REM vol.4, n.2 December by Pensa Multimedia

vol. 4, no.

December 2012

SIX-MONTHLY JOURNAL

REM

Research on Education and Media

Erickson

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REM Research on Education and Media The magazine is published in English twice per year (hardcopy and on-line). Subscriptions to both hardcopy and on-line editions can be bought at the following rates: € 32,00 (single individuals), € 37,00 (for Groups, Schools or Institutions), € 25,00 (students), € 17,50 (single issue), to be paid to Edizioni Centro Studi Erickson, via del Pioppeto 24 – 38121 Trento, on postal account number 10182384; please specify your name and address. Subscription to the hardcopy or on-line version only, please see the website www.erickson.it, under «riviste»/magazines. Subscription grants the following bonuses: 1. special discounts on all books published by Erickson; 2. reduced rate enrollment fees for conventions, seminars and courses organized by the Centro Studi Erickson. Subscription is considered continued, unless regularly cancelled by posting, within the 31st of december, the module found on the www.erickson.it., under «riviste»/magazines. Returned issues do not count as cancellation. Subscriptions ofice Tel. 0461 950690 Fax 0461 950698 info@erickson.it The Review is registred by the Court of Trento at number 1388, 19/06/2009 ISSN: 2037-0849 Editor in Chief Pier Cesare Rivoltella

Editor in Chief Pier Cesare Rivoltella Scientific Committee Ignacio Aguaded Gómez (Universidad de Huelva) Andrew Burn (London University) Ulla Carlsson (Göteborg University) Maria D’Alessio (Sapienza Università di Roma) Thierry De Smedt (Université de Louvain) Luciano Galliani (Università di Padova) Walter Geerts (Univerisiteit Antwerpen) Pierpaolo Limone (Università di Foggia) Laura Messina (Università di Padova) Mario Morcellini (Sapienza Università di Roma) Nelson Pretto (Universidade da Bahia) Vitor Reia-Baptista (Universidade do Algarve) Mario Ricciardi (Politecnico di Torino) Pier Cesare Rivoltella (Università Cattolica di Milano) Luisa Santelli Beccegato (Università di Bari) Jeffrey T. Schnapp (Stanford University) Editor Floriana Falcinelli Referees Committee The referees committee includes 20 well-respected Italian and foreign researchers. The names of the referees for each printing year are disclosed in the first issue of the following printing year. The referral process is under the responsibility of the Journal’s Editor in Chief.

Referral process Each article is anonymously submitted to two anonymous referees. Only articles for which both referees will express a positive judgment will be accepted. The referees evaluations will be communicated to the authors, including guidelines for changes. In this case, the authors are required to change their submissions according to the referees guidelines. Articles not modified in accordance with the referees guidelines will not be accepted. Secretary Alessandra Carenzio, CREMIT, Largo Agostino Gemelli, 1 - 20123 Milano. Tel.: (0039) 02-72343038 Fax: (0039) 02-72343040 E-mail: rem@educazionemediale.it Note to the Authors Submissions are to be sent, as MS Word files, to the email address of the Secretary: rem@educazionemediale.it Further information about submission and writing-up can be found at www. erickson.it/rem Editorial office Davide Bortoli Layout Mirko Pau Graphic design Giordano Pacenza Licia Zuppardi Cover Davide Faggiano Print Legoprint S.p.A. – Lavis (TN)

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INDEX vol. 4, no.

December 2012

SIX-MONTHLY JOURNAL

SPECIAL ISSUE:

ICT In The Classroom ICT in the classroom: a new learning environment Floriana Falcinelli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

monographic section: studies and research on ITC in school Pedagogy vs. Technology in the TPCK Model: Evidences from a Large Case-Study Nicoletta Di Blas and Paolo Paolini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Digital Culture and new and old problems in the context of the «One Laptop per Child» program in Brazilian schools Monica Fantin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Emerging digital profiles during 2.0 activities at school. What are the main learning environment features? Valentina Pennazio, Andrea Traverso and Davide Parmigiani . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

Spanish policies on Information and Communication Technologies in Education Rosabel Roig Vila. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

«Re-tweet the teacher…» Are Italian teachers «followed by» or «following» the Web 2.0 culture? Gabriella Taddeo and Simona Tirocchi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Web 2.0 as a catalyst in training and education processes between school and local territory. The Didaduezero project in the province of Trento Corrado Petrucco and Marina De Rossi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

Could Technology encourage Innovation in School? An overview of «Cl@ssi 2.0» Project in Lombardia (Italy) Pier Cesare Rivoltella, Andrea Garavaglia, Simona Ferrari and Paolo Ferri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

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Media and technologies in teacher training: The SIREM proposal integrating institutional and cultural perspectives Laura Messina and Pier Cesare Rivoltella . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

specific section: Disciplinary intersections Media Education and Motor Sciences Francesco Casolo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

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ICT in the classroom: a new learning environment Floriana Falcinelli

ABSTRACT

University of Perugia, Piazza Ermini, 1 – 06123 Perugia, Italy. E-mail: floriana@unipg.it

In recent years, in Italy, ICTs have been spreading in the school, thanks to the efforts of the Ministry of Education, that has started and supported many projects that would provide for the introduction of new technologies in innovating education. One of the most relevant projects is «Cl@ssi 2.0».This initiative aimed to create learning environments suitable for constant use and spread of technologies in everyday school life in some primary and first and second degree secondary schools, duly selected by public call. The paper presents the experimentations carried out in six first degree secondary schools in Umbria and the experimental results have emerged from interviews with the responsible teachers: it shows that the use of ICT in the classroom has had an impact on the whole teaching and learning organization and has allowed the students to achieve didactic beneficial especially in the motivational, socio-relational and communicative field. Keywords: ICT; learning environment; Moodle.

ICTs and new learning needs In recent years ICTs have been spreading in the school, thanks to the efforts of the Ministry of Education, that has started and supported many projects that would provide for the introduction of new technologies in innovating education. One of the most relevant projects is «Cl@ssi 2.0», proposed by the General Directorate for Studies, Statistics and Information Systems of the Ministry of Education as part of the plan supporting the digEdizioni Erickson – Trento

REM – vol. 4, no. 2, December 2012 (141-152)

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ital innovation. This initiative aimed to create learning environments suitable for constant use and spread of technologies in everyday school life in some primary and first and second degree secondary schools, duly selected by public call. The goal was to assess over time (two or three years, depending on the level of school) the impact of technologies on the educational process in a time characterized by the development of communication, widespread access to knowledge and a radical transformation of access, organization and communication of culture. This project was supervised and supported by a specific design pointed out by ANSAS (now INDIRE) and some experienced teachers in educational technologies belonging to some Italian universities. The focus of the project was not strictly technology but the innovation introduced in the classrooms by the teachers’ cultural approach to ICTs. In particular, university teachers have been asked to implement a form of coaching as an on-the-job intervention allowing teachers to achieve digital as well as education and organization skills, in order to improve their own professional. The coaching goal was the development of a new knowledge by sharing analysis and reflection (within the class council) on activities, difficulties encountered, achieved goals, etc. Working with teachers had different goals; first of all we have tried to share the «Cl@ssi 2.0» project with all teachers of the class council, as recommended by the Ministry and taking into consideration the cultural background, aims and teaching methods to be adopted during the project, too. Then, the most updated results of the scientific research on the use of new technologies in teaching and the possible educational innovation were presented. A system of information relating to some key concepts of the «Cl@ssi 2.0» project (i.e. learning environment) was also shared. Teachers were invited to express their own doubts toward the use of new technologies in teaching, helping them drive them to a positive perspective. They have been supported in thinking over their own teaching in order to find strategies for change and innovation and to enhance their participation in the project. The project in hand demanded teachers to remove their own deep-rooted prejudices about the ICTs effectiveness in teaching/learning. After having observed how pupils approached technologies during the extra-school time, to match formal (at school) and informal (in extra-school time) learning was advisable. Therefore, teachers were encouraged to reflect on their own teaching; in almost schools involved in the project it was indeed based on 142

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ICT in the classroom: a new learning environment

a model of teacher as a «culture transmitter», an underestimation of the pupils’ participation in the processes of knowledge construction and a low expectation towards their capacity of doing it. In all classes involved in the project there were pupils with learning problems as well as foreign students, but technologies were not used to implement learning processes suited to their needs; only in some cases support teachers used them to teach pupils with SLD. Therefore the project in hand aimed to promote in teacher a cultural awareness of ICTs intended not as mere aids to attract the pupils’ attention, but as contexts where multimedia, hypertext and active construction of shared knowledge become key elements in promoting subject study. ICTs had to be included in the curriculum as fundamentals to enhance a meaningful learning by students, since ICTs allow to access knowledge, culture and communication in a different way. Really cross-media can be defined as the possibility of transmitting the same content through different media; that is, there is a system where «the media content invites the subject to pass from a medium to another one, in order to enhance and enrich his/her communication, ludic, commercial or educational experience» (Ferri, 2008). Network is intended as a cyberspace, a virtual, alive, dynamic, everchanging, open and heterogeneous horizon; it is the result of a cooperation among subjects, thanks to the interactivity made possible by digital technologies. At this regard, the used terms are «cyber-culture», that requires new paradigms concerning training (Lévy, 1999), and «culture of virtual reality», that is built primarily through virtual, computer science-based, communication processes and fundamental, being the basis which the meaning systems are built on (Castells, 2006). The experience with ICT is increasingly popular among the younger generation who access information and communicate directly in the web world, nowadays intended as a wide social space (Web 2.0) (Laici, 2007), characterized by a shared culture (Jenkins, 2010). An increasing number of researches analyze the way in which the younger generations experience, know and represent reality (Prensky, 2001), so that the gap technologies have built between generations has now to be filled (Papert, 2006) and formal and informal learning are to be matched. The way to learn ICTs is today very different, being iconic, immersive, reticular and social, open to constant restructuring of mental maps through the connection with the online world, made today increasingly widespread thanks to the mobile technology (iPhone, iPad) (Veen & Vrakking, 2006). 143

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A strong desire of expressing and personalizing choices and interests, a constant information sharing with peers and a continuous connection within the social network come from the young generation.

The school answers In this framework teachers, as hermeneutical and critic subjects trying to make teaching and learning environment meaningful, have to consider ICTs as new teaching-learning settings/environments, that is as resources for education, taking the new elements to be introduced in the traditional teaching/learning process into consideration. Learning uses multidimensional experiences; it becomes increasingly constructive and networked and socially shared, experiments with the ludic dimension, imagination and emotional expressiveness and includes informal learning elements (Ferri, 2008). At the same time, pupils experiencing new technologies have the opportunity of questioning the importance of the traditional culture as it was transmitted by the school in the past and approaching a new culture, intended as dynamic, open, worldwide system of symbols. The school, therefore, must take new media and technologies into consideration, in order to adequately meet the pupilsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; need of knowledge, expression and communication, now characterized by the desire of approaching new media in a personalized, immersive and integrated way (Rivoltella, 2006). Therefore the use of ICTs has to become a fundamental dimension of the educational project of the school, also in the context of citizenship education; it has not to be intended as occasional activity, different from the other ones, but rather consistent with the schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s aims and integrated into the curriculum. Such an educational requires to make ICT-based curricula allowing pupils to know and use technologies in an exploratory and creative way. In other words, pupils have to get a widespread technological skill in order to promote an active use of technologies regarded as authentic education resource and not as an intrusive confusing element. They have to understand that information is not knowledge and knowledge is not the result of data processing or information exchange in a social network, but it implies interpretation, reflection and meaning construction. For this reason, digital competence was included by the European Parliament and the Council of Europe in the key competencies to achieve a 144

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significant education in the school, suitable for preparing young people for their effective integration in the Europe of knowledge (Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of Europe dated 18 December 2006). Digital competence involves «knowing how to easily and critically use information society technologies (IST) for work, free time and communication» and is supported by the ICTs’ basic skills, in particular the ability to use computer to «retrieve, assess, store, produce, present and exchange information and to communicate and participate in collaborative networks via the Internet». The European recommendation remarks that pupils have not only to be trained to use ICTs, but to learn how to use them competently. They have to learn how to choose, analyze and assess the information they convey, be able to solve problems and make decisions, express their own creativity and communicate and collaborate in realizing significant and original products, in order to become informed, responsible and participative citizens (Calvani, Fini, & Ranieri, 2008). This way, digital competence becomes a key element for citizenship education, which requires special skills: learning to learn, developing and implementing projects, collaborating and participating, acting autonomously, communicating, solving problems, finding connections and relations, getting and interpreting information. Pupils have to be helped in consciously knowing and understanding the different technologies, in order to interpret the reality and to progressively endorse the responsibilities of adult citizens, able to take part in public decisions that govern their life and to promote critical knowledge, awareness, social complexity and information. School has to consider this aspect as a key element of its educational curriculum and to include technologies in a deep cultural change. Classroom have to be transformed from contexts where knowledge is transmitted into learning environments where children actively construct knowledge and work collaboratively with peers under the guidance, support and facilitation of teachers (Rivoltella & Ferrari, 2010). In this context, the use of ICTs can introduce some elements of innovation provided that they are real instruments of students’ emancipation and not additional tools for some technologically well-trained teacher to increase his/her own leadership. Using computer in the classroom may allow students to construct hypertexts in group and to access Internet, while interactive whiteboards, integrated with several digital tools, may facilitate 145

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collective building and sharing of hyper-media products. It will enhance knowledge processes that, properly stored, labeled and organized, may allow a metacognitive reflection on the procedures adopted and the opportunity of exploring the Internet resources as the new forms of communication made possible by social networks as contexts helping learn. The opportunity of using technologies in the classroom will necessarily lead to a change in its setting, too. Less emphasis will be given to the chair while students’ tables will become flexible and dynamic work supports. Moreover, the possibility of storing data in personal drive pens or to work using open source environments will allow students to personally organize their study. New forms of relationships between teachers and students, among students and between teachers and students’ parents can be set up by reorganizing the collaboration between school and family. In order to realize this project, teachers should be adequately prepared. They should indeed understand the ICTs’ characteristics, opportunities, languages and technical supports; they should use them to make communication more efficient and to help pupils become aware of their own experience of technologies, until now fragmentary and superficial. Teachers should not only be taught about the use of different techniques, but discovery them even in a ludic perspective with their own pupils, in order to learn the ICTs’ educational potential by matching the technologies at their disposal. For this reasons, teachers are require to get a media and technology competence. Competence means a literacy able to manage online learning environment, plan and build hypertexts and multimedia products as well as know program rudiments. But the most relevant aspect is a new cultural approach to technologies, demanding a knowledge of the changes produced by the new media in education and in teaching/learning, as well as a new approach to the teaching/learning process, needing to use new media as educational resource. So I think that teacher training should be characterized primarily as a process of analysis of teaching practice that allows to know and reflect on the use of media by pupils; on the basis of that experience, it is necessary to design and implement significant culturally relevant educational activities. Knowledge and understanding of various media and technologies should therefore be integrated with a psycho-pedagogical and educational culture. 146

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Furthermore, the possibility of using multimedia skills available in the environment, by organizing environmental laboratories supporting schools as far as the technical aspects are concerned, is also to be taken into consideration. Finally, educational networks among teachers, also in connection with the university, which will allow sharing of experiences, research and good practices, in order to validate them and make them a real element of innovation in school, have to be enhanced.

Presentation of the experience in Umbria New technologies are becoming increasingly popular in the school as shown by several national programs concerning them. In particular, the «Cl@ssi 2.0» project aims at making ICTs a tool for teaching innovation. Therefore, the Italian Ministry of Education considered that teaching in school is to be accompanied by a permanent coaching organized by the different universities and coordinated by the regional school management offices. I was appointed in Umbria as coach of the experimentations carried out in the following first degree secondary schools: «A. Vera» in Amelia, «Dante Alighieri» in Spoleto, «Cocchi-Aosta» in Todi, «B. Bonfigli» in Corciano, «Colomba Antonietti» in Bastia Umbra, Istituto Comprensivo «De Filis» in Terni. As far as this project is concerned, we have designed and implemented a Moodle-based e-learning environment (www.classionlineumbria.net) offering teachers, pupils and parents a space for communication and sharing study materials. The schools have in fact expressed their intention of implementing a deeper interaction among the Umbrian classes involved in the «Cl@ssi 2.0» project, as well as among their students (and their families). They indeed supported teaching in the classroom using an online space promoting exchanges, interactions and materials sharing and possibly realizing a final product shared by all the schools involved. This allowed the construction of communities among teachers which over the time have been animated and supported by the university professor. In September 2010 the environment structure, the course types, the courses and the role individuation were realized by PhD Chiara Laici in cooperation with professor Falcinelli. The environment was realized using the Moodle Learning Content Management System. 147

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A 9 hour training seminar for teachers was then organized within the Moodle environment at the Computer Science Laboratory of the University of Perugia (LIFU). The training sessions allowed teachers to investigate aspects related to the environment structure and allowed them to experience directly in the laboratory the different tools that Moodle offers. During the following months some meetings were held at the schools; teachers and students’ parents participating in the project took part in them. Throughout the year a mentoring and online support for teachers and students involved in the project was realized (http://www.classionlineumbria.net). Through the «Comunicazioni comuni» (Common communications) course a continuous communication among participants in the project was activated; professor Falcinelli played a moderating role of the online communities within it. The course was also accompanied by a news forum (dedicated to the coordination of participants, information and communications), a technical support forum (containing suggestions to manage course and to solve problems concerning resources and activities), handbooks (in PDF format) and video tutorials about the use of Moodle. From December 2010 to June 2011 the «PoliCultura» project was carried out. «PoliCultura» is an educational opportunity/experience in which students and their teachers have the possibility of creating a multimedia «narration» on a cultural, literary or scientific topic. The classes involved in the project had the opportunity of using «1001Storia», a free multimedia engine that needs no technical prerequisite, whose result is a multi-channel application. The «1001Storia» engine creates a website, a CD-ROM and an application for iPod. Once the narration is finished, classrooms can decide to participate in a national competition with prizes. «PoliCultura» has also attracted interest in the national and international scientific community and is one of the best projects innovating teaching at the «Learning for All» (L4All) centre. L4All is a research project financed by the Italian Ministry of Education through the FIRB call and coordinated by the Politecnico of Milan, involving the University of Perugia, too. The classrooms entered in this national experimentation are constantly supported by professor Falcinelli and PhD Laici. Within the «PoliCultura» environment (www.classionlineumbria.net) each school had at its disposal a course specially designed offering resources and tools to support the construction of multimedia narration. The course was structured in areas that covered the phases of the narration construction: from the discussion of the editorial plan to the final publication. Schools could avail themselves of forums, glossaries, directories and wikis, too. 148

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In the following year Moodle was also used as set of activities supporting the assessment process, enabling the Blog and Database resources. Both tools enabled students to become protagonists in learning while allowing them to input autonomously content created by them (files of any type, but also reflections, thoughts, stories) and share them with their classmates and teachers during the courses carried out in their classes. In particular, blog was designed as a space for writing and reflecting on teaching, managed independently by the student who can describe regularly (even as multimedia) the activities carried out in the classroom, the educational tours, as well as the reflections, emotions and difficulties encountered. The potential of multimedia network allows to enrich every single blog post with images, colours, emoticons and text formatting and to attach any type of files. Links to content on the web as well as to the class curriculum are also possible. Moreover, blog enhances a strengthening of expressive skills, especially writing. Each message requires a process of designing, drafting, review and publication. Using the blog also promotes language skills in a more spontaneous and natural way. Database allowed to create a content repository (files, texts), organized in different fields (name, date, subject) and prepared during the designing phase of the tool. In each class curriculum a shared database was activated, in which each student was able to independently upload records and files of any type, together with other information, such as authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name and surname, texts (i.e. comments and/or presentation of the file), upload date and discipline involved. Files are shared with all classmates and teachers, who can also comment each record uploaded. The search page contained in the tool allows making selections and then searching through the files posted by the students, according to the different criteria proposed; this way teachers can monitor the activity of their students and students can constantly self-evaluate and reflect on the undertaken activities.

Considerations on the experience as they come from the interviews administered to the teachers At the end of the three year coaching experience, an interview was administered to six teachers responsible for the project; interviews were made through Skype, audio-recorded, transcribed and coded using a format contained in the L4All research project. 149

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Results. During the three year project a progressive involvement of several teachers forming the class council (initially not willing to take part in the initiative) has to be remarked. It was more evident in schools where the teacher responsible for the project involved his/her colleagues with enthusiasm and the school manager constantly monitored the work since the beginning, giving it much importance. The teachers who participated more actively in the experimentation considered themselves as «learning facilitators» and were willing to get involved, leaving the traditional teacher’s model. All of them expressed the need to take into account the situation and experience of their students in order to motivate and involve them more actively, but without neglecting the discipline content and the life and citizenship skills. The proposed activities generally foresaw the use of different languages and were especially designed to enhance expression, creativity and original products. The realization of some videos using background music, many of which were also uploaded in the net, was greatly appreciated by the students; it confirms how image and music are particularly suited to make adolescents express, because emotionally involving. Nevertheless, sometimes teachers hardly understood how these activities could be useful in learning discipline content. In all classes different technologies were used in an integrated way, beyond books and other traditional tools. In particular, whiteboard, in two cases with responders, notebooks (at least one for two/three students), personal pen drives, digital photo-camera and video-camera, digital taperecorder, scanners, printers and an electron microscopy were used in the schools. Also different software (almost all free) was used for activities relating to disciplines. Web searching and information management tools (i.e. Google) were used. All schools were connected to the net and used Internet resources and tools to connect with other European schools with which they were carrying out Comenius projects or to share content in the eTwinning platform. All activities were carried out in the classroom, generally reset in order to allow a flexible organization of tables (in groups of four or two, in front of the whiteboard, etc.) depending on the educational activity. The teacher tables were progressively situated in marginal positions and became a support for teachers only, while whiteboard was positioned centrally, in the place of the teacher table and next to the traditional blackboard (the latter becoming increasingly marginal). 150

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ICT-based activities were carried out in the normal school-time, together with the traditional learning. The use of the whiteboard was more continuous in the last year of the experimentation and lasted a longer time; it was integrated by the use of computers, even if not for all disciplines. Experimentations carried out in the classroom were organized in different ways: traditional lessons with discussion, work in small groups, tutoring in pairs, individual work. It depended on the technology used and the disciplines involved. It has to be remarked that the use of technologies focuses on the work in small groups or tutoring in pairs. The whiteboard interactive use by the students was more assiduous in the last year of the experimentation. The teachers-students relationship became more and more empathic, teachers began to consider themselves as ÂŤlearning facilitatorsÂť and students became more and more independent in carrying out their learning activities. Students helped each other thus enhancing peer learning. Teachers reported that some colleagues hardly accepted the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; autonomy, complaining about a loss of their authority and finding difficult to maintain their correct behaviour in the classroom according to appropriate conventional standards. This different way of working in the classroom, however, fostered inclusion of foreign students; moreover, students affected by SLD improved their performance and those ones with other disabilities, while working mainly individually with their support teacher, increased the activities carried out in collaboration with their schoolmates. Compared to the benefits obtained, teachers reported an improvement in motivational aspects, referred both to specific disciplines and to school activities in general. Students learned to work effectively in a team, to communicate in the field of multimedia and hypertext and to store information more effectively; they also demonstrated excellent creative skills in original productions, using different languages, study materials, problem solving and abilities in designing and developing multimedia products. According to the teachers most of students, however, met some difficulties in studying independently and in-depth study of some content, organization, reflection and oral communication. This experimentation inevitably brought problems and raised questions that were challenging for a discussion with the professor. They also represented an interesting starting point for a personal reflection and research. Even if the traditional model of teacher is still diffused among the teachers, this experimentation showed new perspectives for teaching and allowed 151

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considering classroom as a learning environment with interesting future developments. Many teachers greatly improved in their digital competence and even those ones who initially had more concerns got interested in technologies.

