TRANSLATOR

The work about translation is very intresting because students can understand problematic structures by analysing mistakes made by online translator. The project is part of the trial project POSEIDON - teach Italian in a perspective multilingual. The project, phases of testing, assessment and final assessment were published in PON platform. The project is aimed at students of secondary level I, but excludes anything that may be considered for the secondary school level II. The result of the project was included in the database best practices POSEIDON.

Chapter 16: PAOLO PUMILIA: L'uso delle ict, in particolare dei dispositivi tascabili, per promuovere la didattica in autonomia degli studenti: lezioni registrate ed esercizi, test, etc, da fruire all'esterno dellla scuola.

Chapter 17: ANNALISA  MARTINI:  TEACHING ACTIONS FOR A SUCCESSFUL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT:

Chapter 18: GIOACHINO COLOMBRITA e FARMESCHI NICOLETTA: “The family in society and the Constitution”. The project   was implemented in the network, with methods of collaborative learning between two different classes and levels are geographically distant (3A/B Primary School Casteldelpiano-3Bss Vocational School Cesena) for a total of 52 students, as well as the social center for elderly F. Arrigo in Casteldelpiano. For four months students and elderly have cooperated and are compared on videoconference and on the Moodle platform specially crafted. This has developed an educationally effective and humanly constructive confrontation, during which issues concerning the elderly have been extensively detailed . Useful was the LIM class, which allowed students to benefit from the Internet when necessary, and videoconferencing links from your class with the project partners with ease. The working materials and activities preparatory meetings by videoconference (documents, lessons, photos, video and audio podcasts, drawings, reports, activities, questionnaires, chat, forum) have found a place in a precise and ordered course of portal LMS institution allowing a continuous interaction between students and teachers, who worked there from home. We also made a video album: http://vimeo.com/album/229611

This project won the "A scuola di innovazione" national contest, 2010 edition. [non questo, ha vinto l'altro progetto che ho presentato, Net4Voice]

Chapter 19: ANDREAS ROBERT FORMICONI: "Networked Literacy"; A story about a Networked Literacy course involving some thousands undergraduate students from about 20 different curricula; a story about how to transform a basic technical course in a technical-humanities course focused on networked literacy as an extension of literacy abilities.

This project, between Italy and Cyprus, was meant to build bridges between cultures since social peace and balance can be achieved only by means of integration, cooperation, respect and sharing of common values. Partners worked in eTwinning, they built groups that had to investigate on the migrant phaenomenon starting from the evidence in their own country: the topic of refugees for Cyprus and  economic migrants for Italy.

Workgroup and peer learning enabled both partner classes to get more and more involved in the effort to make themselves understood by their partners through the use of English and ICT in an amazing way and guaranteed long lasting results. The most involving and creative use of ICT led to the shooting of a short film about  Italian migrations in the XIX century, that  gave room to students’ feelings on the issue. Pupils  also experieced  planning,  acting, shooting and editing activities while exploring  both their own and the ICT expressive and creative possibilities. 

This project won Quality Certificate. It's included in eTwinning programme http://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/index.htm

ordine di scuola: secondaria 2 grado

Chapter 21: CLEMENTINA CROCCO: EducARTechnology-instructions for art:

The main goal of this project is to motivate students to study art history not only during the school lessons, but also in their free time. Partners believe in the enormous value of spreading artistic information as a way to make the new generation aware of the importance of respecting their masterpieces,  through discovery activities, which let students to improve not only their iconographic knowledge, but also their critical skills. The use of ICT contributes to enhance the universal value of artistic outputs, to analyse and understand them, so that pupils can also recognize themselves in them. ICT tools are the basic motivating force of the project and lead students, step by step, to express their own aesthetic sense.   

Chapter 23: GIANFRANCO ZAVALLONI: to a slow school, the snail pedagogy. A new educational journey has begun. Dear parents, teachers, educators (and all those that rotate around to schools and education) begin to "think together" about the meaning of our time's education and the need to adopt teaching strategies in order to slow down.

Chapter 24: MARIA CALABRETTA: An experience to use Robotics to improve English learning. Experiences for primary and secondary level.

Chapter 25: CRISTINA GALIZIA - SIMONA MARTINI: PLAYING AND PAINTING ITALIAN LITERATURE

This paper intends to illustrate how literature can be taught through repeated references to contemporary or ancient paintings and musical compositions. It is a multifaceted approach that helps the student to reconstruct the connections between the arts and to express their emotions. (modificato, ricontrollare)

Chapter 27: SILVA PAVANI: Physics and creative thinking connected by a bit

How to have fun building a text of personal and highly personalized notes.