References Ardizzone, P., & Rivoltella, P.C. (2008). Media e tecnologie per la didattica. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Biondi, G. (2007). La scuola dopo le nuove tecnologie. Milano: Apogeo. Calvani, A. (Ed.) (2007). Tecnologia, scuola, processi cognitivi. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Calvani, A., Fini, A, & Ranieri, M (2009). Gli ambiti e le dimensioni della competenza digitale: la proposta del progetto Digital Competence Assessment, Form@re, 62. Castells, M. (2006). Galassia Internet. Milano: Feltrinelli. Falcinelli, F. (Ed.) (2005). E-learning. Aspetti pedagogici e didattici. Perugia: Morlacchi. Falcinelli, F., & Laici, C. (2009). E-learning e formazione degli insegnanti. Roma: Aracne. Ferri, P. (2008). La scuola digitale. Come le nuove tecnologie cambiano la formazione. Milano: Bruno Mondadori. Grion, V. (2008). Insegnanti e formazione: realtà e prospettive. Roma: Carocci. Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers. Maximizing impact on learning. New York: Routledge. Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., Boyd, D., & Cody, R. (2010). Hanging out, messing around, and geeking out: Kids living and learning with new media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jenkins, H. (2010). Participatory culture and digital skills. London: Guerini Studio. Laici, C.(2007). Nuovi ambienti di apprendimento per l’e-learning. Perugia: Morlacchi. Lévy, P. (1999). Cybercultura. Gli usi sociali delle nuove tecnologie. Milano; Feltrinelli. Morcellini, M. (Ed.) (2005), Il Mediaevo italiano. Roma: Carocci. Papert, S. (2006). Connected Family. Milano: Mimesis. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, Digital immigrants, On the Horizon, IX (5). Rivoltella, P.C. (2006). Screen generation. Gli adolescenti e le prospettive dell’educazione nell’età dei media digitali. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Rivoltella, P.C., & Ferrari, S. (Eds.) (2010). A scuola con i media digitali. Problemi, didattiche, strumenti. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Veen, W., & Vrakking, B. (2006). Homo zappiens. Growing up in a Digital Age. London: Network Continuum Education.

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Monographic section: Studies and research on ITC in school

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Pedagogy vs. Technology in the TPCK Model: Evidences from a Large Case-Study Nicoletta Di Blas* and Paolo Paolini**

ABSTRACT

* HOC-LAB, Department of Electronics and Information, Polytechnic of Milan, Via Ponzio, 34/5 – 20133 Milan, Italy. E-mail: nicoletta.diblas@polimi.it ** HOC-LAB, Department of Electronics and Information, Polytechnic of Milan, Via Ponzio, 34/5 – 20133 Milan, Italy. E-mail: paolo.paolini@polimi.it

This paper examines the different roles of pedagogy and technology knowledge in technology-based school activities. The main thesis is that, while the TPCK model seems to put the three components (Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge) on an even foot, pedagogy apparently plays a fundamental role while technology plays an instrumental role. The thesis (to be confirmed by further research) derives from the monitoring of a large case-study: a whole primary school campus in Northern Italy (Sondrio) where the Interactive White Boards are used in normal school practice. The campus was monitored for one year and data about more than 250 educational experiences were collected. The method derives from a national project («Learning4All»; www.learningforall.it) in which hundreds of experiences from all over Italy are gathered and analyzed. The main finding is apparently odd: teachers with a poor understanding of technology but in full command of pedagogy can run successful educational experiences. This statement, if taken seriously, may have disruptive effects on the policies of many countries (Italy included) where teachers’ training on technology is too much technical, while it should be acknowledged that «technology knowledge» per se does not mean «knowing how to use technology in the teaching/learning process». Keywords: TPCK model; Interactive White Boards; educational benefits; monitoring; evaluation.

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Introduction This paper is based upon a case-study of adoption of Interactive White Boards (from now IWB) in a whole «campus» (in Italian, «circolo») of primary school in Italy (in Sondrio, Northern Italy). The work did not start with a specific research agenda: it was not our goal to demonstrate nor to challenge any specific research hypothesis. A firm point, however, was our wish of fully understanding what was going on in the classroom, how activities were organized and with what results. From a methodological point of view, our starting point was «Learning4All» (www.learningforall.it; Ferrari et al., 2012), a national project that has analyzed almost 300 experiences carried on in all Italian regions. The features that make this case-study notable are: – It is a bottom-up initiative, promoted by the school principal; in other words, it is not a ministerial initiative. All the technology was acquired raising private funding. – There was not a precise plan about how to use the technology, but the need to move in this direction was clear. – Few teachers only had a previous familiarity with technology. – After a short technical course, teachers basically trained each other in a form of peer-to-peer education. The cross fertilization and exchange of ideas is constant. – All teachers are involved. Traditional blackboards (left on site for precaution) are tidy, clean and never used. Activities with the IWBs are now part of the standard curricular activities. The case-study was monitored for one school year, through daily short reports by the teachers and Skype interviews with the Politecnico researchers. A few focus groups were also held on site, at the beginning and at the end of the school year. On the whole, 253 experiences were monitored and analyzed. There were different goals to be achieved: first of all, the school principal wanted to get a picture of how the IWBs were being used, if not for other reasons in order to verify whether the initial investment had been worthwhile. Second, the creation of a well-organized report about the educational experiences was envisioned, for internal as possibly for external use (in the form of an eBook). The research goal was generically defined: understanding the conditions for a pervasive and permanent adoption of technology 156

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at school, in terms of teachers’ confidence and competence with ICT and pedagogical approach. The next section will briefly introduce the relevant background, on the Technology-Pedagogy-Content Knowledge (TPCK) model, a framework for analyzing educational experiences at school involving technology. The following sections will describe at some extent the case-study and the monitoring methodology. The last two sections will examine (a very short selection of) the results of the monitoring and finally draw the conclusions.

Background and theoretical framework During the 80s, Lee Shulman questioned the idea that teachers’ training should separate content from pedagogy knowledge: his opinion was that offering an integrated vision of pedagogy and content would have been a much more effective approach. His starting point was a simple, yet profound question: «How are content knowledge and pedagogy knowledge related?». By intersecting the two, he obtained the domain of pedagogy and content knowledge, by which he meant the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others (Shulman, 1986a; 1986b). After the advent of digital technology and its large-scale adoption even in a traditionally lagging behind sector such as the school system, a third component was added to the «PCK model»: Technology (Koehler & Mishra, 2005; Niess, 2005; Mishra & Koehler, 2006; Koehler, Mishra, & Yahya, 2007; Archambault & Crippen, 2009; Angeli & Valanides, 2009; etc.). The new TPCK model (often nicknamed TPACK model) pinpoints that in teachers’ training the «dynamic, transactional relationship between all three components» must be taken into consideration and again, like for pedagogy and content before, technology must not be taught per se but as a component of a larger scenario. Niess (2005) offers a very clear definition of the model: «TPCK [...] is the integration of the development of knowledge of subject matter with the development of technology and of knowledge of teaching and learning. And it is this integration of the different domains that supports teachers in teaching their subject matter with technology» (Figure 1). The TPACK model is a powerful tool for interpreting ICT-based educational experiences. Still, like Archambault and Crippen (2009) point out, «it remains to be determined if knowledge in each of these domains truly exists». In this paper, we aim at enlarging the scope of this question by adding 157

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«[...] and if so, what kind of knowledge it is». Another concern regards the over-emphasis that sometimes is given to the «Technology» component of the model, as Maddin (2011) states: «some researchers have expressed concern over the tendency to approach technology instruction with an emphasis on learning to use the technology tool itself over careful consideration of the educational value of the tool, speculating that such approaches are unlikely to result in powerful uses of technology in schools» (Maddin, 2011, p. 1).

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK)

Technological Knowledge (TK)

Pedagogical Knowledge (PK)

Technological Content Knowledge (TCK)

Content Knowledge (CK)

Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Context

Figure 1 The Technological Pedagogical Content Model (www.tpack.org; retrieved September 24, 2012).

The Sondrio experience thus aims at investigating the role of pedagogy with respect to technology in the TPACK model (Di Blas, Paolini & Torrebruno, 2010).

Case-study description The «Secondo Circolo Didattico di Sondrio» is a campus including three primary schools and also four pre-schools, remotely located. The school is quite open to innovation: from 1997-98, the school is endowed with 2 com158

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puter laboratories and for more than 8 years it has taken part in a ministerial project about ICT in education. In 2005, after an «inspiring» visit to one of the most relevant Italian fair dedicated to ICT, the introduction of IWBs was decided. In the round of four years, 28 IWBs were bought and introduced in the classrooms, each with a PC, a video projector and internet connection. The cost (120k euro) was totally covered by local sponsorships and contributions. Teachers received an introductory technical training: they then «selftrained», looking for programs and ideas online and sharing them with their colleagues. The students welcomed the novelty with enthusiasm: almost all of them (90% circa) were already accustomed to technology, having a PC at home. Activities with the IWB are now a permanent asset of the school (Figure 2).

Figure 2 A Sondrio teacher using the IWB with one of her pupils.

Method In year 2010-11, an extensive monitoring was organized by researchers of HOC-LAB (Politecnico di Milano) to investigate the use of the IWB in the Sondrio campus. On the whole, 42 teachers were involved. They belonged to different age-ranges: 15% were below 30 years, 60% between 30 and 50 and 25% older than 50 (Figure 3). The average age was 46. They were all females except three men. 159

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<50 years 25%

<30 years 15%

30-50 years 60%

Figure 3 Age ranges of the teachers involved in the study. Total number: 42.

The study was conducted mainly from remote, after an initial meeting in Sondrio in which the motivations and the methodology were explained. The intermediation of the school’s principal was fundamental to ensure the teachers’ active participation. First of all, the research staff assessed the teachers’ confidence with technology, through interviews. Roughly, 30% could be considered good technology users, 50% were average and 20% quite basic (Figure 4). By «average» competence it is meant that they were capable of managing the Office programs (Word and Excel), of browsing

Basic users 20%

Good users 30%

Average users 50%

Figure 4 Teachers’ confidence with technology. Total number: 42.

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the internet and downloading content, but they were not in full command of all the IWB features. As regards the teachers’ competence with technology, it must be noted that the year of monitoring did not just mean «being watched», but it was a spur to improve their performances. (1) Daily short reports by the teachers and (2) direct interviews to each teacher (via Skype) were used as monitoring tools. Eventually, all the data from an experience were distilled into an (3) experience schema. Daily short reports The first monitoring tool were the «daily short reports», filled in by teachers every time an experience with the IWB took place. Since the experiences would typically span a long time, it was agreed to ideally divide each experience into «steps», corresponding to one-hour activity in the class on average (minimum time: 40 minutes, maximum time: 2 hours). Therefore, each teacher had to fill in her daily short reports every time a «step» of an experience had taken place. The first part was a sort of «identity card» of the experience, to be filled once and for all (Table 1). Title

The title must make reference to the kind of work rather than to the subject matter (e.g. «conceptual map»)

Teacher and subject matter

Name of the teacher and his/her subject of teaching

school year

The school year in which the experience takes place

location and class

The campus («circolo») gathers 3 schools in 3 different locations: the specific place has to be specified

number of students

It must be also specified whether there is any sub-group of students with diverse needs

other teachers

Whether any other teacher is involved

subject matter & specific topic

Subject matter of the experience (not necessarily coinciding with the teacher’s main subject of teaching). E.g. «math – teaching numbers from 1 to 10»

Table 1

The identity card of an experience.

Every time a «step» of the experience took place, the daily short reports were filled in according to the following schema (Table 2). The daily short reports were regularly sent to the Politecnico researchers, who went through them and asked for clarifications if needed via Skype. 161

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sTeP 1-n

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Date

Day in which the activity takes place

Time

Hour of beginning and end

Classroom setting

How the class is organized during the activity (where the desks are, whether students are sitting or standing etc.) By «normal» the typical classroom setting, with students at their desks in front of the IWB and the teacher facing the class, is meant

activity description

Short description of the activity, including only the relevant feature

strategies

E.g.: lecture, brainstorming, problem-solving, cooperative learning, peer-to-peer learning…

Comments

Something «special»; anecdotes; quotes by the students…

Tools and resources

What tools (of the IWB) are used

Table 2

The schema for describing a «step» of an experience.

The Skype interviews The second monitoring tool were individual Skype interviews between the researchers and each of the participating teachers. Two interviews were planned: one at the beginning of the experience and one at the end. If anything was unclear in the daily reports, additional interviews could occur. The interviews were semi-structured; during the «expectations» interview the following topics were dealt with: basic data about the teacher (name, age, subject of teaching); confidence with and attitude towards ICT; main pedagogical approach; motivations for using the IWB; experience’s description; expected benefits; expected problems; inclusion issues (for students with diverse needs). The «results» interview skipped the first questions and inquired again about benefits, problems and inclusion issues. All the data from the daily short reports and the interviews were eventually distilled into an «experience schema» (see below). At the end of the year, a library of all the experience schemas was created, to serve as a source of inspiration for the teachers of the school. The publishing of an eBook is planned in 2013. The experience schema: an example In this section a concrete example of experience schema is shown (translated into English). Due to space constraints, only the «identity card» and the first step of the experience are introduced. 162

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eXPerIenCe 210-sChema Subject: Italian Title: Acquaintance with syllables Target: first grade students. The class includes 20 students, of which 1 with learning disability, 5 non-native Italian speakers (immigrants), 2 with learning difficulties Teachers involved: the «main» teacher (teaching Italian, English, History, Geography, Art) and an additional teacher, who supports the students with difficulties Topic: syllables, simple words and sentences Number of steps: 4 Average step’s duration: 1 - 2 hours Total number of hours: 8 Classroom setting: normal (students at their desk, IWB in front of them) Description Through a story about the animals that populate the pupils’ school book, the topic of the experience — the syllables — is introduced. Exercises of syllables’ recognition inside words, words’ completion using the syllables, syllables composition and short rhymes memorization are proposed, all supported by the IWB. Comments by the teacher Thanks to the IWB the exercises are playful; students pay more attention and are less scared of making mistakes. IWB plays a fundamental role when dealing with non-native Italian speakers: the possibility of using images strongly supports their learning. Eventually, the interactive games of the IWB or found on the internet reinforce the knowledge acquired. Goals Make students recognize, read and write the syllables; recognize, read and write words with 2 and 3 syllables; read simple sentences; read short simple texts. IWB’s tools used during the experience Note: all the available tools were classified and given a classification number (in the first column of the table below) noTeBooK smarT BoarD SN2

Pen

To write and paint on the board

SN5

Highlighter

To highlight words, sentences…

SN17

Table

To insert a table

sCreen CaPTUre SN19

Current screen capture

To capture current screen

SN20

Area

To capture a selected area of the screen

SN21

Area: manual selection

To capture a selected area of the screen, defining the borders manually

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oBJeCTs anD ProPerTIes SN50

Object animations

To activate animations in relation to any object on the page

SN33

Drag, move, rotate

To drag objects/words on the page or to insert them into the gallery

SN37

Screen shadow

To hide and reveal parts of the screen

SN53

Insert audio

To add an audio file to an object

GallerY SN55

Background

Sets the background of the page as if it were a notebook (e.g. squared or ruled…)

SN56

Lesson activity toolkit

Collection of customizable tools and templates, including activities, games and graphics, that can be used to create interactive and engaging lessons

SN58

Essentials collection

When installing the software of the SMART Notebook it is possible to include a collection of thousands of images, divided into categories

SN59

Gallery of images

Library of images, backgrounds, themes, Notebook pages and files, simulations, interactive and multimedia applications…

mUlTImeDIa ConTenT SN65

Images, clip art, gif

Taken from a website (URL not defined)

ImPlemenTaTIon STEP 1 Duration: from 8.00 to 9.30 a.m. Classroom setting: normal Description and comments The pupils listen to a tale told by the teacher while images are shown on the board, one by one. Then the story’s text is shown on the board. Taking turns, the pupils go to the IWB and circle all the words that include the syllables they are supposed to learn (e.g. FA, FE, FI, FO, FU). All the students do the same exercise on their notebook. Then one of the images is shown, surrounded by scattered words: the goal is to put the words in order and make up a sentence. All the students try to guess what the right sentence is. Then one of the students goes to the IWB and puts the words in the right order. The exercise is repeated three times, with other images and words. The activity is individual in the first part (syllables’ recognition), collaborative in the second (sentences’ recognition). Everything is recorded in the students’ notebooks. The telling of a story supported by images is very much appreciated by the students, especially the non-native Italian speakers. Everyone would like to come out to the board and do the exercises! 164

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Tools used: Background settings; images and pictures either from the SMART collection or from the internet; animation effects; SMART pens. STEP 2 …

Results The year-long monitoring led to the collection of 253 experiences in 26 classes. Since all the teachers of the campus were involved, all subjects were represented, with the traditionally «most relevant» ones (Mathematics and Italian) on top of the list (Table 3). This means that teachers embedded the use of the IWB in their real didactic activity and did not consider it as an experiment to be run with the lighter subjects. subject

number of experiences

Mathematics

Italian

History

Foreign language: English

Geography

Religion

Science

Music

Art & Design

Civic education

Other

Technology

Sport education

Foreign language: French

TOTAL

Table 3

253

Subject-matters of the experiences.

The educational experiences were of various lengths. Each experience was ideally divided into «steps», lasting one hour approximately. The vast majority of the experiences span more than 1 step, with quite a good number 165

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longer than 6 steps: this means that quite complex pedagogical implementations were put to work (Table 4). number of «steps»

number of experiences

From 2 to 5

157

From 6 to 9

From 10 to 15

> 15

Undefined

Table 4

The experiences’ length, in terms of number of «steps».

During each experience, a variable number of IWB’s tools were used (Table 5), of different kinds (Table 6). These data show that most of the experiences were quite complex in terms of pedagogical implementation since they made use of a quite large number of tools. On the other hand, they were mostly based on the simplest tools. This means that all the teachers embedded the IWB in their practice supporting non-trivial pedagogical implementations, though only a minority took the hazard of using the most advanced tools. number of IWB tools used during one experience

number of experiences

Between 2 and 5

121

Between 6 and 9

Between 10 and 15

More than 15

Table 5

The number of IWB’s tools used by the teachers.

IWB tools’ typology Basic tools

examples

Pen, highlighter, keyboard, eraser…

how many times they were used Percentage (i.e. in how many of usage «steps») 547

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Pedagogy vs. Technology in the TPCK Model: Evidences from a Large Case-Study

IWB tools’ typology Screen capture

how many times they were used Percentage (i.e. in how many of usage «steps»)

examples

Standard screen capture (capturing the whole screen); manual screen capture…

1,95%

Math tools

Equations, tables, graphs…

1,05%

Objects editing

Drag, move, rotate…

139

10,41%

Objects properties

Full screen view, line color…

118

8,84%

Gallery

Images, pages’ background…

157

11,76%

Other tools (extraIWB)

Multimedia Encyclopedias, CDROMs with educational games…

334

25,02%

Table 6

Typologies of IWB’s tools used during the experiences.

Eventually, all the experiences were classified into three categories, according to their level of «complexity». It must be noted that higher complexity does not absolutely mean better educational benefits (Table 7). – A means: wide range of IWB tools used; multimedia content; high level of interaction within the class. – B means: good range of tools; use of other resources (internet, CDs…), good level of interaction. – C means: basic use of the IWB tools; limited interactivity within the class. level of difficulty

number of experiences

Percentage (over 253 exp.)

A: complex

37,2%

B: average

109

43,0%

C: simple

19,8%

Table 7

The experiences’ level of complexity.

Through the individual interviews (two per each teacher at the least) and the final focus group (with all the 42 participating teachers) conclusions were drawn as regards the impact of the IWB in the class, which on the whole was perceived as highly positive. These are the main findings: – The IWB is quite playful for the students: they feel engaged and therefore pay more attention. Taking turns at the IWB adds to the engagement. 167

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– The fear of making mistakes is reduced thanks to the cooperative and playful atmosphere. – The IWB fosters cooperative work: all the students take part, if someone makes a mistake the others suggest the right answer/move, etc. Students feel more as a class and peer-to-peer learning is encouraged. – Even low-performing students feel more involved and motivated. – Since all the materials are prepared before (at home, by the teacher), the «rhythm» of the lesson is faster: again, this fosters attention and involvement in the students. – In many activities, students are able to self-assess their learning and check whether they are right or wrong. This highly enhances their sense of responsibility. During the study, researchers met with some unexpected difficulties: – Teachers found it difficult to separate the crucial ingredients of the experience from the non-relevant ones (i.e. the ones that could be changed leaving the value of the experience unaltered). – They were hardly capable to separate the specific content (e.g. «volcanoes») from the educational implementation (e.g. how groups were organized, what kind of tools were being used, what kind of tasks the students were given…). – Last but not least, being the normal workload of the teachers already significant, it was sometimes really hard for them to dedicate extra-time for filling in the daily short reports. The interesting thing is that all the above difficulties were overcome during the study, thanks to the interaction with the remote tutors. At the end, some teachers even declared that in spite of the fact that it did require a lot of time, they found the daily short reports useful for reflecting upon what they had done in the class. The result of the study is a comprehensive, realistic picture of what a whole primary school campus does with IWB in the classroom. It must be stressed that the realism of the picture is one of the main achievements of this study: short and long, easy and complex, plain and structured experiences, involving skeptical as well as enthusiast teachers, are all gathered and reported in details. The monitoring methodology is another achievement: the interplay between the daily short reports and the interviews with external experts proved a powerful way to gather data, to learn to separate what is relevant with respect to what is not really relevant and to reflect upon the teaching practice. 168

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Conclusions The activities described in this paper involved 42 teachers. They were of different ages, with different technological expertise and different attitudes towards the idea of introducing technology in the classroom. None of them was particularly tech-savvy. Through the «Learning4All» approach (Ferrari et al., 2012), the experiences were carefully analyzed, trying to detect the impact: was the learning process successful or not? The results can be synthesized as follows: a) Some experiences were quite innovative, others were more traditional, but overall it can be said that all the teachers were successful in introducing technology in the classroom. b) Experiences, in general, were educationally quite effective. In most cases the quality of learning (as attested by school grades) was good. Even difficult students became more involved and proficient. c) In all cases the «starting spark» for an activity was not technology per se, but rather a pedagogical idea (about content, or a way to organize the class). Technology selection (which tools to use and how) came later and in most cases, with few exceptions, was not crucial. d) Technology did not seem to be «efficient» (in the sense of saving time, for example) but rather to be «effective». Kids were engaged by the interaction with the IWB, therefore spent more time handling the subject matter and therefore learnt better. This positive effect is particularly evident in the case of less-proficient kids, which through technology find new motivations for being at school and taking part into the school activities. e) A great part of the effort and cost of monitoring was due to the fact that teachers would tend to be vague about implementation details as if taking them for granted: e.g. how was the class organized? How were roles in groups assigned? Etc. f) Correlating details (e.g. group organization or task assignment, or roles assigned to pupils) with results, in terms of educational benefits, was difficult for many teachers. They obtained overall good results, but they could not easily pinpoint what had determined what. g) Most of the experiences were not glamorous, in the sense that they would hardly be published on a scientific paper, and, even less, that they would draw attention from the media. Still, they were effective and could be very good examples for other teachers. 169

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From the above we can derive a research agenda for further understanding a set of intertwined issues. From a), b), c), as far as the TPCK model is concerned, we need to better understand the roles of the different components: Technology, Pedagogy, Content. Our hypothesis is that Technology is more instrumental than fundamental, and therefore the overall interpretation of the model should be better clarified. This hypothesis is in line with what the annual Horizon Report 2011 (Johnson, Adams, & Haywood, 2011) advocates when it identifies digital media literacy training as one of the top five challenges facing K-12 education, stating that «digital literacy is less about tools and more about thinking» and concluding that «skills and standards based on tools are somewhat ephemeral». We think that more research on the interplay between Technology, Content and Pedagogy should be conducted, in order to develop a more detailed model that can help in training teachers (for example deemphasizing training in technology for itself and reinforcing training about how to use technologies in the classroom). From d) and e), we derive the opinion that investing over the self-awareness of teachers (about what they do) is important and can be rather effective: many teachers told us that through our analysis they better understood what they had done. Self-awareness must also include precise information about timing (which we tried to detect through the daily notes): how much time was spent on X or Y? Overall we think that scientific research should more often be based on precise data analysis, including information about the amount of the effort devoted to each (sub)-activity. We are not advocating an industrial «taylorism» for schools, but the current lack of precise data is somehow embarrassing, if a proper research about the ratio benefits/effort must be conducted. From e) again and f), we derive the opinion that details often make the difference over big ideas and that more research is needed for investigating how implementation details affect educational results. For example we are conducting a research about how groups’ composition and roles affect inclusion. First results seem to suggest that while sometimes fostering different talents through heterogeneous groups can be instrumental to help everyone feel involved, in other cases homogenous groups are more effective into pushing each student to experiment all activities and thus improve in all competences. From g), we derive the opinion that good practices conducted in normal, everyday situations, are in the end more relevant for disseminating technol170

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ogy at school, with respect to «best practices» that are typically conducted under special circumstances, with special resources and special means. We think that collecting «good experiences» based on technology (as we did with the school in Sondrio) can be more effective than focusing on «best practices», as it is often the case with scientific publications. We are fully aware that our hypotheses are not undisputable results yet, and that further research is needed. We are currently working on targeted projects, in order to better address the above issues one by one. We would like to cooperate with other research groups, in order to compare our findings with theirs, and also to develop a better interpretation of the large amount of data that we collect.

Acknowledgments We thank the Politecnico researchers who passionately worked at this experience: Diletta Apollonio, Domenico Franzetti and Laura Pomoni. A special thank to Carlo Zanesi, the «enlightened» school principal of the Secondo Circolo Didattico of Sondrio and of course to all the teachers who showed us that «yes, you can»: Emanuela Agnelli, M. Dolores Ballestracci, Carla Balsarini, Maria Bertucci, Silvia Briotti, Elena Bulanti, Domenico Caliano, Maria Assunta Camerota, Marina Crapella, Monia Dell’Avanzo, Luisa Dusci, Saverio Elia, Maurizia Forlani, Rosalba Forno, Angela Fumasoni, Silvana Gianatti, Serenella Gianfreda, Wilma Gianoncelli, Paola Grotto, Maurizia Mangiafico, Martino Martini, Donata Maspero, Antonella Mazzoni, Stefania Morellini, Savina Mostacchi, Alessandra Nesa, Angela Maria Orlacchio, Franca Orsi, Vilma Paganoni, Maria Parolo, Annamaria Passaretti, Marilisa Pigoni, Patrizia Sambrizzi, Merisa Sandionigi, Sabrina Santucci, Marinella Scieghi, Giovanna Simonini, Luisa Soggiu, Clara Spinelli, Sara Tocalli, Rita Valesini, Laura Vanini. This work is partially supported by National Project L4All («Learning for All») – Grant Num RBNE07CPX 001.

References Angeli, C., & Valanides, N. (2009). Epistemological and methodological issues for the conceptualization, development, and assessment of ICT-TPCK: Advances in technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK). Computers & Education, 52 (1). Archambault, L., & Crippen, K. (2009). Examining TPACK among K-12 online distance educators in the United States. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9 (1). Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/vol9/iss1/general/article2.cfm. Barab, S., Thomas, M., Dodge, T., Carteaux, R., & Tuzun, H. (2005). Making learning fun: Quest Atlantis, a game without guns. Educational Technology Research and Development, 53 (1), 86-107.

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Barab, S., Gresalfi, M., & Arici, A. (2009). Why educators should care about games. Teaching for the 21st Century, 67 (1), 76-80. Di Blas, N., Bucciero, A., Mainetti, L., & Paolini, P. (2012). Multi-User Virtual Environments for Learning: Experience and Technology Design. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies (in print). Di Blas, N., & Paolini, P. (2012). Beyond the School’s Boundaries: PoliCultura, a LargeScale Digital Storytelling Initiative. In T. Leo, L. Spalazzi, P. Ghislandi, & M.G. Ierardi (Eds.), Journal of Educational Technology & Society. Special Issue on «Innovative technologies for the seamless integration of formal and informal learning» (in print). Di Blas, N., Paolini, P., & Torrebruno, A. (2010). Digital Storytelling at School. Does the TPCK Model Explain What’s Going On?. In J. Sanchez, & K. Zhang (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2010 (pp. 2239-2248). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Ferrari, L., Di Blas, N., Paolini, P., Arpetti, A., Lanzillotti, R., Falcinelli, F., Vergallo, R., Ierardi, M.G., & Pacetti, E. (2012). «Learning for All»: is everyone learning?. In Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2012 (pp. 1782-1792). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/41867. Johnson, L., Adams, S., & Haywood, K. (2011). The NMC horizon report: 2011 K. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium. Koehler, M., & Mishra, P. (2005). What happens when teachers design educational technology? The development of technological pedagogical content knowledge. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 32 (2), 131-152. Koehler, M., & Mishra, P. (2008). Introducing TPCK. In AACTE Committee on Innovation and Technology (Ed.), Handbook of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK). New York: Routledge. Koehler, M., Mishra, P., & Yahya, K. (2007). Tracing the development of teacher knowledge in a design seminar: Integrating content, pedagogy and technology. Computers & Education, 49 (3). Maddin, E. (2011). Using TPCK with digital storytelling to investigate contemporary issues in educational technology. Journal of Instructional Pedagogies, 1 (11). Retrieved on Sept. 28, 2012 from http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/11970.pdf. Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for integrating technology in teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108 (6), 1017-1054. Niess, M.L. (2005). Preparing teachers to teach science and mathematics with technology: Developing a technology pedagogical content knowledge. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21 (5), 509-523. Shulman, L. (1986a). Paradigms and research programs in the study of teaching: A contemporary perspective. In M.C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 3-36). New York. Shulman, L. (1986b). Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching. Educational Researcher, 15 (2), pp. 4-14.

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Digital Culture and new and old problems in the context of the «One Laptop per Child» program in Brazilian schools Monica Fantin

ABSTRACT

Department of Education Sciences, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Campus Universitário – Trindade, 88040-900 Florianópolis, SC, Brazil. E-mail: mfantin@terra.com.br; fantin.monica@gmail.com

While digital technologies are producing innovative processes in schools and bringing teachers new problems, public policies for the insertion of technologies in schools reveal that programs and technologies change, while educational problems remain the same, and in some cases, are intensified by digital culture. These contradictions permeate the reflections of this article, by placing in context the «One Laptop per Child» program in Brazilian schools in a context based on an ongoing study of some aspects of the pedagogical practices and perceptions of teachers and students about digital culture. Keywords: digital culture; public policy; laptop in schools; pedagogical practices.

Edizioni Erickson – Trento

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Given Brazil’s continental scope, public education policies must be analyzed based on our cultural diversity, the tensions between the global and the local and the singularity of educational experience in broader social practice. Thus, it is important to question how Brazilian public policies dialog with experiences undertaken in other countries and with studies about the insertion of ICTs in schools in the context of digital culture. Given the country’s countless social inequalities, a school model in crisis and the challenge of thinking about the suitability of this school model in the construction of the contemporary world, it only makes sense to think of the insertion of ICTs in schools if they are incorporated as an element for education, construction of citizenship and participation in the culture in a world in transformation, and not only to teach curricular contents. Indications of transformative practices in schools can be seen through the perceptions of teachers and students about their learning and practices. We situate the context of the «One Laptop per Child» program (PROUCA) and undertake a partial analysis of the results of a study about pedagogical practices that use laptops in the unique reality of schools as an expression of a larger whole, seeking to consider their limits and possibilities in dialog with other practices.

Aspects of the «One Laptop per Child» program in Brazil The history of the use of laptops in schools in a 1:1 model dates to the 1990s, when the first pilot programs were developed to in Australian schools (Warschauer, 2006). Since then, many experiences with mobile technology and digital culture in schools have spread throughout the world, seeking to meet political-economic and social demands of each cultural context, strengthening the discourse of digital inclusion as a condition for school innovation and citizenship, becoming the object of studies in the fields of education and communication, of theories of learning, and of new literacies and public policies. Stimulated by an initiative with great visibility and international repercussion that proposes the development and commercialization of low-cost laptops, various emerging or developing countries have adhered to this proposal, believing that access to the technological device will provide digital and social inclusion for children and a way to overcome teaching and learning difficulties in schools. 174

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Digital Culture and new and old problems in the context of the «One Laptop per Child» program in Brazilian schools

The project was known as the «One Laptop per Child» (OLPC), inspired by Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MediaLab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, which in 2005 released the small XO-1 laptop at a unit cost of U$ 100,1 aimed at children in «third world» countries. The initiative is now found in 42 countries as part of consolidated public policies or projects and programs under implementation. The presentation of the OLPC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2005 sparked the interest of the Brazilian government, leading to what in Brazil is called the «One Computer per Student» program (PROUCA), which would be developed in conjunction with other actions and existing programs. With the goal of «being an educational project utilizing technology, digital inclusion and intensification of the commercial production chain in Brazil», 2 its implementation involved various moments. In 2006, partnerships between the OLPC organization at MIT, federal institutions and research centers in Brazil signed an agreement to develop a pre-pilot program in 2007 in five schools in five municipalities in different Brazilian states. In 2010, the pilot phase of the project began with distribution of 150,000 educational laptops to 320 public schools chosen in each state of the country, involving some 113,385 students. Each school received the laptops for students and teachers and support for improving or establishing infrastructure for Internet access. The Ministry of Education was responsible for providing broadband and wireless at the participating schools. An open software policy was also adopted. The initial laptop model was the Classmate, using the Metasys system, a customized version of OpensUse 10.1. But various technical problems with the system impeded the viability of innovative pedagogical proposals and some schools migrated to the UBUNTU operating system distributed by Linux that had applications for navigation, communication, text, image, video and sound editing, spreadsheets and presentations, which allowed better access and speed to wireless networks and Internet content. In the pilot program, selected teachers and school administrators were trained to use the laptop. 1 2

The laptop was first sold in Brazil for U$ 272. Quote found on the site. At http://www.uca.gov.br/institucional/projeto.jsp (accessed July 17, 2012).

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Although the working group responsible for the implementation of PROUCA, known as GTUCA, addressed three areas: Training, Evaluation and Research, the educational policies for the insertion of technological devices in the schools in recent years lack a specific and efficient policy for training teachers that would make viable the use of the ICTs in a transformative manner (Quartiero, Bonilla, & Fantin, 2011). This fact is highlighted in various studies that associate the lack of teacher training to the inexpressive use of technologies in schools. Other related difficulties are also related to the lack of time among teachers to learn to use digital technologies, to questions of infrastructure and maintenance of the equipment, and the lack of competencies for critical use, which transcends access to the device (Fantin & Rivoltella, 2012). Although the official PROUCA documents emphasize the possibilities for digital, pedagogical and social inclusion promoted with the access to laptops, in an attempt to reduce the digital gap that separates those included and excluded from technology, in Brazil, this distance is revealed in the inequality of opportunities to qualified access and use of digital technologies from the perspective of sociocultural mediation. Even if a student uses a laptop in school and takes it home for family use, various problems impede this strategy of inclusion and are not considered in the learning process, as Warschauer affirms: «to provide significant access to new technologies, content, language, literacy, education and community structures and institutions must all be considered» (2006, p. 21). This reveals the importance of research and evaluation. In addition to initiatives to evaluate the program through GTUCA, in 2011 the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) published a national call for proposals and approved financing for 27 research projects to evaluate the PROUCA pilot from 2011-2013. It is in this context that this research and reflection are inserted. It is important to highlight that the challenge of analyzing the device itself and its limitations in light of technologic advances, becomes more complex when considering that it is an evaluation of a project that is basically destined to disappear, given that the government has declared that it will begin to purchase tablets for students and teachers. It appears that we are facing a «chronicle of a death foretold». It is thus important not to focus on the laptops, but on the relations and possibilities of the digital culture, because programs and technologies change, but the educational problems remain the same, and in some cases are intensified by the context of the digital culture. 176

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Digital Culture and new and old problems in the context of the ÂŤOne Laptop per ChildÂť program in Brazilian schools

Pedagogical practices with the laptop in the realm of PROUCA The complexity of inserting laptops in Brazilian schools requires that researchers from different institutions of higher education investigate the challenges and strategies that could construct other pedagogical practices and consolidate other public policies. This is what we are doing in the pilot schools in Santa Catarina and Bahia states by conducting participant research with case studies inspired in critical ethno-research, based on an emphasis on three investigative focuses: administration, pedagogical practices and a collaborative network established in the PROUCA schools. In this way, we intend to help redefine digital culture projects and contribute to the development of public policies dedicated to quality education. The research design is based on the focuses mentioned and involves different schools in each state, different subjects (professionals and students) and different instruments (observation in the schools, interviews with teachers, questionnaires for administrators and focus groups with students). We are also developing a project for training in schools, which in addition to being an educational principle of the study, is a counterpart or contribution of the study group that is also transformed into material for investigation. Considering that the empiric research is still underway, at this time we are presenting some approaches and partial analyses focused on the pedagogical practices. The challenge to explore the mobility and digital immersion of teachers and students through the use of the laptop as an expression of the thinking of how to favor intellectual, social and cultural development of students is articulated with the principles of the program. These include: digital inclusion with the goal of inserting students into the society of knowledge, the pedagogical use of the laptop supported by mobility, connectivity and immersion based on the 1:1 model, the strategies for learning and constructing knowledge, argumentation, creativity, logic, reading and writing, using and searching for information in hyper-textual electronic repositories, development of ideas and cultural productions. These articulations involve mutual influences among technologies, people, contexts and their interactions, revealing the complexity of the learning process with mobile technologies in schools. We highlight a few aspects observed: 1. The shift of the place of and the teacher-student relationship, generating new power relations and new forms of learning with ICTs, suggesting other possibilities for mediations. 177

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2. The use (or not) in a continuous and diffuse manner, of the laptop in daily classroom activities, which can go beyond the idea of a «computer laboratory» which reproduces disciplinary fragmentation and isolated activities in the school curriculum. This requires a reflection on the disciplinary or transversal insertion of media-education in schools, and a discussion about school architecture and the redefinition of spaces based on social uses. 3. The didactic attention to the collaborative construction of knowledge through discoveries by children (spontaneous or directed) as a stimulant to the production and creativity that leads to cooperation, exchange of content and to other concepts of authorship. This leads us to question the 1:1 model and the emphasis on the technology to the detriment of the relations that it mediates. 4. The understanding of expanded literacy as multiliteracies (Hobbs, 2006) based on the uses and potential of the laptop as forms of expression and visual electronic and digital communication, mobility and connectivity. This resignifies the sense of being literate in the 21st century and of media and digital literacy (Rivoltella, 2008) reviving the concept of reading the world that precedes the reading of the word (Freire, 1977) and of meaning in the new literacies as social practices (Lankhsear and Knobel, 2007). 5. The practices of digital productions and contents and sharing in networks relate to the concept of the «ethical hacker» as a metaphor for other opportunities for participation in digital culture (Pretto, 2012). 6. The need to question the model of teacher training proposed and undertaken in the program. 7. The commitment to the use of the laptop in terms of the technical and operational aspects of the equipment, to the limits of the machine, its maintenance and repositioning, and to the broadband connection in the schools. 8. These challenges to the integration of the laptop in the schools are related to the 3 categories of difficulties listed by Warschauer (2006, p. 21): workability, complexity, and performativity. In the theory of situated action (Suchman, 1987) the emphasis on the organic nature and inseparability of the relationship between knowledge, action of the subjects and context, makes relative the role of the technological device in this relationship. Considering part of the context, condition and infrastructure that assures learning in network, Serenelli and Mangiatordi understand that for students, the laptop can be: a) a cognitive amplifier: 178

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Digital Culture and new and old problems in the context of the «One Laptop per Child» program in Brazilian schools

a machine for children with software that can strengthen their cognitive potential (abilities, writing, memory, etc); b) an amplifier of relationships: which allows connecting with others at various levels; c) a platform to access teaching content: whether online or hosted in the machine; d) a tool for creation and production of knowledge: by means of individual and collective activities; e) a tool for sharing knowledge: access to the Internet allows publishing and sharing content. Allied to these possibilities, we reinforce the sense of multimedia learning with an emphasis on the meaning of multiliteracies and of the development of the competencies needed to understand it and to what degree the laptops are leading to changes in the dynamics and in the teaching-learning processes in schools, considering that the creation of meaning is always multimodal, and not only through written language, as Kress (2010) emphasizes. The articulation between different languages and contents involves collaborative work, discovery and creation, and in learning with the use of laptops, collaborative authorship has a central role, together with one of the aspects that is most emphasized in this proposal, which is connectivity. The idea of distributed technology and the possibility to work in a cooperative manner gives potential to an innovative didactic, but we observe that this aspect is still conditioned on the technical limits of the computer and on the school infrastructure, which in most cases does not allow structured and simultaneously connected use. By associating technology and learning, Pischetola (2010) questioned the false expectations that this association created as if it were a panacea, considering both the potential and risks, without forgetting the forms of mediation: – Interactivity: between «learning to do» based on active behavior, reflections and decisions requested by the computer and «doing things mindlessly». – Multimediality: between the multisensoriality and communication promoted by the laptop and dispersion in the process of attention and comprehension. – Hypertextuality: between cognitive precursors associated to the significant and intertexutal experiences to risks of distraction and incoherence in the course of learning. – Collaborative learning: between the motivation to learn, the stimulus to autonomy and to cooperative work that the networks offer and the risk of a superficial and limited communication of ludic factors. 179

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â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Written and audiovisual production: between the possibilities for written and audiovisual communication, and the metacognitive reflections on the risk of not articulating other forms of language. In this light, we realize that there is great potential for the use of laptops and their mediations, but in the context studied, this potential is not always realized through innovative pedagogical practices, as some approximations with schools suggest.