Chapter 28: MIRKO LAMBERTI: Future is Video
Abstract: Students explain to students. A Videocourse (about Power Point) made in classroom from students for our collegues. Instruments for support explanation (LIM, software, etc.) and instruments for consult it (PC, PDA, ecc.). With the possibility of following a lesson anywhere. [Possible development of a "didattica partecipata (partecipated didactic /teaching/learning)".] --> Possible development of a cooperative learning across class, institute and years. 

Chapter 29: ELISA FONNESU: Through the discovery of the world

A scientific laboratory developed through practical work and observation to encourage the curiosity and interest to the world of science and technology and promote the acquisition of specific disciplinary skills.

Chapter 30: ELENA FAVARON and CHIARA TRABELLA: SCIENCE LAB FOR DUMMIES.  We report here different strategy to teach science, such as role game, and we suggest to use the natural sense of rebellion of young people to motivate the scientific activity. Here it is also told in details how to build a science kit and play experiments.

This project won the ECOREBEL award, 2010 edition.

Chapter 31: PAOLO BENEVENTI: virtual museum of small animals. It is a virtual museum found and shared by children.By shooting videos and photos, they began to collect pictures of insects, spiders, millipedes, snails. They chose to write very little text in English, as that's the most used language in the world. Starting from scientific names, everyone can go and look on the net for other news

Chapter 32: GIULIANA MASSARO:  Podcast, an experience in special needs education
Podcast "Radio Tangram" is a multimedia communication tool for primary school pupils. Students become writers, authors, users of online communication. It develops situations where individual talents are encouraged and valued, even in case of children with special needs. Experience a year with visual impairment in student tells of the importance of an easy to use by teachers (non capisco) and has promoted inclusion and results in terms of improvement of learning and relationships into the class. The tool makes the web 2.0 accessible to all, nobody is excluded.

Chapter 33: ELENA FAVARON: Freeware software to help discalculic child. Can discalculic children learn multiplication tables? Through the use of dedicated software they can also perform addition subtraction multiplication and division. In this chapter we offer some methods to teach math in SLD children.

Chapter 34: GIOACHINO COLOMBRITA: The Net4Voice project aims at presenting a methodology focused on using Speech Recognition (SR) technologies and assessing their impact in learning and teaching processes. The targeted SR technologies transform speech in real time digital text, by generating electronic transcriptions synchronised with the audio and/or video. The transcriptions are saved in open and portable formats that can be delivered through different channels/devices, such as Braille text only, audio only, accessible HTML interface with audio synchronised with text, and also as podcast. The project aims at raising awareness and deepening knowledge about the impact of SR technologies in school. It considers the impact of SR technology in classes held in three of the main European languages such as Italian, English and German, attended by different kind of students, such as students with disabilities or second language learners that could specifically benefit from the adoption of learning methodologies based on multiple and accessible ICT tools. The project aims at defining a strategy for transferring the SR testing results to other EU partners.

Chapter 42: RUBERTO ANNARITA: Experimentation with a blog for teaching and learning science

STELLA is an European  Project financied inside the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007-2013.

It refers to all of them who are interested in scientific education, particularly to teachers, schools, head masters, researchers, etc., offering them an interactive and multilingual web site, thought and realized to comunicate experiences, to cooperate, to exchange ideas and suggestions about teaching methods.

Inside the STELLA Project, my didactic blog “Scientificando” (http://scientificando.splinder.com)  has been selected, together with three more projects, to represent Italy as example of using blog in the science teaching for students of lower secondary school. It has been included in STELLA ebook, that has been distribuited in the seven european countries envolved in the STELLA Project. (Questo capitolo dovrebbe rientrare nell'area 1)

Chapter 43: RUBERTO ANNARITA : Teaching modules and science curriculum in third year of lower secondary school

The title refers to an  Education Department research, practically experimented at school, as regard as modular teaching. The students of  a third year of lower secondary school class have realized four teaching modules, each of them referring to a different scientific area:

1. Matter, materials and their properties
2. Living systems: structure, function and evolution
3. Earth, space and environment
4. Energy and society

(Questo capitolo dovrebbe rientrare nell'area 3)