Perceptions and practices of teachers and students Using the categories of representations, practices and multiliteracies, the analyses and reflections about the forms of appropriation of laptops in a school in the UCA program allow considering that mobile technologies and their different possibilities for communication and interaction can assure a process of multi-media teaching and learning. The weekly observations registered in field diaries, conversations with the research subjects, the partial analysis of interviews with teachers, data from focus groups with children and the dynamics realized in the training process, provide important elements for preliminary syntheses. Representations of the teachers A partial synthesis allows identifying words, gestures and attitudes of teachers in relation to PROUCA that express representations associated to the way they see and think of reality based on their culture, values and opinions. These representations are determined to some degree by factors such as culture; communication and language; social, economic, institutional educational and ideological insertion and involve emotional and social factors that are part of the process. As an initial survey, we offer a summary of some words that were associated to UCA: interaction, communication, information, facility, creativity, discovery, teaching, cooperation, patience, interactivity, action, training, expression, games, literacy, research, inclusion, exclusion, challenge, transformation and curiosity. Some statements made in different contexts also reveal aspects of the complexity of UCA in schools: ÂŤThe way that it was implemented, is not vi180

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able», «There was a lack of training», «No rules were established for use in the classrooms», «The students go on the social networks and waste time», «They need to block the use of the Internet», «I question the UCA model, not the use of the technology», «There is a problem with the machine and its maintenance». The understanding of teachers concerning the laptop’s assistance in children’s’ literacy process can be expressed as follows: «Young children know how to use the computer even without reading», «They enter YouTube to watch something without mediation and assistance», «The use of the image is useful, they seek text based on symbols, letters and the image that helps them to visualize». In the perceptions concerning possible changes in methodology with the use of laptops the teachers emphasize: «The use of and access to information improved, which is immediate», «Now we interact more», «I don’t know if it got better, but it makes one think differently in general». And this relates to reflections on disciplinary problems in the classroom: «Before there was no UCA and there were disciplinary problems», «But now it seems there are more conflicts, and UCA contributes to this», «It’s a conflict of interest: learning and playing». These factors relate to autonomy, authority and the use of Internet filters: «I am in favor of a filter, the children still do not have the autonomy to decide when to study», «I am against them because just as you teach certain forms of care you have to say; “this site is not good for you”», «With 30 students it’s not possible to control, to know what each one is doing», «What sites should be blocked? Facebook? YouTube? Relationship sites, pornography, games?», «This is related to the discussion about curriculum: what does Facebook bring that is good for children in the classroom?». Finally, there are many questions about the pedagogical practice related to the use of the laptop in the classroom and these representations can provide a clue to the complexity of the issue. In a certain way, they support the discussion by Gee and Hayes (2011) about the empowerment of new languages, and of Warschauer (2006) about the combination of learnings of traditional literacy (reading and writing) and the new literacies (information literacy and multimedia production) in the relation between laptop and literacy, highlighting the changes in the practices of literacy with the use of the laptop based on 3 fields: processes, sources, and products of literacy. 181

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Practices and uses of the laptop among students Considering that digital culture modifies the forms of being in the world, it also modifies the forms of learning. We saw some aspects about what the laptop changes in the classroom in the perception of teachers, now we will look at the perception of students. By observing students’ practices with laptops inside and outside classrooms, we ask: how do they learn? Alone (self-learning), with colleagues (collaborative learning), with orientation from teachers (directed learning)? What competencies do they develop? In the focus groups we asked questions to see what students say they learn with this device. There are a wide variety of uses of the laptop in schools and they depend on the moment and place. To offer a profile, we give priority to the competencies linked to the categories: digital culture, digital literacy, multiple languages, collaboration, creativity, sharing and authorship, which are revealed in traditional didactic activities, research, individual and or collective production, collaborative, playful, structured-guided and free activities and sharing in networks. We found changes according to the activity and the mediation, in which motivation and interest, attention and concentration, involvement and participation, exchange and sharing oscillate with disinterest, absence, indiscipline, disrespect and other attitudes. In the classroom activities, we found practices with text editors, presentations, calculations, photographic and audiovisual production, games and research on the Internet, which is one of the main uses requested by teachers. The preferences vary according to age: younger students prefer games, and older ones social networks. It is common to see students navigating during class and laptop batteries run down during an activity. At recess, or while entering or leaving school, students run with their laptop in hand, as if they were part of their body. At these times, the preferences are for recreational activities, games and social networks. Among the spontaneous uses, it is common to hear conversations about «adjustments» and «repairs» that the students make to the machine, or even programs that they download, going beyond the expected uses and discovering other possibilities for the machine that even the technicians are not aware of. Based on their discoveries, the children teach each other or give tips. These attitudes of sharing and discovery about the laptop at times approximate students to the hacker ethic, an expression coined by Finnish 182

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philosopher Pekka Himanen in a book of the same name. Inspired by opensource software practices and the way that their systems are produced, in which one can recreate, modify or improve certain programs and socialize these changes in a collective process. The term ethical hacker has been used in academic circles to denominate possibilities for collaborative production through digital culture. An ethical hacker «works from principles of collaboration, horizontality and decentralization» (Pretto, 2012, p. 11), which differs from the usual sense of the term, related to the invasion of computers and illegal operations. The students also emphasize their fondness for social networks such as Facebook and MSN, they speak of the facilities for the research activities in the classroom, indicate the machine’s problems (small screen, little memory, short battery life) and with the slow Internet speed at school. As the statement of one student demonstrates: «The Uca could be better, right? Have a better configuration [...] The computer is very weak, it has little memory. It’s only good for e-mail, Facebook and YouTube. The rest doesn’t really work». We found dialogs during work in pairs: «I think it’s cool…» the other student ponders: «More or less cool, eh brother? The connection is too slow!». Thus, according to the students’ perceptions, there are few changes in the forms of learning when they use the laptop in school. For this reason, we highlight the importance of understanding the singularity of experiences developed in the sociocultural context of the school. Nevertheless, as important as it is to emphasize the collective production of students, to stimulate the logic of the remix and reaffirm their digital competencies, it is also important to relativize these competencies (Buckingham, 2007) highlighting the value of the mediations for a critical appropriation of digital culture and the importance that these competencies be contemplated in teacher planning. In this sense, we observed various interdisciplinary projects that used laptops, involving video-documentaries, a school newspaper, school radio and many other productions. One perspective of the practice that we highlight is that of «monitor students», who are students from higher grades who participate in activities in classes of younger children to help them use the laptops. In addition, in the training workshops, we have worked with the concept of student instructors which approximates us to the idea of a «community of mutual learnings» (Bruner, 2002, p. 35) from the perspective of shared production and authorship. As Gee recalled «Freire would be 183

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enchanted with what it is possible to do with the digital media in the hands of all these people».3

Final Considerations Among the perspectives that define PROUCA as «a form of digital inclusion» and or «a way to deal poorly with poverty», we situate some nuances of the program in the scenery of some Brazilian schools. By analyzing aspects of the implementation of the program, administration and pedagogical practices based on the perceptions of teachers and students in the context of a study, we sought to understand why this public policy for insertion of ICTs does not reach the school to contribute to its change and its pedagogical practices. We reveal that the low quality of the equipment and its lack of maintenance, the problems of access to the connection, the lack of suitable training for teachers and the lack of support for administrators have repercussions on the uses of laptops and students’ learning, distancing the program from a perspective of work based on the presumptions of media-education. As historically occurs in various countries, the implementation of projects related to the insertion of digital culture in the schools is slow and does not always assure the conditions needed to make it viable. This situation is aggravated given the velocity with which the changes occur in the field of technology, making equipment rapidly obsolete and proposals for their use outdated, revealing that the programs and technologies change but the educational problems appear to remain the same, and in some cases, are intensified by digital culture. Nevertheless, experiences with digital culture in schools also show that it is possible to have changes in the dynamics of learning, greater interaction, cooperation and horizontality between teachers and students, modifications in the organization of spaces, and an increase in transversal projects among the curricular areas. We thus reaffirm that the research dialogs in 3 dimensions: the academic, political and activist. That is, the possibility to look at the administration, 3

Statement made at the talk «Novos paradigmas de aprendizagem e pesquisa na cultura» [New paradigms in research and learning in culture] Sept. 4, 2012, at the IV Seminário de Pesquisa em MídiaEducação [Reserach in Media-Education Seminar], UFSC, Florianópolis. Remix available at http://www. nica.ufsc.br/index.php/publicacoes/videos.

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practices and networks in order to contribute to new didactics and forms of learning, but also to a change of modus operandi, after all, by finding that the insertion of technology in the schools is not sufficient to unleash innovative processes, we affirm the importance of considering digital culture and its broader relations and not only the perspective of the ICTs. We emphasize the possibility for integrating the digital culture to schools as a pedagogical innovation, of creating new movements in the educational community, of working with knowledge as a continuous social practice, of using the multiple language of the new media, of exploring the new forms of understanding and constructing reality, of learning in the digital surroundings, of constructing critical perspectives and productions, that are responsible and based on solidarity, to assure access to equal opportunities and to learn together and participate in culture. Upon conducting contemporary research, we construct networks of relations (that previously existed in some form) that are intensified by the technologies. The exchange between teachers and researchers can be a beginning, but the objective is to think beyond daily classroom activities, to the perspective of creating citizens. Thus, research can help provide support for redefining public policies and projects related to teaching and learning in digital culture, articulated with other transformations. In our context, PROUCA should be considered in conjunction with discussions about the civil mark of the Internet, about copyright laws, mobile telephone contracts, the use of open source software as a public policy and others, to consider digital inclusion as qualified participation in the culture and as social belonging.

References Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. London: Harvard University Press (Bruner J., La cultura dell`educazione. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2002). Buckingham, D. (Ed.) (2007).Youth, Identity and Digital Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fantin, M. (2012). UCA: representações e práticas de estudantes e professores a partir do uso de laptop nas escolas. Paper presented at IV GRUPECI, Aracaju, Brasil. Fantin, M., & Rivoltella, P.C. (Eds.) (2012). Cultura digital e escolar: pesquisa e formação. Campinas: Papirus. Freire, P.(1977). Extensão ou Comunicação. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Gee, J.P., & Hayes, E. (Eds.) (2011). Language and learning in the digital age. New York: Routledge.

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Hobbs, R. (2006). Multiple visions of multimedia literacy: emerging areas of synthesis. In M.C. McKenna, L.D. Labbo, R.D. Kieffer, & D. Reinking. International handbook of literacy and technology (vol. II, pp. 15-28). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge. Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M.(2007). New Literacies Samplers. New York: Peter Lang. Pischetola, M. (2011). Educazione e divario digitale. Milano: Unicopli. Pretto, N. (2012). Por uma ética hacker. CienciaHoje, 49 (290), 8-11. Quartiero, M., Bonilla, M.H., & Fantin, M. (2011). Gestão e práticas pedagógicas no âmbito do Programa UCA. Projeto de Pesquisa. Brasília: CNPq/Edital 76. Rivoltella, P.C. (Ed.) (2008). Digital Literacy. Tools and Methodologies for Information Society. New York: IGI Publishing. Serenelli, F., & Mangiatordi, A. (2010). The ‘One Laptop Per Child’ XO laptop as a PLE.A cognitive artifact beyond hardware and software. (http://pleconference.citilab.eu/cas/ wpcontent/uploads/2010/06/ple2010_submission). Severin, E., & Capot., C. (2011). La computación uno a uno: nuevas perspectivas. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación, 56 (1), 31-48. Suchman, L.A. (1987). Plan and situated action: the problem of human-machine communication. New York: Cambridge University Press. Warschauer, M. (2006). Laptops and literacy. Learning in the Wirelles Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

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Emerging digital profiles during 2.0 activities at school. What are the main learning environment features?1 Valentina Pennazio, Andrea Traverso and Davide Parmigiani

ABSTRACT

Department of Education, University of Genoa, Corso A. Podestà, 2 – 16128 Genoa, Italy. E-mail: valentina.pennazio@unige.it

This paper presents a study aimed at emphasizing the students’ attitudes when they are carrying out activities with tools and web 2.0 in the classroom. The research has been carried out in some primary and lower secondary schools in the Italian region named Liguria. We arranged six weeks of 2.0 activities including analysis, inquiry and reworking of information. We administered questionnaires with open and closed questions to the students at the end of each activity. After the data analysis, we have been able to identify four digital profiles that emerged during various 2.0 activities: executant, explorer, thinker, communicator. Such profiles tended to develop in learning environments with specific features. This research allowed us to focus our attention on the relationship between the profiles and the learning environment features. In this way, the results may help the teachers in designing learning environments suitable, on the one hand, to support the development of the spontaneous students’ profiles and, on the other, to help

Pennazio Valentina wrote the paragraph called: Theoretical framework. Traverso Andrea wrote: Research design; Data analysis; Discussion. Parmigiani Davide wrote: Introduction; Conclusion: educational and instructional suggestions.

Edizioni Erickson – Trento

REM – vol. 4, no. 2, December 2012 (187-204)

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the students to experience different profiles when the situation needs different digital skills. Keywords: learning environment; competences; digital profiles; web 2.0.

Introduction What are the main cognitive and social attitudes that the students show when they are using tools and web 2.0 in the classroom? This paper tries to respond to such a wide question, through the analysis of data, arising from a research carried out throughout the school year 2011-12 in some primary and lower secondary schools of the Italian region named Liguria. Students tend to show a broad range of attitudes using ICT. In particular, they show spontaneous attitudes that can be included inside the so-called concept of «informal learning» (Gordon, 2000; Bonaiuti, 2006; Jenkins et al., 2010). As Sefton-Green concluded from an extensive review of literature in the area «computers and other aspects of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) allow children and young people a wide variety of activities and experiences that can support learning, yet many of these transactions do not take place in traditional educational settings; in fact many of these may not be considered “educational” according to our conventional understanding of that term» (Sefton-Green, 2004, p. 3). Of course, web and 2.0 applications allow users to participate directly in the creation and distribution of shared contents or interactions but «despite the immediate appeal of applications such as Facebook and Second Life, it is necessary for educators to take time to reflect carefully upon the nature of these web 2.0 applications as online learning environments and question the learning affordances they offer in practice» (Selwyn, 2007, p. 2). On the one hand, 2.0 applications and informal practices carried out on the web outside the school may present potential benefits for the formal learning developed at school (Parmigiani & Pennazio, 2012a). On the other, we should be aware that the role of teachers in arranging and designing meaningful experiences is still crucial to connect formal and informal learning effectively (Parmigiani & Pennazio, 2012b). For these reasons, we structured a study aimed at emphasizing the main attitudes that students show when they are using web and typical 2.0 applications, in order to recommend to the teachers the best ways to build 188

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significant and constructive learning environments. In particular, in research we wanted to: – Identify what kind of 2.0 activities promotes the observation of the students’ attitudes. In this case, we proposed 2.0 activities based on the analysis, inquiry and reworking of information found on the web. – Identify and categorize the different ranges of attitudes. As you will be able to find out hereunder, we will find four emerging digital profiles: executant, explorer, thinker, communicator. – Analyse the features of the digital contexts in which such attitudes tend to emerge. We will underline that some 2.0 applications tend to support the growth of specific profiles. – Underline the ways to handle the learning environment features to steer the students towards the development of specific profiles. – Find some indications for the teachers in order to design learning environments suitable, on the one hand, to support the development of the spontaneous students’ profiles and, on the other hand, to help the students to experience different profiles when the situation needs different digital skills.

Theoretical framework Learning environment: an intentional action space The concept of the learning environment was created by a new paradigm. This paradigm shifts the focus from teaching (what to teach) to learner and its processes. The class is considered as a community of learning and community of inquiry (Vaughan & Garrison, 2005; Cacciamani & Giannandrea, 2004; Varisco, 2000; Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1999; Brown & Campione, 1996). The social-cultural constructivism and the post-constructivism are the theoretical frameworks to build a learning environment (Varisco, 2000; Bruner, 1997; Jonassen, 1995). The essential features of social-cultural constructivism are: the construction of knowledge, the promotion of cooperation, the promotion of personal autonomy, reflexivity, active involvement, the personal relevance and pluralism (Lebow, 1993). The structuring of the context (Collins, Brown & Newman 1989; Lave, 1988) is important because it supports learning, it facilitates and guides students in the construction of knowledge. 189

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Instead, the post-constructivism allows to understand the type of relationship that must exist between learning and teaching between formal and non-formal learning and finally, which processes are needed to activate a knowledge building path (Rossi, 2010). In general, a learning environment must be considered as a physical / virtual space and as mental and cultural, emotional/affective space (Carletti & Varani, 2007). In the first case the space organization, minimalist or rich (Varisco, 2002; Perkins, 1991) is important because it is an element of mediation and interpretation between the subject and reality. When a space is rich, in this relationship there are also technologies (PC, LIM, netbook) (Bonaiuti, 2009) and 2.0 applications (wikis, blogs, forums) (Deng & Yuen, 2009; 2011; Dickey, 2004). Both are influenced and influence the way of organizing and conceiving space to achieve certain objectives. In the second case, the structuring of the learning environment and the correspondence of the learning environment with the objectives to be achieved are influenced by: the characteristics of the proposed task, the actions required by students, the relationships, the correlation between activities and technology used, the type of evaluation, the scaffolding of the teacher (Calvani, 1998). In summary, the learning environment can be defined as a «space of action» (Rivoltella & Ferrari, 2010) and a context of structured activities. A space «intentionally> organized by the teacher to create a learning (acquisition of knowledge, skills, motivations, attitudes then competences) that must be achieved with the terms and purposes expectations. When technologies and applications 2.0 are introduced, the space of action is more characterized. In this environment, some activities are carried out in the presence, others at distance. To design this environment must combine strategically different tools to create new and more intense learning opportunities (Ligorio, Cacciamani & Cesarei, 2006). Designing specific learning environments to develop competence profiles The teacher must know how to structure different learning environments — that we call specific — within the more general learning environment designed to achieve objectives and specific competences. Each specific environment, even if born in the same setting with the same protagonists, is differents from another; in fact, it is determined by specific 190

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preconditions, activities, functions and objectives (Carletti & Varani, 2007). In general, a learning environment should promote: active and participative roles of students, the construction of knowledge, the combination of formal and informal context, the cooperation, authentic tasks, etc. (Black & McClintock, 1996; Savery & Duffy, 1996; Dunlap & Grabinger, 1996; Lebow, 1993). However, the teacher to achieve specific competences must structure a specific learning environment; he must change, in a systemic perspective, aspects that interact: the physical and contextual aspects involved in the learning process (spatial and instrumental organization), the times, the objectives, how to achieve objectives (teaching strategies), the tasks and activities, tools and technological applications to use (Antonietti, 2003; Salomon, 1996). When the teacher wants to create learning environments using technology and applications 2.0, he must design with additional attention, in order to not enhance only one side: technological, cultural, informational and collaborative (Parmigiani, 2009). The teacher must be able to evaluate different technological solutions, in relation to the objectives that aims to achieve, and in this way he promotes the use of technology in education. The combination of different variables (Baldascino, 2008) makes the learning environment characterized and distinguished by the presence of some related ÂŤcoreÂť, they promote or put together specific competences in students, such as: search, select information in a context of hyper-information; identify and achieve objectives, find solutions through different strategies (ex: the best strategy for time, quality or resources used), ability to communicate, express themselves, listen, compare with others, build, affirm or disprove the thesis through logic, conceptual frameworks and evaluation systems shared; work with the group, accept the ideas of others, make decisions together, meet the commitments; manage, direct and promote creativity and emotions; translate ideas into action by evaluating the time, resources, opportunities, criticalities (Carletti & Varani, 2007; Cacciamani & Giannandrea, 2004). The concept of learning as dependent on learning environment emphasizes the importance of an open design. The main idea is that the learning environment built, the structure of materials and activities learning promote a knowledge process important for the learner; their experience in fact, must be built through a process of continuous and flexible restructuring of knowledge. Resulting configurations change in time and space in relation to changing situations and educational and communication-apprenditive needs. 191

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Research design Research questions Starting from the questions put at the theoretical level, the University of Genoa conducted a quantitative and qualitative analysis to study the relationship between the design of learning environments (specific technology), the attitudes of students in class activities in 2.0 and the acquisition of competence profiles of digital literacy and school disciplines. Research questions focused on three key issues: 1. What are the cognitive and social skills (digital profiles) that students show when they use web 2.0 tools in the classroom and to perform specific tasks? 2. What features have digital environments in which these attitudes come out? 3. How should be designed the learning environment to guide students to a technological development of specific profiles? Participants and context The research involved 10 schools located in the Liguria (4 primary and 6 secondary school degree). The total number of students is 215, but only 182 have played a minimum of 60% of the work. The percentages are: 34.1% primary school (59,7% males, 40,3% females) and 65.9% of secondary school (45,8 males and 54,2% females). Methodology The research was carried out in the school year 2011-12. The active stage lasted six weeks. Mostly, the work has provided, through the use of the network, the learning community engaged in activities of textual revision in blended mode, just within individual classes and between schools. Three specific moments of Practice were designed and organized: a) one training week b) one week of work in the individual classes (4 activities) c) a week of collaborative work between schools (1 activity). The teachers, meantime, have enhanced the knowledge, competences and abilities of the students for the achievement of training objectives. 192

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To ensure the effectiveness of technological activities we have chosen themes and topics that could be of interest to students (for age and study levels) and that were embraced by the teachers. The theme is the relationship with nature. Two tracks have been selected: an extract of Moby Dick (Melville, 2009) for the lower secondary school degree and a track of The story of a seagull and the cat who taught her to fly (Sepúlveda 1996), for primary school. The texts were short, simple and they contained a lot of information to discuss on: current issues and social problems (the challenge, the relationship between man and nature, the relations of friendship, help, etc.). The week in each class After the first week of training and simulation four activities have been proposed to be carried out in class: a) To seek information from a text. On the net the text of few lines was presented: the students have printed it and read in the paper version. Then, even with the use of the network, the students had to retrieve information about the text, which they shared with peers in a blog specially created. Activities aim to stimulate the ability to search and select information. b) To analyze and understand a text/discuss. In a forum the students had to answer two types of questions: the first about reflection on the text, and the second about expression of their points of view (ex: What do you mean …? What would you do if …?»). Activities aim to develop critical thinking, ability to reflect supporting hypothesis and evaluate the utility of the net. c) To edit text. Students in small groups (3 people) have modified the text in digital form with wiki making it easier to understand (eliminating irrelevant information), more detailed (with new information) and dynamic (attaching images). Each group had to make a single text. Activities aim to promote the ability to reflect and critically analyze a text, collaborate synchronously and asynchronously to create a common product, use properly applications. d) Research in network and comparison. In the fourth activity, students had to check with YouTube or other video repositories, the existence of rework video (such as movies or cartoons), 193

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rework musical or graphical (pictures) and share it in the forum. At the end was voted the video, the music, the most representative image of the text. Activities aim: to stimulate critical interpretation of information media. The week of collaborative work between schools In the second week the work was collaborative (activity 5). The students worked together with those of other schools in order to achieve a unique and shared product. Associated classes have discussed in the blog and forum, have compared videos, images and texts. With wiki, students have created a poster with a slogan and an evocative image of the text. Activities aim: to stimulate all literacies: search for information, use critical thinking in groups to choose images and videos, collaborate, implement technological skills. The step of evaluation and self-evaluation At the end of the activities we offered at the students, a questionnaire, to evaluate the grade of satisfaction and we asked to complete a sentence like this: «I understand to be good at …». The students were able to express the types of skills used in each specific activity. Finally, the students have done a questionnaire that asked the frequency (3 levels) compared to some operations, capabilities and applications. They were asked about the content and the tools used in individual and group activities. (ex: «the final images are the result of teamwork» — absolutely yes, only in part, not at all). To exemplify we present the timetable of the activities and actions of monitoring, evaluation and monitoring (Table 1).

1 week

Dimension of work

n°

activity

Search for information on a text

Classroom

apps Network, blog

specific aims of the activity Search and select

Questionnaire at the end of activity: satisfaction and self-assessment 1 week

Analyze and understand a text, discuss

Classroom

Forum

Reflect critically, to compare

Questionnaire at the end of activity: satisfaction and self-assessment

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1 week

n°

activity

Dimension of work

apps

Reworking a text

Classroom

Wiki

specific aims of the activity Use of tools and web 2.0 applications

Questionnaire at the end of activity: satisfaction and self-assessment 1 week

Research in network and discussion

Classroom

Network, forum

Use of tools and web 2.0 applications

Questionnaire at the end of activity: satisfaction and self-assessment Questionnaire at the end of the week: self-assessment of skills 2 week

Lear n, work and produce with other schools

Interaction between schools

Forum, blog, wiki

Search and select, to compare, use of tools and web 2.0 applications

Questionnaire at the end of activity: satisfaction and self-assessment Questionnaire at the end of the week: self-assessment of skills

Table 1

Timetable of activities and evaluation plan.

Data analysis The first evaluative step We analyzed the students’ answers (895 lexical units) with T-LAB, aggregate by relevance, with exhaustive criteria (no exceptions) and we have also considered the double choice. We have found four digital profiles: executor, explorer, thinker, communicator; in addition we have found two further groups of answers: «inactive/passive» (those defined themselves as «I’m good» or «I’m not good» in activities) and «no answers». In the five activities, digital profiles have shown a different distribution highly dependent from objectives and skills that teacher wanted to develop. Executor is the profile of those students who are good at using the technologies and applications in a functional way. They are able to perform actions in difficult situations. They have practical and procedural competences, even personal, improved in the classroom. The executor works well in the face of learning opportunities proportionate to his cognitive level. Here are some answers that we analyzed: I’m good at learn new writing programs that did not know before, or that I used a little.

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I’m good at assemble images in a forum and decide which texts thanks to my a large lexical richness. I’m good at copying images while maintaining the best quality and paying attention to the source from which it comes.

Explorer is the profile of students who are good in finding, evaluating, selecting and managing the information, searching and selecting sources and data. The explorers have easy access to information and they «respond» to a simple task. Here are some answers that we analyzed: I am good at finding information on the Internet with the directions and instructions of the teachers. I am good at research and information on the texts and on people. Were things that I knew to do, but with this experience I have only increased my skills. I am good at searching videos on YouTube and be careful what videos I open for safety. Before you open a video it is better to look what it’s about.

Thinker is the profile of students who are good in reading and interpreting images and content, analyzing, understanding and revising the information in order to overcome the task and solve a problem. The thinker is thoughtful and chooses in personal or collective way. He is committed in the analysis and in the revision of the text. Here are some answers that we analyzed: I am good at do research on authors and keyword, but also in researching and selecting images more suitable. Thanks to this activity. I am good at understanding the text because before I could not find the meaning of difficult words, downloading images and ask fellow suggestions. I am good at to change words or phrases in order to have a better idea in my head.

Communicator is the profile of the students good in creating interactions, promoting collaboration and cooperation. They draw attention to the relationship and communication to carry out the task. The communicator contributes to the transition from personal dimension to the collective dimension. His expertise is backdrop to digital literacy and increases the chances of problem management and troubleshooting. Here are some answers that we analyzed: I’ve been good to commit as much as possible with individual work and group work, trying to comment as much as possible and to exchange with my classmates the ideas that went through my mind. 196

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I am good at working with my classmates, try to find a solution for everything. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m good at collaborate with peers from other schools in the forums trying to take into account the ideas of everyone and not just my point of view.

The following graphs show the impact of the digital profiles of the students in the project activities (Figure 1). 120 100

Explorer Executant Thinker Communicator Inactive N.r.

102

80 60

40 20

38 31

29 22

17 8

0 Figure 1

35 38 25

23 11

15 14

33 21

17 4

Digital profiles in the activities.

We believe that digital profiles are a direct consequence of the design choices and the didactic action of the teacher in structuring the learning environment. The graphs tell us that: a) research and exploration are stimulated in the activities 1 and 4 (Table 1), where the network was the instrument for the collection and selection of information, the research capacity prevails on selection capacity and on comparison capacity because the task was individual and then the capacity for reflection and communication were less stimulated; b) executive and practical skills have visibility and effectiveness in the fifth activity, these help to transfer information from the individual phase of research to phase of group work (sharing, exchange of views and use the forum for decision-making); c) critical thinking and reflection are urged in the second activity and third activity. These activities, wanted to involve the students in moments of analysis, elaboration and understanding of the text; 197

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d) communication and relationship are reflected in the last activity (this activity involved interaction between two classes of two schools for the production of a new shared document) and in the second activity which required a discussion and a revision of the text in a forum. When we analyzed data by following variables «type of schools» and «gender» we found further informations about the relationship between students, knowledge and activities (Table 2): a) profiles do not change but the percentages are higher in secondary school, probably because thirteen year olds have a greater self-awareness in relation to the learning process; b) higher percentages of positive/negative responses among students of primary school (due to easy activities, good students or little time to reflect).

Act. 1

Act. 2

Act. 3

Act. 4

Act. 5

Table 2

explorer

executant

Thinker

Communic.

Inactive

n.r.

pri

38,2

19,1

16,2

2,9

19,1

4,4

sec

61,8

14,6

8,9

4,9

3,3

6,5

pri

14,7

27,9

30,9

8,8

13,2

4,4

sec

24,3

8,7

31,3

16,5

1,7

17,4

pri

23,9

35,2

16,9

8,5

11,3

4,2

sec

16,2

11,7

43,2

8,1

5,4

15,3

pri

44,9

27,5

10,1

1,4

10,1

5,8

sec

50,5

16,5

10,3

5,4

2,1

17,5

pri

14,3

26,8

7,1

16,1

10,7

25,0

sec

27,4

28,2

5,1

15,3

8,5

16,2

Profiles in primary and secondary school (%).

The analysis of the correspondences between the project expectation and the personal development of digital profiles shows that 14,3% of students have a match of 4 profiles on 5 and 1,6% full match. The desired digital profiles (explorer, thinker, thinker/executant, explorer/thinker, communicator/explorer) were achieved more by females (65,5%) and secondary school students (79%). The data also reveal that we have the greatest deviation from 198

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Emerging digital profiles during 2.0 activities at school

the objective in the activity 5 and lower in activity 3 and 4. The full analysis is delayed in future essays.

Discussion To answer the first research question, the study found four digital profiles that students show when they use web 2.0 tools in the classroom and to perform specific tasks (explorer, thinker, executant, communicator).The digital profiles and the cognitive and social skills are related to the characteristics of the proposed activities and have a double bond with them, they determine and influence these. The choice to achieve specific learning objectives with the use of certain types of equipment involves the application of specific performances that are not always perceived by the students. The comparison between the digital profile and the expected aims allows you to check the relevance of the project and the ÂŤsense of adequacyÂť of students about that portion of the path. About the relationship between the digital profiles and features of learning environments (second research question), we have observed that if the environment is designed combining together the variables in a functional way, the teacher should observe, at the end of each activity, the appearance in students of certain digital competence profiles which should be relevant with the proposed activity and with the objectives. Therefore the teacher must structuring different environments in order to achieve different purposes. For example if his objective is to improve a profile of a student, or is to create a specific profile, he will have to structure a learning environment where the activities and objectives regarding specific aspects of competence. However, if his objective is to introduce students to the characteristics of multiple profiles, helping them to develop complete competence, he will have to structure a learning environment with a series of complex tasks (problem solving, inquiry) (Table 3). All digital profiles have specific features that make them actives. In both examples there are specific environments that require a different design: focused, linear and sequential in the first case; wide, and based on problem situations in the second. In both types of design there are elements of advantage and disadvantage. An environment designed with linear and sequential perspective has the advantage of ensuring the development and consolidation of abilities and techniques required by the individual competences, the disadvantage is the lack of complexity and a possible repetition. The 199

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learning environment can be designed to guide students to the technological development of specific profiles. The teacher choices are important. executant Look for information, select information Identify and pursue different strategies and solutions

explorer

Thinker Communicator

✘ ✘

✘ ✘ ✘

Communicate, speak, listen Compare themselves to others through the progressive creation of shared backgrounds Build, share and represent concepts and thoughts

✘

Affirm or disprove the thesis through logical, conceptual frameworks and evaluation systems shared Work with the group, accept the ideas of others, make decisions together, meet the commitments

✘

Manage, direct and promote creativity and emotions Translate ideas into action by evaluating the time, resources, opportunities, criticality

Table 3

✘

✘ ✘

✘

✘ ✘

Matching features of the learning environment/digital profiles.

An environment designed for situations-problem has the advantage of developing complex profiles and wide competences, the disadvantage is the increased of difficulty of managing the process. The second type of environment is the most appropriate to develop complex competences. In the structuring of specific and technological learning environments, based on developing of competences, is necessary to respect a gradation that goes from the simple to the complex (Parmigiani, 2009) according to the variables in the particular situation in which you are to act. To propose immediately complex technological activities, may cause for example, cognitive or collaborative overload, with the consequent failure of the activity. 200

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At first it is useful to propose simple activities related to individual competences (ex: research). Later, when the group of students achieved a higher social, cognitive and collaborative ability, is possible to propose more complex tasks involving multiple skills and profiles (research, collaborate, reflect). The final objectives are the structuring of specific learning environments where the students can enhance their digital competence and their profile of competence, for to complete it with the other profiles and develop the key competences. An instructional design intentional and reflective can connect the aim of the teacher with the activities that usually take place with the disciplines (ex: the reworking text, performance of activities logic, problem solving, etc.) and in structured contexts. When an environment is designed to support the development of students and helps them to experiment with different profiles, a profile emerges and becomes a factor of learning. Awareness of learning by students depends on the relationship that they have with the learning objectives, the interaction that they have with the tools and by the opportunities that they have to interact with the learning environment.

Conclusion: educational and instructional suggestions Throughout this research, we highlighted the characteristics of the learning environments when the teachers use 2.0 applications. In addition, we underlined that, carrying out specific 2.0 activities, the students reveal and show particular digital attitudes that we called ÂŤemerging digital profilesÂť. Therefore, the key educational question becomes as follows: how to handle the learning environment features with the contribution of 2.0 applications, to improve the development of the various digital profiles? As the reader can point out, the core issue of the learning/teaching process is focused on the learning environment design that is started by the teachers but it is progressively shared with the students during the activities. In particular, the design process is crucial because it emphasizes the affordances of the learning environment. We can define the learning environment affordances as the possibilities that the environment allows teachers and students to talk, interact, discuss, use books, tools, etc. during the instructional activities. In this way, the affordance of a learning environment can be 201

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described as «a relationship that holds between the object [in this case, the features of the learning environment] and the organism [in our experience, teachers and pupils] that is acting on the object » (Norman, 1998, p. 123). In our study, we built particular digital learning environments through the use of some 2.0 applications, assigning some specific affordances. They allowed students to: – search many kinds of information; – interact and debate to choose and modify the information structure; – create new contents easily and share them with other students in the classroom and online. The different cognitive and social profiles solicited by such affordances are the results of a complex process that involves three factors: primarily, the pupils and their digital skills; then, the characteristics of 2.0 activities and applications; finally, the structure of the learning environment designed by the teachers. These three elements have to be connected to develop a complete digital competence. Of course, teachers have the basic responsibility in designing meaningful experiences, weighing the previous factors. The main purposes of such teaching efforts are directed towards the creation of an environment where the different digital skills have the opportunity to change into a more complete digital competence because it «involves the confident and critical use of Information Society Technology (IST) for work, leisure and communication» (EU, 2006). As the reader can understand, this is an overall competence that involves a wide range of cognitive and social skills (Trentin, 2004). That’s why the results of this research may help the teachers in designing learning environments suitable, on the one hand, to support the development of the spontaneous/informal students’ profiles. In this case, the teachers should tend to arrange several educational situations, where the students can strengthen their own skills, in executing tasks.

References Antonietti, A. (2003). Contesti di sviluppo-apprendimento come scenari di scuola. In C. Scurati (Ed.), Infanzia scenari di scuola (pp. 31-56). Brescia: La Scuola. Baldascino, R. (2008). Ambienti integrati di apprendimento: l’ambiente fisico e la sua influenza. Rivista dell’Istruzione, 2, 90-96.

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Spanish policies on Information and Communication Technologies in Education Rosabel Roig Vila

ABSTRACT

University of Alicante, Campus Sant Vicent del Raspeig, ap. Correos 99, 03080 Alicante, Spain. E-mail: rosabel.roig@ua.es

The present paper focuses on analysing the rules which guide Spanish educational policies, more specifically those related to integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into education. Along these lines, it examines the different programs and initiatives developed by various political institutions in the last few years — both the central government and the governments of Spain’s Autonomous Regions. This allowed us to appreciate how these education policies have significantly improved the equipment and infrastructure of schools; however, the profound educational change announced by such policies has still not arrived. The said policies have indeed generated action programs and technological investment but, unfortunately, teacher training and methodological innovation were forgotten along the way. An overview of educational policies is therefore badly needed to ensure the proper integration of ICTs into the classroom. Keywords: system of education, teaching and training; administration of education; Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

Introduction Governments and public organisms have become aware of the strategic importance that comes with development of Information and CommunicaEdizioni Erickson – Trento

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tion Technologies (ICT) and of facilitating their access to everyone (Balanskat, Blamire & Kefala, 2006). Political leaders, Europeans in our case, are laying the foundations of the educational communication policy as a central issue for the economy, the industrial competitiveness, education itself and the general well-being of European citizens. This requires close cooperation between educational institutions, government agencies and the business world through an ongoing, flexible and effective collaboration, adapted to the immediate challenges of globalization (Kozma, 2008). Since the early nineties, discussions on cultural and educational policies in the European Union have intensified, also in Spain. In order to establish the basis of a nation framed by the Information Society, there have been numerous political efforts to set the guidelines that should control the actions required to set up a society in such context, as the e-Europe plan suggests.

Policy initiatives on ICT programs in the Spanish educational system In order to understand the different active policies in Spain, a brief mention of the Spanish territorial organizational structure that was adopted with the 1978 Constitution is rendered necessary. The political division of the Spanish territory in 17 Autonomous Regions was the start of a new period in the nation’s territorial decentralization. Therefore, the political regulations in education started to be dictated at a national and an autonomous level — and at a European level too — by: a) The Ministry of Education’s legislation that regulates the general normative — mainly existing educational laws and national programs of education policy— and used to regulate the specific issues on education that had not been transferred to the Autonomous Regions in the past. b) The institutions of the Autonomous Regions, which were then delegated all competencies on education. Thus, the political initiatives related to the integration of ICT in education in Spain have arisen firstly from the central institutions — mainly the Spanish Ministry responsible for common topics in education that affect the whole country — and on the other hand, institutions of the Autonomous Regions which have their own competencies regarding the regulation of educational issues within their territory. 206

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Since the 80s, the Spanish Ministry of Education has been aware of the need to have a general framework suitable to coordinate the initiatives regarding an education framed within the Information Society (Area, 2006). Some general objectives were thus established, as well as the methodology to follow, the teacher training model and all the issues that came up with the evolution of technology through the years. In this regard, the Spanish Ministry of Education’s Atenea Project should be mentioned, as well as some of the major plans that have been developed in the different Autonomous Regions: Andalusia’s Plan Zahara, Project Ábaco-Canarias, the Computer Education Program in Catalonia, Abrente and Estrela Projects in Galicia, the Basque Educational Computing Plan, etc. Even though they are all different independent plans, there are some aspects that are shared by all. They all intend to introduce new media as a pedagogical too to be used in the different areas of the curricula. In fact, this initiative started after the 1992 Education Reform, in which the General Law of the Education System (LOGSE, for its initials in Spanish) already recognised Computing as an elective subject in high school, and as a compulsory subject in some branches of Vocational Training. Still, some specific aspects of each plan and of the political performance of each autonomous community should be mentioned. The program e-Europe led in Spain to the plan Info XXI. In 2003 the plan comes to an end and is substituted by the plan España.es, approved in December 2005. The main objective of both plans was to generalize the use of these technologies among the population. As a result of these plans (González, 2011, p. 42) the number of computers available for students increased (7.3 computers per every 100 students, compared to an average of 6.3 in Europe) but not regarding their usage (0.7 hours a week in Europe, compared to the 0.4 hours in Spain). Also, in 2005, the Plan Avanza I (http://www.planavanza.es) was approved, a program run jointly by the Government and the totally of the Autonomous Regions for the development of the Society of Information and Knowledge. From the budgetary point of view, Avanza has involved the investment of more than 6,500 million euros between 2006 and 2010 by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce and has been co-financed by the Autonomous Regions. The second phase of the Plan Avanza called Plan Avanza 2 incorporated the actions that were being carried out at the time and updated the initial objectives in order to adapt to the new challenges of the networked society. 207

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Red.es was constituted within this context, a public entity responsible for the consolidation and the development of the Information Society in Spain. Its objective is then to implement ICT projects according to the strategic priorities of the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and the Information Society in collaboration with the Autonomous Regions, local entities and the private sector. The following table indicates the relationship between the Spanish and European initiatives on ICT in education policies (González, 2011, p. 39) (Figure 1).

Figure 1

e Europe (2000)

Info XXI (2000)

Internet en la escuela

e Europe (2004)

España.es (2004)

Educación.es

i2010 (2005)

Avanza I (2005)

Internet en el Aula

i2010 (2005)

Avanza II (2009)

Escuela 2.0

Relation between Spanish and European programs on ICT (González, 2011, p. 39).

Spanish Ministry of Education ICT programs During the 1985-86 academic year, the former Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) launched two pilot projects: the Atenea Project (on digital media) and the Mercurio project (on audiovisual media). In 1986 the MEC officially expressed its firm commitment to ICT (MEC, 1986) and in 1989 it took the initiative to create the ICT applied to education program (BOE [Official State Gazette], 17th November 1989, n. 276). According to the development of the Atenea and Mercurio projects developed since 1985, the Ministry admitted it was necessary to create a stable structure «to ensure continuity of the training process, along with the development of material to enable proper extension and intimate connection with the [then] proposed 208

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Educational Reform». The intention was then to create a specific program that «should be able to perform these tasks with a high level of competition, involving the specialization of functions and the ability to generate rapid responses in line with the rapid evolution of new media technology». Later in 1989 they created the program Nuevas Tecnologías de la Información y de la Comunicación Aplicadas a la Educación (PNTIC) [Information and Communication Technologies applied to Education] (BOE [Official State Gazette], 17th November 1989). The extension phase began in 1991 and several actions were developed in order to generalise the articulation of ICT in the curriculum of non-university education: developing materials and programs, establishing the new figure of the Computerized Media Responsible with a 3 hours/week reduction, the formation of pedagogical teams, economic contributions to schools, etc. As part of the PNTIC, the project Descartes in 1998 was developed to promote new ways of teaching and learning mathematics, integrating ICT in the classroom as a teaching tool. In 1999 the MEC completely transferred the education competencies to the Autonomous Regions that still depended on it: Aragon, Asturias, Cantabria, Castile and Leon, Castile-La Mancha, Extremadura, La Rioja, Madrid and Murcia. This involved a modification of some of the PNTIC approaches to adapt the Ministry’s action to the new circumstances. For example, the Ministry could no longer invest directly on the provision of equipment as the schools did not depend on it legally, but could do it only through the administration of the Autonomous Regions. The PNTIC was then reconverted in the National Centre of Educational Information and Communication (CNICE, for its initials in Spanish) and is currently called National Institute of Educational Technologies and Teacher Training (INTEF, for its Spanish initials) (http://www.ite.educacion.es/), which depends on the Ministry of Education. This organism has promoted the educational projects related to ICT of the Ministry of Education. We should also mention the program Internet en el Aula [Internet in the Classroom] (2005-2008) (Pérez, 2011) and the project Agrega (http://www. proyectoagrega.es) (Ministry, 2011), an initiative of global interest about learning objects developed by the Ministry, Red.es and the Autonomous Regions. The program Escuela 2.0 has been the last project developed by INTEF about the integration of ICT in Education (from 2009 to 2013). This program is based on the following areas of intervention: 209

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– Digital classrooms. Providing students and centres with ICT resources: laptops for students and teachers and digital classrooms with efficient standardized equipment. The main recipients are primary school students (aged 10 to 12 years old) and secondary education pupils (aged 12 to 14) with a 1:1 student-computer correlation. – Ensuring Internet connection and interconnectivity within the classroom for all equipment. Possibility of Internet access in the homes of students at special times. – Promoting teacher training both in the technological and methodological aspects and in the social integration of these resources into their daily teaching practices. – Generating and providing access to digital educational materials adjusted to the curriculum to teachers, students and their families. – Involving students and families in the acquisition, custody and use of these resources. Despite these general guidelines, the decentralized nature of the Spanish education system makes it necessary to adapt these objectives to the policies and calendar of each region. The plan is still in an implementation phase in most regions, but not in all of them, a distinction that seems to respond to political rather than methodological issues. Another project led by INTEF and some Autonomous Regions is project Experimentación Didáctica en el Aula (EDA) [Experimental Teaching in the Classroom] (http://recursostic.educacion.es/eda/web/) which aims to help teachers incorporate ICT into their classroom activities, to identify the advantages and disadvantages of using these new technologies and also to find new approaches to teaching and learning. We should also mention the pilot project ACER-EUN and the project about the digital pen Papershow. Also noteworthy is the project Buenas PrácTICas 2.0 [Good Practices] (http://recursostic.educacion.es/buenaspracticas20/web/), which offers a collaborative space to publish the experiences and research projects conducted in the field of ICT, to promote the dissemination of information generated both by the educational institutions and by the participating teachers and to collect all initiatives promoting innovation and research in the classroom. Currently, the new government team has promoted a reevaluation of the educational policies and especifically of the project that was in effect when the government change took place: project Escuela 2.0. The Minister of Education has claimed that they will analyze the cost-effectiveness of 210

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Escuela 2.0 and assess the program’s impact and its achievements in order to develop a new design. Autonomous Regions’ programs on ICT in education As seen above, there are projects and initiatives in education shared by the Spanish Ministry of Education and the regional governments. Besides these, because of their autonomy in educational competencies, each community has developed their own ICT integration projects within their region. All the autonomous programs share their general objective, which is to provide the centres of with the technological resources needed to integrate ICT in the curriculum and to promote the use and application of ICT in education. However, even though they have these objectives in common, the situation differs from one community to the next. Some communities have been more persistent and have made their key objective the consideration of ICT as an essential element in education. Others have developed isolated actions and projects without continuation and the results have not been as satisfactory. However, it is beyond the scope of this paper to analyse in a detailed and thorough way the projects, investment, activities, etc., of each autonomous community. We would like to make an overview, however, of the main initiatives that have shaped the education policies in the different communities: – Catalonia is one of the Autonomous Regions with a greater concern about being integrated in the knowledge society. The Xarxa Telemàtica Educativa de Catalunya (XTEC) [Catalonia’s Educational Telematic Network] created in 1986 by the Catalonia’s education department is the most important autonomous telematic network in Spain in terms of the number of schools, teachers and students connected to it, and the quality of the services offered. – Murcia also has one of the most comprehensive educational portals: Educarm (http://www.educarm.es). – Andalusia has developed different projects such as Plan Alhambra, Zahara XXI and the program And@red, developed in 2003. The net Averroes is also worth mentioning. – In Galicia, the integration of ICT in the classroom is made through the project Siega (http://www.edu.xunta.es/siega). – In Asturias, the project Aldea Digital was launched in the 1998-99 academic year in order to fulfil the deficiencies of the rural schools, which represents a high percentage of the total number of centres. 211

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– The Canary Island published in September 2000 the Plan para el Desarrollo de la Sociedad de la Información en Canarias (PDSIC) [Plan for the Development of the Information Society in the Canary Island] also called Canari@s Digital project. – Navarra developed the Programa de Nuevas Tecnologías (PNTE) [New technologies Program] (http://www.pnte.cfnavarra.es/pnte/pnte.php), and one of its most outstanding actions stem from the Proyecto Trenza to provide the necessary infrastructure and facilities needed to connect the centres to the Web. – In the Valencian community, the Plan MES-TIC (http://www.edu.gva.es/ ite/val/mes_tic.htm) is currently being developed in order to generalize the creation of mobile IT classrooms with free software (LliureX) and other equipment. – In the Basque Country the Premia projects were developed with the intention of providing infrastructure and teacher training, as well as the educational and administrative management of the centres. – In Madrid, the project EducaMadrid (http://www.educa.madrid.org/ educamadrid) has been developed to promote the use of ICT outside the university. – Castile and Leon has launched a pilot initiative known as RedXXI (http:// www.educa.jcyl.es/educacyl/cm) and Castile-La Mancha has launched the program Althia. – In Cantabria, the autonomous government has developed the Plan Educantabria. In turn, they have launched the project PARTIC which focuses in infant and primary school and the Proyectos Experimentales to introduce the use of ICT (PRETIC) in secondary school. – Aragon has developed one of the most ambitious projects to integrate ICT in the classroom: program Ramón y Cajal (http://ryc.educaragon. org). – The Balearic Islands have launched the plan Xarxipèlag 2.0 (http://weib. caib.es) to modernize the educational model, which has been active since the academic year 2009-2010. – Extremadura is one of the European pioneers in the development of educational policies on ICT. In 2001, the Red Tecnológica Educativa [Educational Technological Network] was created, based on infrastructures, free software (GnuLinEx), teacher training and content generation. Also worth mentioning is the educational portal Educarex (http://atenex.educarex.es) and the learning objects platform Atenez. 212

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– In La Rioja the project ENTER was developed to provide technological equipment and teacher training, and in 2002 the Programa Riojano de Acciones Innovadoras (PRAI) [La Rioja’s Program on Innovative Actions] was incorporated, as well as the current Programa Pizarra Digital [Digital Whiteboard Program] (http://www.educarioja.org/educarioja/ pizarradigital/pd_inicio.htm).

Programs evaluation The assessment of the different ICT programs in Spain has been held by various institutions (Agencia de Evaluación de las Políticas Públicas [Agency for the Evaluation of Public Policies], Instituto de Tecnologías Educativas [Institute of Education Technologies], etc.) but we should stress the work of the Ministry’s Instituto de Evaluación [Evaluation Institute], which acts as a coordinator of the educational institutions through the Autonomous Regions’ evaluation units. There are therefore in Spain as many different evaluation organizations as Autonomous Regions, which makes it harder to compare the results among the different territories. Some studies have analysed the integration of ICT in education in Spain (Cebrián, Ruiz & Rodríguez, 2007; Gimeno, 2011). They all highlight the growing efforts of the government to equip and technologically adapt Spanish schools. However, not all of conclusions are positive. Regarding Escuela 2.0, for example, we can see that the latest program launched at a national level, involved the distribution from September 2009 to January 2011 of more than 600,000 laptops among students from 5th and 6th grade and 1st and 2nd ESO (high school); 133,080 learning objects were generated, more than 27,000 digital classrooms started to be used and about 150,000 teachers in primary and secondary have received specific training related to the program Escuela 2.0 on ICT tools, and especially on methodological aspects on how to use them in their teaching (Pérez, 2011). The latest survey by the Spanish Instituto de Técnicas Educativas (ITE) [Institute of Education Techniques] of the Confederación Española de Centros de Enseñanza (CECE) [Spanish Confederation of Education Centers] managed by the Ministry of Education (ITE-CECE, 2012) compared the situation in Spain between 2008 and 2011, and showed that: 213

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a) the average number of computers per center has gone from 55 to 86; b) while in 2008 most were still computer desktops, in 2011 one third of the total and are portable computers; c) the number of computers in computer rooms has remained constant, as well as the average number of computer rooms per center. However, the number of computers in regular classrooms, either for teacher or student use, has doubled. It is important to highlight the statement made in this report (ITE-CECE, 2012, pp. 10-11): «The positive effect [of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)] in student learning is not supported by empirical evidence. What has occurred in these past years is a quantum leap in the devices supporting the teacher’s work in the classroom. Projectors, which in 2008 were used in two-thirds of the centres, have spread to almost all of them. In addition, since 2008, the centers which had at least one projector have gone from having an average of just over three to six, half of them in regular classrooms. The use of digital whiteboards has grown even more: in 2008 only a quarter of the centers had at least one, and among such centers the average was two boards. In 2011, 96% of the centers had at least one digital whiteboard, and the average was 3.6 per center, two of them in regular classrooms». On the use of ICT, six out of ten teachers use ICT in the classroom (66% in private schools), while 35% are willing to use them but do not dare. Only 5% of teachers (3% in private or subsidized centers) are not willing to use ICT in the classroom. Most projects carried out by the various administrations are focusing mainly on providing technology (laptops, Internet access, whiteboards, etc.) and also devoting a small part of the financial resources to train teachers to use ICT in the classroom. However, the curricular integration of ICT promoted by the various Spanish educational laws are meant to go beyond the technological equipment of the centres, as they are designed to produce changes in the teaching methodologies and the teaching practices due to teacher training, among other actions. The success of these policies only makes sense if ICTs are normally integrated in the school life through innovative projects which enhance the teaching-learning processes (Tondeur et al., 2008). This must be generated naturally and not with massive reform-induced technology investment policies which imply, in any case, conflicts and organizational chaos due to the lack of projects that really integrate technology into the curriculum and into the school system. 214

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All these initiatives necessarily need a side policy to be successful. Teachers invest a lot of effort to incorporate the new technologies in their practices, but the absence of incentives, encouragement and support from the administration could affect this, and the involvement of teachers could decrease. Programs and initiatives such as those described above cannot be limited to the provision of materials, equipment, furniture and technical support, but should also be provided with the design and implementation of a logistics system that facilitates the development of innovative projects. This measure, technical in appearance but educational at the core, can be improved through mechanisms that facilitate the involvement of teachers and maintain their enthusiasm motivated by satisfactory results. We could ask ourselves now what makes a successful program on the incorporation of ICT in the classroom. In this line, González (2011, p. 298) has led an investigation based on teachers’ feedback and concludes that the most positive aspects for them in this respect is the development of teacher training programs, the creation of working groups among teachers to encourage the use ICT in centres and the creation of a stimulating work environment by school headmasters. We should also mention Project TICSE 2.0 (Area, 2011), a report analysing the results of a survey of 4,500 teachers in Spain which participated in the Escuela 2.0. program. In a nutshell, the report’s conclusions are: – Teachers had a positive opinion on the incorporation of ICT in the classroom, both in their teaching practices and in their effects on the students, but there were differences between regions regarding this issue. The opinion divergence can be attributed to: a) the perception of computing resources available in the classroom, b) the provision of ICT infrastructures, c) the perception of the faculty on the ICT training received, d) the evaluation on the educational policy of the community. – Most teachers (75%) recognized that the presence of ICT in the classroom has a significant impact on improving student motivation. – Traditional teaching materials (textbooks and blackboards) remain the most used resources despite the abundance of digital technology. – Most teachers think it is necessary to promote the existence of websites that provide free access to digital materials. – Primary school teachers use ICT more than secondary school teachers. – It is necessary to have a coordinating ICT teacher in each centre. – A significant proportion of teachers considered they had adequate training, although 96% of them demanded even more training. 215

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– The overall assessment made by the teachers on ICT education policy in their community was quite negative, and the provision of technological equipment was the most appreciated variable.

In conclusion We must be mindful not to fall into the trap «access to ICT equipment = knowledge». As can be seen, Spanish institutions have followed infrastructure-oriented policies. Telecommunications, in this context, have become in themselves, a goal, an end. Initially the process followed these stages: With the creation of infrastructures (1), the centres were provided with facilities (2), and there was then a supply of equipment (3) that, at the same time, would create the demand it would satisfy (4). But this model has not resulted in the creation of a demand or in the modernization of the regions. By contrast, the European Union considered that, in fact, this is a real hindrance to the process, since modernization does not only mean being in possession of the infrastructural mean, but should involve, above all, the correct usage of it for the social, economic, cultural and educational development of the society. As a result, the sequence of phases or stages to achieve modernization should rather take place in the opposite direction: the possession of knowledge (skills, attitudes and values) (1) will determine the creation of a demand (2), which in turn will activate the necessary services (3) that the infrastructures will have to meet (4). In conclusion, we can only emphasize the necessity to raise actions of a political nature in order to mitigate and compensate for any inequalities of the current system. A democratic state must ensure social cohesion and should act through correct planning, development of policies that will balance the differences between social groups and the consistent evaluation of their policies’ results (UNESCO, 2009).

References Area, M. (2006). Veinte años de políticas institucionales para incorporar las TIC al sistema escolar. In J.M. Sancho (Ed.), Tecnologías para transformar la educación (pp. 199-232). Madrid: Akal.

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Area, M. (Ed.) (2011). ¿Qué opina el profesorado sobre el Programa Escuela 2.0? Un análisis por comunidades autónomas. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. (http://ntic. educacion.es/w3//3congresoe20/Informe_Escuela20-Prof2011.pdf). Balanskat, A., Blamire, R., & Kefala, S. (2006). The ICT Impact Report: A review ofstudies of lCT impact on schools in Europe. European Schoolnet. (http://insight.eun.org/shared/ data/pdf/impact_study.pdf). Cebrián, M., Ruiz, J., & Rodríguez, J. (2007). Estudio del impacto del Proyecto TIC desde la opinión de los docentes y estudiantes en los primeros años de su implantación en los centros públicos de Andalucía. Málaga: Universidad de Málaga. Gimeno, M. (Ed.) (2011). Informe anual sobre el desarrollo de la sociedad de la información en España 2011. Madrid: Fundación Orange. (http://www.informeeespana.es/docs/ eE2011.pdf). González Pérez, A. (2011). Evaluación del impacto de las políticas educativas TIC en las prácticas de los centros escolares. Tesis doctoral, Universidad de Sevilla. (http://fondosdigitales.us.es/media/thesis/1718/K_Tesis-555.pdf). ITE-CECE [Instituto de Técnicas Educativas de la CECE] (2012). Informe de Tecnología Educativa 2011. Madrid: ITE-CECE. (http://www.red2001.com/docs/tecnologia/informe_tecnologia_educativa_2011.pdf). Kozma, R.B. (2008). Comparative analysis of policies for ICT in Education. In J. Vooght & G. Knezek (Eds.), International Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education (pp. 1083-1096). New York: Springer. Pérez, A. (2011). Escuela 2.0. (http://www.ite.educacion.es/images/stories/ii_congreso_e20/ docs/e_20_feb2011.pdf). Tondeur, J., van Keer, H., van Braak, J., & Valcke, M. (2008). ICT integration in the classroom: Challenging the potential of a school policy. Computers & Education, 51 (1), 212-223. UNESCO (2009). Medición de las TIC en educación- manual del usuario. Montreal: Instituto de Estadística de la UNESCO. (http://www.uis.unesco.org/Library/Documents/ ICTguide09_es.pdf).

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«Re-tweet the teacher…» Are Italian teachers «followed by» or «following» the Web 2.0 culture?1 Gabriella Taddeo* and Simona Tirocchi**

ABSTRACT

* Polytechnic of Turin, Via Boggio, 61 – 10138 Turin, Italy. E-mail: gabriella.taddeo@polito.it ** Department of Philosophy and Education Sciences, University of Turin, via S. Ottavio, 20 – 10124 Turin, Italy. E-mail: simona.tirocchi@unito.it

The paper presents a research carried out during the National Project «Cl@ssi 2.0» in Piedmont (Italy). It focuses on how Italian teachers, traditionally considered as performing a core function in the social system, in its preservation and innovation, are facing and contributing to the Web 2.0 cultural landscape and which role they have acquired in this, still confused and magmatic, setting. Using the pervasive vocabulary of social media applications metaphorically, we wondered: are teachers starting to be «followed by», or are they «following» the Web 2.0 culture? Through a multi-method approach of research, we have investigated the changes in the cultural consumptions of teachers and their impact on teaching activities. The results strengthen the findings that the teachers are adapting their role in relation to the Web 2.0 landscape, acting as «new mediators of the convergence culture». The «2.0 teacher» in fact, innovatively

This article has been developed jointly by the two authors. Gabriella Taddeo has written paragraphs: The rise of web 2.0 and the changing role of Italian teachers; Methodology and research questions; Not «Spectators» nor «Creators», but «Mediators». Simona Tirocchi has written: Introduction. Teachers, media and cultural industries; Results: teachers as «cultural mediators», Conclusions. A bottom-up vademecum for the 2.0 teacher.

Edizioni Erickson – Trento

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uses the web for mediating and bridging generations, contents, media and cultural backgrounds. Keywords: teachers; Web 2.0; cultural mediators; convergence culture.

Introduction. Teachers, media and cultural industries This article presents the research carried out by a research group of the Polytechnic of Turin and the University of Turin on the National Project «Cl@ssi 2.0» in Piedmont (Italy). Starting from a brief analysis of the role of teachers in the Italian cultural landscape, the main research questions are: are teachers changing their role, as a consequence of the use of Web 2.0 tools for producing, communicating and sharing cultural contents, and because of the new, «dis-intermediated» models of cultural transmission? In order to critically analyze the relationship that teachers have with Web 2.0, new participatory platforms and social media, and their use in education, it can be useful to discuss their relationship with the world of media communication. For this purpose, we need to analyze, firstly, the relationship that teachers have with old and new media, which consists in the relationship with old and new communication technologies, and cultural consumption practices. The universe of media consumption has become a cultural and socialization competitor to school education, which traditionally was the main centre of transmission of knowledge. In fact, values, worldviews and knowledge, which individuals use to see and interpret the surrounding reality, are transmitted even through media and cultural consumption. As early as 1972, George Gerbner, author of a famous theory on the effects of television (the Cultivation Theory), spoke of the changes caused by the rise of institutions of cultural mass production. He held that these institutions were taking on many functions performed in the past by parents, school and the church: The media manufacture the shared symbolic environment, create and cultivate large heterogeneous publics, define the agenda of public discourse, and represent all other institutions in the vivid imagery of fact and fiction designed for mass publics. Teachers and schools no longer enjoy much autonomy, let alone their former monopoly, as the public dispenser of knowl220

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«Re-tweet the teacher…» Are Italian teachers «followed by» or «following» the Web 2.0 culture?

edge. The formal educational enterprise exists in a cultural climate largely dominated by the informal «curriculum» of the mass media. (Gerbner, 1972)

In this way, mass media and digital media have become a privileged channel of knowledge acquisition by children, but also a universe of reference for teachers. Thus, we can assume that there is a positive correlation between the level of cultural consumption and teachers’ critical thinking skills and ability to interpret and initiate innovation (Buzzi, 2010). According to research conducted by IARD on Italian schools, teachers read a lot of newspapers: in 2008 the percentage of regular readers among high school teachers was very high at 82%, among middle school teachers this percentage decreased slightly to 77% and among primary school teachers it was lower but still at 65%. This represents a significant increase compared with percentages of 1990. Regular reading is a less frequent habit among younger people and tends to increase with age. Reading weekly and monthly magazines of various kinds is, however, almost generalised, about 70% declare that they read a lot. Of course, in general, the propensity towards reading is not homogeneous. However, in the teachers’ cultural consumption sphere, there have been significant growth rates in recent years. In the three months preceding the IARD interviews, nine out of ten teachers purchased a book, about four-fifths visited an art exhibition or a museum, two thirds of primary school teachers and three quarters of secondary school teachers went, at least once, to the cinema, and about three-fifths of secondary school teachers went to the theatre. However, it seems there is no correlation between the cultural consumption of teachers and their ability to use it with their students (Buzzi, 2010). Even the analysis of data from a study conducted by CREMIT at the Catholic University of Milan, entitled The uses of media, cultural consumption and the training of teachers in Media Education, reveals several interesting results: – technology is present in the private lives of teachers, and a regular guest in their homes, but this presence does not match necessarily with educational use; – cultural consumption, such as cinema, theatre and exhibitions are made private. Teachers tend to use what they have at home, at the expense of outputs and of public sharing of the cultural experience; 221

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– the camera is among the most used technological tools, chosen especially for documenting. In this case, it should be pointed out, there is a correspondence between home use and educational use, perhaps for ease of use or because of the immediacy of the camera for educational purposes; – the use of PCs and networks is very dependent on the presence and functionality of infrastructure in schools, where these are lacking their use is limited and they are not very popular; – the difficulties expressed about using the media in their own class or context concern some well known problems such as the generalised disorganization, lack of equipment, poor quality of software, and finally the lack of cooperation and poor skills of teachers. Some other researches on the relationship between teachers and media have showed how teachers maintain, sometimes, an adversarial relationship with media technologies. A research conducted on teachers in the area of Rome and province in the late 90s, showed how teachers are persistently linked to the culture of the book and entertain a critical relationship with the media, and partly with the PC, even if it is certainly considered a better technology than television (Tirocchi, Antenore & Andò, 2002; Tirocchi, 2004). This attitude reflects an old prejudice of teachers against mass media. For these reasons, because the media are often accused of a standardization of culture, that is, of producing a flattening of cultural differences, the role of the teacher could be very important for decoding the meanings of media culture and its correct interpretation in different contexts. This was true for media broadcasting and the cultural industry, but also applies to the new digital technologies, and the Web 2.0 environment.

The rise of Web 2.0 and the changing role of Italian teachers According to several scholars (Fourie, 1999; Benkler 2006; Bruns 2008), during the mid ‘90s the expansion of the WWW initiated discussions about new possible dis-intermediation processes in fields as diverse as: music, commerce, tourism, as culture and learning. Disintermediation and other concepts like end-user empowerment, prosumer, produsage and so on refer to end-users having access to information and having the necessary skills to retrieve, analyse, re-use and re-elaborate information according to their own needs. 222

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This process seems to acquire a structural dimension with the rise of Web 2.0 and the emergence of tools and «cultural interfaces» which allow users to produce, not only access and use, digital contents directly. In the media the discussion about the possible disintermediation of information processes starts with the spread of blogging at the beginning of 2000s (Kublinski et al., 2011). Web 2.0 and social networks have brought new questions to the table: if information is produced and distributed in a bottom-up and participatory context, are information professionals still relevant? Is there any future for traditional cultural intermediators in the land of social networks and Web 2.0 environments? These questions were pivotal first in the field of journalism, in relation to the emergent phenomenon of citizen journalism, then they became relevant in the mass media and pop culture, with the emergence of the participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006), the fandom and other forms of end-user cultural productions. Afterwards, they also reached the structural fields of national and global institutions such as the e-politics, the e- health and the e-education fields (Tucker, 2010). Far from an oversimplified rethoric, promoted by several «new media gurus» (Negroponte, 1997; Tapscott & Williams, 2006) which allocate all the power to people and to the «active audiences», it’s quite clear that, in those years, each institutional sector had to relate to the changing role of their end-user targets and their power to contribute, discuss and even upset the existing power relations: the result has been a deep reshaping of the internal models of relevance, accountability, influence, and the re-negotiation of the gatekeeping roles and dynamics in the cultural, social and political intermediation. In this context, our specific research questions relate to how Italian teachers, traditionally considered as performing a core function in the social system, in its preservation and innovation, are facing and contributing to the Web 2.0 cultural landscape and which role they have acquired in this, still confused and magmatic, setting. The aim of the research is to understand their role as cultural intermediators in such a dramatically changing cultural landscape. As highlighted in the previous paragraph and underlined in several international researches (Eurydice, 2003; OECD, 2005; OECD, 2010; Schleicher, 2012), the role of teachers in the cultural, economic and social 223

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system is really complex and controversial not only in the Italian but also in the European context, as well as their status as professionals and their attractiveness as symbolic and cultural leaders and gatekeepers. In this respect, Novoa (2007) observes as many, in recent years, have advocated a reinforcement of the presence of teachers in the public sphere, intended as «public sphere of action» (Habermas, 1989). However, paradoxically, the presence of teachers in this sphere has been reduced. He says: There is a lot of talk about schools and teachers. Talk from journalists, columnists, university professors, specialists. Teachers don’t talk. There is an absence of teachers, a kind of silence from a profession that has lost visibility in the public arena. Today, teachers’ openness to the outside world is imposed upon them. Communicating with society means also answering to society. Perhaps the profession has become vulnerable, but this is the necessary condition for an affirmation of its prestige and of its social status. In contemporary societies, the strength of a profession is greatly defined by its capacity to communicate with the public. (Novoa, 2007, p. 26)

In the Web 2.0 and participatory culture era, the symbolic arena has been further complicated: not only «journalists, columnists, university professors and specialists» can talk for and, often, in place of teachers, but also the students themselves, those «digital natives» that, thanks to their confidence with the World Wide Web, can reach, use and also produce cultural contents outside the formal contexts of education and definitely beyond the control of teachers. Using the pervasive vocabulary of social media applications metaphorically, we wondered: are teachers starting to be «followed by», or are they «following» the web 2.0 culture? Starting from the IARD framework which describes the position (selfperceived and socially-attributed) of Italian teachers in the «1.0» cultural system, our aim was to launch a first investigation on how this position is changing with the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies by teachers.

Methodology and research questions To investigate such an articulated scenario we had the chance of approaching really privileged research context such as the «Cl@ssi 2.0» national experimentation. 224

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The «Cl@ssi 2.0» programme in Italy is part of a broader programme, based on the «Digital Classroom of Tomorrow» (DCOT) concept. The goal of «Cl@ssi 2.0» is to check if, and how, technologies have been integrated in the learning environment in Italy and if their presence has brought relevant changes to teaching practices and in the learning environment. In Italy, the project began in 2009 in 156 Italian secondary schools (level one – middle school), then it was extended to primary and high schools. In Piedmont 20 classrooms have taken part in the project, coming from Turin as well as from all over the Region.2 Compared to other programmes of ICT adoption in Italian schools, the «Cl@ssi 2.0» project proposed an innovative intervention model: not a closed system of ideas, guidelines and experimentation models imposed from above, but an effective «2.0» model where each classroom had the opportunity to design and experiment its own innovative, personalised and bottom-up approach to ICT. In this context, the role of the University was to coach and provide scientific support, as well as to support teachers in their application of a «meta-reflexive framework» in the experimentation processes. In our research we have investigated a number of issues among which the role of technologies in the learning environment (Taddeo & Tirocchi, 2011; Taddeo & Tirocchi, 2012), the students’ approach to Web 2.0, but also the role and transformation of the teachers as key actors in any innovation process relating to the school environment. According to the cultural and social framework we have described in the above paragraphs, we in fact wanted to discover if, and how teachers were central innovators in the fast process of digital innovation or, instead, they were more «followers» and passive users of the emergent scenario. How are they transforming their role of cultural intermediatiors in such a dis-intermediation era? Which is their approach to cultural production, and not only preservation and transmission, in the era in which anyone is virtually transformed in prosumer and he/she can produce contents and deliver them on a global scale, compeeting in popularity with the mainstream cultural producers?

The schools which have taken part in the project are, for the secondary school: Asti, Biella, Cigliano, Felizzano, Galliate, Grugliasco, Moretta, S. Antonino di Susa, Sommariva del Bosco, Torino, Tetti Francesi di Rivalta, Villadossola. For the primary school, the schools are: Cervasca, Galliate, Ornavasso, Pasturana, Rivoli, Torino (1), Torino (2), Tortona.

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Are they using Web 2.0 tools in an active way, in order to «take the floor» of the cultural and pedagogical public scene? Or are they merely «users» of the emergent 2.0 culture? We started to critically consider the concept of «active users» in the Web 2.0 era, trying to better define what the term «active user» means in the new cultural system and in the field of educational in particular. For instance, in the pivotal document Key Competence for Lifelong Learning, drawn up in 2007, digital competencies are intended as «the use of computers to retrieve, assess, store, produce, present and exchange information, and to communicate and participate in collaborative networks via the internet»: therefore, digital literacy implies the active presence of subjects in co-shaping and co-creating a social, civic and cultural common playground. In this regard, the interesting Hitwise-Forrester report, titled Social Technographics (2011), identifies six different levels of social media participation on the web: users are identified progressively by means of a «ladder of usage» starting from the «inactives» and finishing at the highest level with the «creators» (Figure 1). As we can see from the infographic, the majority of online Americans and Europeans are still Spectators — meaning they consume social media content but do not necessarily create it. In fact, less than one-quarter of these consumers are Creators — those individuals who generate social content. Where are the Italian teachers in this scenario? Are they more «Creators» or «Spectators» of the Web 2.0 era? Starting with the sample of the «Cl@ssi 2.0» teachers (classrooms which have been selected by the Minister of Education also for their pregressive experience in ICT projects) we have investigated such questions through a multi-method approach which has included: – analysis of the digital learning contents developed during the three years of the project, which have been gathered in the dedicated ANSAS web repository; – ethnographic observation of teachers’ attitudes, behaviors and beliefs in relation to Web 2.0 innovations. The ethnographic analysis was carried out both on line, through the collection and analysis of messages and interactions in the «Cl@ssi 2.0» platform, and directly, through the systematization of ethnographic tracks collected during more than 20 face-to-face meetings with the schools; 226

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– 10 in-depth interviews with the teachers, entirely aimed at exploring to a further extent their «2.0 skillfulness» and attitudes not only in their professional context, but also in their spare time, and to investigate their cultural consumptions as a whole.

• Publish a blog • Publish your own web pages • Upload video you created • Upload audio/music you created • Write articles or stories and post them • Update status on a social networking site • Post updates on Twitter • Post ratings/reviews of products or services • Comment on someone else’s blog • Contribute to online forums • Contribute to/edit articles in a wiki • Use RSS feeds • Voter for websites online • Add «tags» to web pages or photos • Maintain profile on a social networking site • Visit social networking sites • Read blogs • Listen to podcasts • Watch video from other users • Read online forums • Read customer ratings/reviews • Read tweets None of the above

EU-7

Creators

24%

23%

Conversationalists

36%

26%

Critics

36%

33%

Collectors

23%

22%

Joiners

68%

50%

Spectators

73%

69%

Inactives

14%

21%

Base: 57,924 US online adults (18+); 16,473 European online adults (18+) Source: North American Technographics® Online Benchmark Survey, Q3 2011 (US, Canada); European Technographics Online Benchmark Survey, Q3 2011

Figure 1

The «Ladder» of Web 2.0 Consumers (Forrester-Hitwise research).

The interview sample included 4 teachers from primary school and 6 from secondary school; the interviews were carried out face-to-face in the schools, giving us the opportunity to see and to visualise some of the products and contents they talked about. 227

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Results: teachers as «cultural mediators» Starting from our research results, we can outline how teachers, in this phase of cultural disintermediation, are acquiring the new role of «Web 2.0 cultural mediators». The concept of cultural mediator refers to different meanings. According to the classical definition, he/she is an agent that mediates between two different linguistic communities. His/her task is to facilitate understanding, during the development of a research. He/she is knowledgeable in both cultures, even if the researcher is closer to one of the two. From the point of view of social intervention, however, the mediator is a professional who has the task of facilitating the integration of foreign citizens in the social context of the host country, acting as an intermediary between the needs of foreigners and the answers offered by public services. Ottaviano (2001) points out that the role of the teacher has always been inscribed in an operation of mediation because he/she has always bridged the gap between the new generation and the adult world, driving children from the family to the radically different contexts of school and work. From this point of view, it is clear that the teacher can now reinterpret this concept, setting himself/herself up as a mediator in a variety of contexts. In this particular phase teachers have a very difficult task, because they have to regain a key-role as «players» in a situation of social and institutional crisis, in which there is a gradual disintegration of the agencies of social mediation (Giddens, 1990). We can say that, with regards to teachers, the term mediator has at least three different meanings: 1. mediators between old and new media, and so mediators of convergence culture; 2. mediators between young people and adults (also referring to the debate about digital immigrants and digital natives); 3. mediators between formal settings (the school) and informal environments (home and leisure time). Many teachers use computers, but also Blackberrys, iPads and social network sites even in their spare time. For many of them joining a social network is natural, to keep in touch with people: I’m signed in to Linkedin, to Facebook, to Twitter. Especially on Linkedin and Facebook since we have many friends abroad, it useful. Joining Face-

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book today has become almost mandatory. Linkedin is also a way to keep in touch especially with co-workers, and is more serious than Facebook, from a formal work point of view, it is a platform on which we exchange a great deal. On Facebook, instead, I have many contacts with all my former students, almost all (laughs) because they are all very young. On Facebook I met some old friends again, but especially my former students, it was a tragedy? (laughs). [D (female), primary school]

With regards to the second meaning of cultural mediator, there are various ways in which teachers mediate between adults and children. First, the «Cl@ssi 2.0» project requires the active involvement of families, who must constantly accompany children while they are managing technology. In addition, teachers become partners peer to peer, when the exchanges with their students take place in the «virtual» spaces of technology, such as forums, SNS, learning platforms. These spaces, in fact, are less hierarchical and more fluid than traditional ones, because social software extends the opportunities for interaction. The meeting between teachers and pupils in the network can also be useful for the exchange of digital skills: children have a more relaxed attitude, while teachers are more reflective and can provide deeper interpretations of content meanings. In this regard, it is appropriate to refer to the concepts of media literacy and computer literacy. In our opinion, we should start talking about a social media literacy (Tirocchi, 2012) directed specifically to the management of social media and, more generally, of Web 2.0 tools. Finally, the third meaning of cultural mediation refers to the ability to mediate between formal and informal learning spaces. For example, a teacher in a secondary school, has chosen not to use the traditional didactic software, but web based services: We are all using the Google platform, the calendar for example, to share tasks, built on the Google site, the Google Docs that proved to be an inexhaustible source, when you have to work together. These services are good for the removal of some spatial and temporal boundaries of the classroom: teachers can be reached everywhere and therefore the class widens, you can work at any time. [E (male), secondary school]

This platform proved to be very useful in the management of homework: using a common calendar, homework was handled first by the teachers, and then by the students. In this way, students felt effective in their social interactions in the Web 2.0 environment: the interactions were no longer teacher-initiated and teacher-focused. 229

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Through 2.0 tools the teacher has set himself/herself up as a guide, a facilitator. In fact, he/she helps students to manage these tools, using them to propose stimuli, to reflect on student answers, to correct assignments, evaluate projects and so on. The same teacher who used the Google platform also opened a personal Twitter profile that has allowed him to become a sort of opinion leader on the issues related to teaching and new technologies. In this case, he could certainly be defined as a creative teacher and not simply a user of Web 2.0 tools. This is a good example of how teaching styles could change.

Not «Spectators» nor «Creators», but «Mediators» The second focus of our research related to the teachers’ role as cultural «Producers» and not only «Spectators» in the Web 2.0 scenario. Shifting the IARD framework into the new cultural context we asked the teachers if they were used to consuming «2.0» cultural contents (e.g. download video and music, read blogs, attend social networks and so on) and if they used them also at school, for example showing the students a video, a blog post or a song they found in their private consumption. Generally, we found that teachers entered the participatory culture, first as «Spectators» approaching Web 2.0 contents primarily for the following activities: – reading on line newspapers; – viewing YouTube and/or downloading movies; – consulting sources and didactic contents for their lessons. According to our interviews, teachers seem to access these new contents considering them more as new channels to reach traditional contents than as innovative and original cultural forms which enrich and change their cultural consumptions. In this respect it is interesting to report what a primary teacher said: I normally go on the Internet to search for old tv programmes, or movies I have seen in the past… the web is really a powerful means of finding what I thought to be lost… [D (male)]

They appreciate the web also as a cheap channel to mantain, in this moment of hardship, an adequate level of cultural consumption which allows 230

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them not to give up, for example, reading a newspaper and enables them to keep up to date with the issues on the International agenda. Furthermore, they are really engaged in using the web to search for didactic contents to use in class, often dedicating part of their spare time to consult contents which merge professional and private interests (e.g. science, history). However, their approach to Web 2.0 contents is quite functional, not driven by serendipity models of browsing but more focused on specific search keywords and questions (Petrucco, 2006). Unlike their «digital native» pupils, they thus prefer top-down more than bottom-up strategies for searching on the Web 2.0, and they are still not confident — or consider it a waste of time — with network, viral or serendipity approaches to searching and browsing on the web. We could say that they apply a «1.0 search strategy» to the 2.0 web contents. Furthermore, they rely more on institutional resources (e.g. national and international portals dedicated to learning) and they very rarely use «informal» contents found on the web (e.g a song, a blog or a YouTube video) in a «formal» learning activity with the students. With regards to their «active» presence as cultural producers of 2.0 contents, in the beginning we explored the uploaded contents and interactions in the «Cl@ssi 2.0» digital platform, then we specifically asked the teachers, during the interviews, if they managed blogs, participated in forums, uploaded learning contents to the public Web 2.0 landscape (e.g. ppt, learning objects, podcasts and so on). We found that only three teachers are used to actively producing and sharing contents on line, (outside the institutional environment of the «Cl@ssi 2.0» platform): two of them manage a blog, while the third, a primary school teacher, prefers to upload contents to several free sharing platforms (e.g. Slideshare, Vimeo, Twitter). We can conclude that the profile of «Creators» is still a minority and that the majority of teachers are approaching the Web 2.0 more as a big repository in which to search for and to select what they want. Thus, from this small, exploratory investigation, we can conclude that teachers, in this phase, have a complex role: they are not simple «Spectators» nor fully «Creators» of the Web 2.0 culture, but, they are, once again, «Mediators» across several cultural tendencies and cultural forces. In fact, in relation to their cultural use of the Web 2.0: – they mediate different search and browsing strategies and remind students of the need to integrate bottom-up with top-down approaches to knowledge; 231

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– they mediate formal and informal contents, providing students with on line institutional resources which they would never have accessed spontaneously; – they bridge the inter-generational gap, allowing the young to access traditional culture as well as proposing contents and resources from their own cultural and media landscape; – they mediate in the teacher communities, often not directly producing original contents, but promoting and sharing web contents with less technologically skilled colleagues.

Conclusions. A bottom-up vademecum for the 2.0 teacher It’s difficult to draw conclusions from a research whose developments are constantly evolving. The relationship between teachers and Web 2.0, in fact, is dynamic and it’s renewed day by day, as teachers become more familiar with the participatory and Web 2.0 environments. It is, in this case, a long-term process of change, based on self-reflexivity and the acquisition of skills required to manage the new cultural scene and the new learning processes. One of the results of the research discussed in this article, is that teachers certainly rethink their role as cultural mediators of convergence culture (about which we have abundantly spoken), but also as mediators between different contexts. The 2.0 teacher could, in fact, be seen as a node in a network, in which other nodes are: students, student’s parents, colleagues, territory, the shared media and cultural environment. A first result is the proposal of a «teacher 2.0 vademecum». This guide has been built starting from teacher discussions, using a bottom-up approach. The suggestions have been summarized as follows: • Curiosity and ability to get involved • Willingness to innovate in a critical way • Role of teacher-tutor • Sharing with colleagues • Involvement of children’s families • Accountability and ethical education (of the family) • Territory promoter • Enhance knowledge of students. 232

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«Re-tweet the teacher…» Are Italian teachers «followed by» or «following» the Web 2.0 culture?

Summing up, the 2.0 teacher’s ability is, therefore, to mediate between different subjects and environments, using a bottom-up approach, based on the comparison, participation, sharing, and building of creative contents. So far teachers are managing this process alone, becoming, on some occasions, active agents of this process of appropriation. It would certainly be advisable to activate specific training programs for teachers, in order to help them use the 2.0 tools in a productive and strategic way. We also think about peer-to-peer courses, based on sharing and comparing experiences. If this does not happen, we run the risk of missing, in Italy and for the second time, a great opportunity. In the past we have already missed the opportunity of a dialogue between school and the world of media and technology. Today it is even more important to encourage the 2.0 literacy of adults and children, because there are a lot of opportunities for growth, learning and personal empowerment.

References Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Production Networks Transform Markets and Freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bruns, A. (2008). Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: from Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Buzzi, C. (2010). I consumi culturali degli insegnanti. In A. Cavalli, & G. Argentin (Eds.), Gli insegnanti italiani: come cambia il modo di fare scuola. Terza indagine dell’Istituto IARD sulle condizioni di vita e di lavoro nella scuola italiana (pp. 97-109). Bologna: il Mulino. European Commission (2006). Key Competences for Lifelong Learning – A European Framework. Official Journal of the European Union, 30 December 2006/L394, Bruxelles. (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2006/l_394/l_39420061230en00100018. pdf). Eurydice (2003). Key Topics in Education in Europe. Volume 3. The teaching profession in Europe: profile, trends and concerns. Report III: Working conditions and pay. Bruxelles: Eurydice. Forrester Research (2011). European Technographics on line Benchmark Survey. (http:// www.forrester.com/European+Technographics+Online+Benchmark+Survey+Q3+2011//E-SUS838?objectid=SUS838). Fourie, I. (1999). Should we take disintermediation serously?. The Electronic Library, 17 (1), 9-16. Gerbner, G. (1972). Teacher Image and the Hidden Curriculum. The American Scholar, 42 (1), 66-92. (http://www.asc.upenn.edu/gerbner/archive.aspx?sectionID=39&package ID=165).

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Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. (Giddens, A., Le conseguenze della modernità. Bologna: il Mulino, 1994). Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of public sphere. Boston, MA: The MIT Press. Jenkins, H (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. (Jenkins, H., Cultura convergente. Milano: Apogeo, 2007). Kublinski, H.P., Cristobal, C., & Scolari, C.A. (2011, May). Death of the university? Knowledge Production and Distribution in the Disintermediation Era. Paper presented at the «McLuhan Galaxy Conference. Understanding Media Today». Barcelona. Negroponte, N. (1997). Re-intermediated, Wired, 5 (09). (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.09/negroponte.html). Novoa, A. (2007, September). The return of teachers. Paper presented at the Conference Professional Development of Teachers for the Quality and Equity of Lifelong Learning, Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Lisbon. OECD, (2005). Teachers Matter – Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers. Bruxelles: OECD Publishing. OECD, (2010). PISA 2009 Results: What Makes a School Successful? Resources, Policies and Practices (Volume IV). Bruxelles: OECD Publishing. Ottaviano, C. (2001). Media, scuola e società. Roma: Carocci. Petrucco, C. (2006). ‘Folksonomie’ nella Rete. Costruire categorie alternative, creative ed interculturali. Tecnologie Didattiche, 37 (1), 38-50. Schleicher, A. (Ed.) (2012). Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders for the 21st Century: Lessons from around the World. Bruxelles: OECD Publishing. Taddeo, G., & Tirocchi, S. (2011, May). Cultura digitale e trasformazione degli attori e dei contesti didattici. Un percorso di ricerca a partire dall’esperienza del progetto «Classi 2.0». Paper presented at the Conference Didamatica, Polytechnic of Turin, Italy. Taddeo, G., & Tirocchi, S. (2012 in press). Learning in a 2.0 classroom: results from an empirical research in the Italian context. In P. Pumilla-Gnarini, L. Favaron, & L. Guerra (Eds.), Didactic, Strategies and Technologies for education. Hershey, PA: IGI-GLOBAL. Tapscott, D., & Williams, A.D. (2006). Wikinomics. How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. New York: Penguin. Tirocchi S., Antenore M., & Andò, R. (2002). Giovani a parole. Dalla generazione media alla networked generation. Milano: Guerini. Tirocchi, S. (2004). Identità dei docenti e comunicazione: una tavola delle interazioni. In M. Morcellini (Ed.), La scuola della modernità. Per un Manifesto della media education (pp. 83-97). Milano: FrancoAngeli. Tirocchi, S. (2012 in press). Sociologie della Media education. Giovani e media al tempo dei nativi digitali. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Tucker, R. (2010). Disintermediation: the disruption to come for Education 2.0. Reading About Leading. (http://www.readingaboutleading.com/?p=767).

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Web 2.0 as a catalyst in training and education processes between school and local territory The Didaduezero project in the province of Trento1 Corrado Petrucco and Marina De Rossi

ABSTRACT

Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy, Applied Psychology, University of Padua, Piazza Capitaniato, 3 – 35139 Padua, Italy. E-mail: corrado.petrucco@unipd.it; marina.derossi@unipd.it

While students use social software outside school in informal contexts, it is still very rare that it is used in support of curricular activities. The research, in collaboration with IPRASE (Istituto Provinciale per la Ricerca e la Sperimentazione Educativa of Trento – Italy), developed a new experimental model (SoSoFIN) to investigate how Web 2.0 learning processes in informal and non-formal context can be mediated and successfully integrated within the formal school curriculum. The research activities covered a wide range of Web 2.0 learning projects where students and teachers collaborate with the local community creating digital artifacts highly contextualized in the real world, and making them available to all. This approach, stimulating social-cultural processes, increased students participation and motivation to learn as well as their digital skills. Keywords: Web 2.0; social software; informal learning; local community; school.

Corrado Petrucco wrote the following paragraphs: Introduction; The Didaduezero project, objectives and theoretical background; Project Structure; Focus group and video interviews. Marina De Rossi wrote: Research Design; Method; The research; The actions; The tools: the questionnaires; Conclusion.

Edizioni Erickson – Trento

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Introduction Siemens (Siemens, 2006) recent theory on connectivism states that with the revolution of Web 2.0 what is important on the network is not just the information, but also and especially those who generate the flow of information: it is no longer possible to think of the content as disconnected from the channels and contexts that allow for interaction and participation (Jenkins, 2010). In this respect, many authors point out that there is a strong dichotomy between the practice and use of technology that occurs at school as compared to outside this context, so the school experience becomes alien to the students compared to their everyday experience (McTavish, 2009; Ferri, 2011). It’s as if students are participating in a double curriculum, one that is formal and one that is informal, the latter being a real «parallel hidden curriculum» (Jenkins et al., 2006; Ito et al., 2008), that is absorbed informally and daily through the practice and use of social technology and social networks. Trying to «sew» the two curriculum’s together by adopting Web 2.0 also at school, means to rethink the educational subject content and make contact with professional and social informal daily contexts, and with the verbal processes that naturally underlie these. The learning context that we operate in is that of Project Based Learning (Boss & Krauss, 2007), namely the possibility of offering students authentic real-world problems that require an effective solution. Most of the educational content and the assessment methods that are adopted in the school lack in fact what may be called a «frame of reality» (Castoldi, 2011; Lichtner, 2004): namely they are lacking a practical approach to real knowledge. The school also demands individual performance and reviews, while the social and work reality also demands the collaboration of others in order to successfully carry out any task that is professional, recreational or tied to personal interests.

The Didaduezero project: objectives and theoretical background The «Didaduezero project – The development of digital skills in the school and in the local area: the opportunity of Web 2.0» was designed based on the theoretical framework described above and was carried out between 2009and 2011 in collaboration with the Educational Research Institute of the Province of Trento (IPRASE). The objective of the study was to initiate inter and multidisciplinary educational courses using the Web 2.0 tools to: 236

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– foster informal learning by integrating this type of learning into the formal type; – improve the integration between school and local territory (institutions, organizations and community); – increase the motivation to learn by creating an active participatory learning environment based on real contexts and processes; – develop digital skills of students and teachers. The pedagogical references made are those of Dewey, Lewin and Freire, and their interpretation of the school as a tool that allows the student to participate first-hand in the process of knowledge construction working within a concrete social reality. Therefore we created a innovative model called SoSoFIN (Figure 1) as a reference for building a teaching/learning

Teachers promote reflection on practices NON-FORMAL

FORMAL Digital Artifacts

Social Software

Students

engaged in real life activities

Social Software

use, propose and discuss artifacts

Social Software INFORMAL Figure 1

Communities

The SoSoFIN model (Social Software between formal, informal and non-formal) social software can be the tool committed to solving real problems and integrating the formal, informal and non-formal learning processes between students, teachers and the community (Petrucco, 2010, p. 28).

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environment in which Web 2.0 technology would help to meld together formal, non-formal and informal areas (Greenhow et al., 2009; Conole & Alevizou, 2010; Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012). The challenge for the teachers was to offer projects based on concrete and real learning activities which require interaction with the community (online and in person) to create digital artefacts and share them in the local territory. We can consider a «rhizomatic» model (Cormier, 2008; Attwell, 2010) that re-discovers the involvement of Freire’s teaching, in which the community can help to create a curriculum template («community as curriculum») that is no longer developed only by experts but also «negotiated» with people that are part of real contexts of work and life. Our experience was successful, but it was not easy and the difficulties encountered confirm what is found in the literature (Bull et al., 2008): many teachers found that, along with the limiting factor in the time available, there was difficulty in managing the in-class on-line activities and planning online activities to be completed outside the classroom. In addition, from all the stakeholders of the school (teachers, parents and students) there was a strong perception that the use of social software and Web 2.0 was distracting compared to traditional school activities and for the purpose of measurable performance (Tan, 2009). Finally a typical criticism was voiced regarding the use of technology by teachers: often the skills are «practiced» at school but they are not experienced in daily life, like they are for students.

Project Structure The project involved 9 schools in the province of Trento and a total of 21 teachers (5 from primary school, 13 from junior secondary school and 3 from senior high school) and approximately 300 students. The project took place during three years and involved various consecutive steps: 1. aimed to orient teachers towards a motivated and conscientious choice in relation to the objectives of the project; 2. aimed at providing guidance in the use of Web 2.0 tools within the various disciplinary areas; 3. directed towards engaging the local members of the community through the execution of specific projects using social software and other Web 2.0 tools. 238

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During the second phase of the project we designed four training modules for the teachers on specific software suggested. At the end of the training the teachers developed an educational project chosen within the confines of the objectives of one or more modules (Table 1). module

objectives

Tecnology

Build collaborative knowledge

• Reflection on the reliability of the sources • Participation as co-authors in the development of a paper

Wiki and Wikipedia

Build reading community

• Training in the stand-alone player between the formal and informal (network between schools, local libraries and virtual libraries)

aNobii and blog

Share local resources

• Development of analytical skills and interaction in the geo-physical, anthropological and environmental reality • Development of the ability to recognize and integrate cultural artefacts in the territory

Google Maps and Google Earth

Create intercultural maps of the local territory

• Development of reading skills in the territory at the intercultural level with specific «mash-up» and interaction between schools and local associations

Open Street Map

Table 1

The training models for the teachers.

Research Design Reference was made to the participant research model (RP), according to which: the problem arises within the community that defines it, the model analyzes the problem and resolves it; the aim is the transformation of social reality and the change of behaviour in individuals that are part of this reality; the procedures tend to stimulate an increased awareness among the participants with respect to the activation of their own resources and the involvement of the researchers is continuous. The Didaduezero research follows this point-of-view, giving priority to the construction of new forms of cooperation in order to allow both a constant adherence to problems and concrete contexts for field testing, as well as provide rigorous procedures and results through the use of appropriate tools (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992). The dynamic between educational activities and scientific activities involved all the participants starting from assumptions made jointly and centred on the work of the operators (Portuois, 1995; Orefice, 239

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2006). Through the stimulation of the researchers, the participants were asked to think, to decide and to prepare plans of action (Trombetta & Rosiello, 2000). Method To summarize, from the methodological point of view, the three key moments were: a) planning the group work for designing the actions that refer to the modules; b) participation in the work in various contexts that were singled out for the implementation of the project; c) administering the survey that accompanied all stages of the field action for the evaluation of progress (Elliott, 1991). The construction of a volunteer group took place during presentation stimulus meetings The teachers and the school administrators had the means to reflect on the following: – on the representations about the reality of the school-territory; – on the conceptions of the role and function of the school in society; – on their own perceptions of competence in relation to their own professional history; – on the perceptions of the relationship between teaching and the use of technology; – on their level of motivation to change. Various sub-groups were then created for each module on the basis of the different territorial needs. Each group was put into the position of organizing a repertoire of strategies with the goal of problem posing and problem solving (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988). The increasing involvement of regional partners came about as a result of co-optation from teachers. In this stage we carried out focus groups that revealed some key issues critical for the development of our project. The co-design model used for the actors involved enabled us to negotiate the needs that emerged in various contexts. In fact the needs and conditions were different; on the schools part, there was the need to qualify the local resources from an educational prospective. On the contrary, on the part of local agencies, there was little need felt and the supply was limited. Through the actions presented, focused on a continuous exchange-comparison, we saw significant influences between the different parties in the development of a community (Wenger, 2007). 240

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The research The research examined reality as a whole considering changes of relationships and behaviours (Cunningham, 1976, p. 216), in particular analyzing the technology variable. The purpose was to create a research community to develop an important critical task with the entirety of the methods and techniques used in practice. The action was set-up as a continuous verbal exchange between the scientific expertise of the researchers and the practical-reflexive skills of the operators. The aim of the research concerned the gradual spontaneous transformation of those habits and behaviors which constituted entrenched routines. But these routines did not include any codesign action and little or none, conscious real integration between school, territory and virtual community. In fact, even though a certain amount of technology use is widespread in schools for educational purposes and for informational purposes for the other partners, the use of the Web 2.0 tools was almost non-existent, apart from informal personal practice. Most of all process implications about communication and collaboration in the local and virtual community had not been considered criteria of effectiveness (the congruence between educational aims and means used in the path) and criteria of efficiency (the achievement of aims through the optimization of resources) were found. The actions Two variables that were important to the research-action were joint planning and the teaching laboratory. The planning stage was seen as a state of discovery that favoured an awareness of the problems so we adopted a heuristic approach, highly committed to investigation and based on dialogicaldiscursive factors (Kaneklin, Piccardo & Scaratti, 2010), as opposed to a linear mode (of design). Through the use of Web 2.0 technology we tried to avoid the risk of fragmentation within separate action contexts that are selfreferenced by the use of devices for facilitating the communication process, constructing shared meanings and creating exchange goods. The Indicators which allowed monitoring were: the action as a function of the aim/aims of the group; the central importance of individuals as actors for change; the managerial aspect of time and the duration of the work in reference to the aims; the institutional context as a juridical- political framework, within which the project took place; the social link that has structured 241

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the process of socio-cultural animation both within the group and in relation to the outside community; the strategy, as the way to adapt the means to the aims of community development and the integration school-territory. The second important factor concerned the adoption of a laboratory methodology which represented a factor that can generate forms of reflective learning, aimed at constructing knowledge and skills in which subjects become involved in an ongoing dialogue between the generalization of theory and the specificity of practice (Bond & Walker, 1991). The laboratory methods enabled the emergence of the implicit, or hidden knowledge which determines efficacy within the professional realm regarding the solution of problems and the awareness of the processes underlying the experience (Polany, 1979; Reber, 1993). All the actions were conducted in the following manner: development of teaching-educational projects related to the four units and coordination among all the subjects involved and the activities performed directly with students. In every case the laboratories were set up as: a place of integration between theory and practice; a space for developing cognitive and reflective processes and a space for methodological framework of «situated research», that is still able to show significant generalizations according to transversal criteria (Gilbert, 2001). The tools: the questionnaires At the end of the second year of research three semi-structured questionnaires were prepared (open ended and closed ended questions) targeted to the various subjects belonging to the school context (teachers directly involved in the research, students in the classes considered in the research and teachers indirectly involved). The questionnaires aimed to measure the perception, from different points of view, of the processes of integration of learning between the formal and the informal through the use of social software and Web 2.0 tools (Table 2). 21 teachers answered the first questionnaire (Q1, F = 79%, M = 21%), 24% belonging to primary school, 62% to middle school and 14% to upper school. In summary it emerged from the answers that participation in the action-research had increased both the number and the type of social software utilized and the frequency of use within the informal context (Figure 2). The majority of teachers (71,4%) later underlined the extremely positive influence of technology and social software, in particular because they represent a motivational source for students, an element of novelty and a 242

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Target

Tipology and number of questions

Dimensions

Q1 Teachers directly involved in the project

– personal use of internet and social software (before and after the project) – efficacy of projects based upon integrated educational settings both in the area of teaching and about the relationship between school and community

20 closed ended questions of which 7 required the target to provide greater openended detail

Q2 Students involved in the project

– satisfaction about the realized activities – perception about efficacy of this innovative teaching modality

12 closed ended questions (on a fivepoint Likert scale) 6 items asked for greater details (open ended)

Q3 Teachers directly or indirectly involved in the project

– membership to a non-formal and informal group of socio-cultural animation – perception of the relationship between his/ her own membership to an interest group and predisposition to use technology in personal and teaching contexts – perception of usefulness in the use of technology as a resource for teaching

9 closed ended questions of which 6 asked for greater detail (open ended)

Summary of the tools used.

Figure 2

Before After

29 19 14

Other

5 5

Podcast

Wiki

Facebook

Flickr

Blog

Skype

Google-maps

Wikipedia

Google Earth

Google

100% 90 90% 81 81 76 80% 71 70% 62 57 60% 48 48 48 50% 43 38 40% 35 33 29 29 30% 19 20% 14 10% 0%

Anobii

Table 2

Social software used by the teachers in an informal environment.

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Collaborative learning

76%

Discovery learning

62%

Problem Solving

28%

Simulation

28%

Case study

24%

0 Figure 3

Learning strategies believed most effective.

source of interest especially when teaching is planned using the principles of collaborative learning and discovery (Figure 3). With regard to the relationship between school-local area, we found no substantial changes. About half the teachers (54%), do not believe that the community, as a result of the project views the school institution differently after the project, and this is mainly due to the lack of time. In nearly all cases (87%) of teachers believe that the local areas could benefit from the creation of networks through the widespread use of social software in contexts of formal and informal education (Figure 4).

70%

62%

60% 50% 40% 30% 19%

20% 10%

10% 0% Figure 4

Very much

Not answered

Not at all

Just a little

Somewhat

Quite a lot

Assessment of the benefit for the community arising from the creation of networks through the widespread use of social software in formal and informal education contexts.

The second questionnaire (Q2), administered to the students, was a relatively simple tool given the wide age range target. In total 228 students (M 244

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= 52%, F = 48%) answered, divided according to school grade (20% from primary school, 72% from junior secondary school and 8% from senior secondary school). From the data it emerged that the majority of students value the use of social software and of Web 2.0 tools in teaching. In fact, not only did they regard favorably the project but they would advise other teachers to use the same activity with their students (Figure 5).

45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Figure 5

41%

To like t others To like oneself

39%

34% 29% 23% 16%

8% 1%

Not at all

Just a little

Somewhat

Quite a lot

Very much

Comparison of answers regarding the appreciation of the use of social software for educational activities in relation to themselves and to other students.

There were no relevant differences by gender found, but they existed according to module and by school grade. Younger students took part in the project with enthusiasm and interest, but as the level of schooling and the age of the student increased, the judgment differs and the perception of the usefulness grows compared to simple liking. In conclusion, it seems that the introduction of Web 2.0 tools has had a positive impact in three main areas: 1) learning with personal and creative contributions; 2) collaboration and building strong relationships with teachers and fellow students; 3) building relationships with the community and external parties (Figure 6). The third and last survey tool (Q3), administered to teachers that were directly or indirectly involved in the project, highlighted two important issues. The presence of a colleague that is a technology expert is still a decisive variable when introducing innovative teaching practices, because they can address any unforeseen issues that might occur during the lesson and suggests possible uses. Secondly, there is also a need to organize workgroups between teachers of the same subject (and at a later time, of different subjects) and technical 245

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To know more your teachers

37%

To know other people

61%

To express more your fantasy

62%

To learn with more easiness

65%

To learn better the territory you live in

69%

To collaborate more with mates

87%

0 Figure 6

100

Effects perceived by students.

experts to co-design educational activities balanced both from the technological point of view and from the content point of view (76%) (Figure 7).

60% 49%

50% 40% 30%

25%

22%

20% 10% 0% Figure 7

Not at all

Just a little

Somewhat

Quite a lot

Very much

Importance of the presence of a technology expert for the introduction of new teaching practices and their application to other subjects.

Focus group and video interviews The research group tried to show by means of 6 focus groups the main views on the relationship school-local area existing in the communities. In this way we can also co-plan a research-action intervention, according to specific local area characteristics. Group interviews with the various different social parties involved were held in schools. Meetings on average lasted one and a half hours. The 48 focus group participants came from formal contexts (teachers, managers), non-formal contexts (local authorities, libraries, museum, 246

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document centers) and informal contexts (educational/entertainment agencies, cultural and intercultural associations, cooperatives promoting tourism, trade associations). The textual analysis of the different conversations (using Atlas.ti software) followed a top-down approach with regard to the dimensions that were investigated, and a bottom-up mainly for the project phase of the work. We identified 6 specific «families» in which 85 codes aggregated: school concept, (12) codes, local area (15 codes), new information technologies (15 codes), aims of the project (16 codes), how to carry out the project (10 codes)and the difficulty of the project (17 codes). Generally we noted a strong interest in the Didaduezero project, due to a proposal of cooperation between two types of subjects that already knew each other, but had not yet directly interacted with one another through a shared project (in Table 3 it is possible to look at the most significant ideas related to individual households). Training agency Local area «glue» Knowledge maker Local area promoter

school

Difficulty in realizing real part partnership Structural rigidity/Bureaucracy Lack of time and energy by teachers Culture/Tradition Local economy/Tourism

local area

Environment/Nature Solidarity relations Publicity/Low cost visibility Futile and «distracting» mean

Information technologies (Web and social network)

Exchange and co-construction of knowledge environment Lack of critical content re-elaboration Motivational tool (teaching) Transversal lesson method Provide technology skills to students Increase minors knowledge of local area

aims of the project

Make student s active producers Promote local area Increase social network

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Computer and IT not intended as object of study, but as application tools how to carry out the project

Active and collaborative work Public visibility of artifact’s made at school Time-consuming design\work times Synergy between local area and school in person and online Lack of collaboration Distrust of information technology

Project difficulties

Lack of time Intergenerational Gap (cultural and technological) Lack of technical computing performance tools Poor computer literacy

Table 3

Summary of the most significant concepts arising from the focus group textual analysis.

In addition to focus groups, we carried out video-interviews with the main representatives of various local offices, both during the actual implementation of the project and once we completed the products created in class. The aim was to monitor the work in progress and to understand if the thoughts of the subjects changed when moving from theory to practice. From the video-documentary one can observe that the initial fears, regarding the feasibility of the Didaduezero project and the use of new information technologies in teaching, have vanished. Among the most important aspects that arose at the end of the project was that social software, when used conscientiously and with the proper scope and reason (according to Didaduezero’s project methodology), is beneficial for integrating formal and informal learning and bringing kids closer to the potential of the web by making them creators of useful resources for the entire community. In particular, we observed that, on the one-hand there was an increase in motivation and involvement of minors (even those who usually have relationship and cognitive difficulties) in educational activities, and on the other hand, students felt like protagonists of what they were doing and therefore more responsible for the success of these projects. The learning process then becomes more significant. It seems that the use of web 2.0 for teaching purposes does not only increase IT and technology literacy in students, but it also activates new forms of creative intelligence and collaboration between peers and between teachers and students.

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It is clear that computers, technology and the internet can be useful tools for any discipline and should not be relegated to mere computer laboratory activities in computer science. Thanks to the products created in the Didaduezero project the connection between school and the local territory has become stronger, both in terms of knowledge of its characteristics and of the positive effects for the communities themselves. The communities have been enriched by new multimedia resources (created and shared online by kids) accessible to everyone and able to further enhance local area value and social networks. It should also be noted that there was another important result achieved by this project; the involvement\contagion that occurred in the families of the students. Parents in fact supported school work, they facilitated the discovery of local resources and could monitor their own sons and daughters activities step by step by simply going online. The work of the various schools and the documentation of the entire project implementation process (with text contribution and video interviews) were collected together into a dedicated web space accessible by everyone.2

Conclusion From the analysis of data collected, it’s possible to state that the use of Web 2.0 according to the suggested model and applied in a school setting has the following effects: – promotes the students’ integration of formal and informal knowledge (students’ perception of the creative component in the integration of formal and informal learning 62%; improved portion in the quality of their own learning 65%); – increases the resources available to teachers (23,87% average increase perceived by the teachers on a personal level from the use of social software and Web 2.0 with favourable implications in the classroom); – facilitates the realization of learning paths based on real issues (perception of teachers on the methodological innovation brought about by the use of 2.0 technology: 62%, learning through discovery, 80% introduction of problem solving methods for problem solving, simulation and case analysis); 2

http://www.iprase.tn.it/didaduezero/index.php.

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– characterizes the central role of learning with respect to the importance of teaching (students’ perception of satisfaction and value of Web 2.0 and social software in relation to itself, 62% a lot-very much, in relation to the other 57% a lot-very-much); – increases collaborative participation and motivation of the students (according to teachers 76%, according to students 87%); – increases among teachers the integration between methodological and technological competences (although clearly the need for technology support by an experienced teacher is needed 71%, a lot very-much). With respect to the research objectives of developing socio-cultural empowerment in the community, the planned introduction of 2.0 technology between the school and local territory highlights the following summary results: – actively involves the various actors (fairly well for 62% of teachers, a lot-very much for 24%, improves knowledge about and the relationship with their own local community for 69% of all students); – activates processes of participation and communication (according to the main categories that emerged from the focus groups in relation to culture and traditions, the environment, the economy and a network of solidarity); – favours the co-planning process (the positive aspects that emerged from the focus groups: increased synergy between school-local territory, rates active and collaborative work between partners, increases visibility for the entire community; critical aspects: bureaucratic timetables that do not foresee these working arrangements, red tape); – facilitates the processes of socio-cultural entertainment (according to the categories that emerged from the focus groups, improves participation, improves collective responsibility and improves communication between actors and different contexts.

References Anderson, T. (2008). The theory and practice of online learning (2nd ed.). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press. Atwell, G. (2010). Can Web 2.0 and Social Software Help Transform How We Measure Quality, in Teaching, Learning, and Research? Changing Cultures in Higher Education, I, 433-446. Barron, B. (2006). Interest and self-sustained learning as catalysts of development: A learning ecologies perspective, Human Development, 49, 193-224.

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Bogdan, R.C., & Biklen, S.K. (1992). Qualitative Research for Education, Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Bond, D., & Walker, D. (1991). Experience and Learning: Reflection at Work, Gelong: Deakin University Press. Boss, S., & Krauss, J. (2007). Reinventing project-based learning: Your field guide to realworld projects in the digital age. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education. Bull, G., Thompson, A., Searson, M., Garofalo, J., Park, J., Young, C., & Lee, J. (2008). Connecting informal and formal learning: Experiences in the age of participatory media. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 8(2) (http://www.citejournal. org/vol8/iss2/editorial/article1.cfm). Castoldi, M. (2011). Progettare per competenze. Percorsi e strumenti, Roma, Carocci. Conole, G., & Alevizou, P. (2010). A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education, Milton Keynes: Open University. Cormier, D. (2008). Rhizomatic education: community as curriculum, Innovate 4.5 (http:// www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=550). Cunningham, B. (1976). Action Research: Towards a Procedural Model. Human Relations, 29 (3), 215-238. Dabbagh, N., & Kitsantas, A. (2012). Personal Learning Environments, social media, and self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning. The Internet and Higher Education, 15 (1), 3-8. Elliott, J. (1991). Action Research for Educational Change. Buckingham: Open University Press. Ferri, P. (2011). Nativi Digitali. Milano: Mondadori. Gilbert, K.R. (2001). The emotional nature of qualitative research. B. Raton, FL: CRC Press. Greenhow, C., Robelia, B., & Hughes, J. (2009). Web 2.0 and classroom research: What path should we take now?. Educational Researcher, 38 (44), 246-259. Ito, M. et al. (2008). Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media. Chicago: McArthur Foundation, 29 (http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley. edu/report). Jenkins, H. (2010). Culture partecipative e competenze digitali. Milano: Guerini. Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, P., Robinson, A.J., & Weigel, M. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on line (http://www.digitallearning. macfound.org/). Kaneklin, C., Piccardo, C., & Scaratti, G. (2010). La ricerca-azione: cambiare per conoscere nei contesti organizzativi. Milano: Raffaello Cortina. Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (1988). The Action Research Reader. Third edition. Victoria: Deakin University Press. Lichtner, M. (2004). Valutare lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;apprendimento. Teorie e metodi. Milano: FrancoAngeli. McTavish, M. (2009). I get my facts from the Internet: A case study of the teaching and learning of information literacy in in-school and out-of-school contexts. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 9 (1), 3-28. Orefice, P. (2006). La Ricerca Azione Partecipativa: teorie e pratiche. Napoli: Liguori. Petrucco, C. (Ed.) (2010). Didattica dei Social Software e del Web 2.0. Padova: Cleup.

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Polany, M. (1979). La conoscenza inespressa. Roma: Armando. Pourtois, J.P. (1995). La ricerca-azione in pedagogia. In E. Becchi & B. Vertecchi (Eds.), Manuale critico di sperimentazione e della ricerca educativa. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Reber, A.S. (1993). Implicit Learning and Tacit Knowledge: An Essay on Cognitive Unconcius. New York: Oxford University Press. Siemens, G. (2006). Knowing Knowledge (www.knowingknowledge.com). Tan, Jennifer Pei-Ling (2009). Digital kids, analogue students: a mixed methods study of students’ engagement with a school-based Web 2.0 learning innovation. Thesis (http:// eprints.qut.edu.au/30396/). Trombetta, C., & Rosiello, L. (2000). La ricerca-azione. Il modello di Kurt Lewin e le sue applicazioni. Trento: Erickson. Wenger, E. (2007). Comunità di pratica. Milano: Raffaello Cortina.

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Could Technology encourage Innovation in School? An overview of «Cl@ssi 2.0» Project in Lombardia (Italy) Pier Cesare Rivoltella*, Andrea Garavaglia**, Simona Ferrari*** and Paolo Ferri**** Catholic University of Milan. E-mail: piercesare.rivoltella@unicatt.it University of Milano Bicocca. E-mail: andrea.garavaglia@unimib.it Catholic University of Milan. E-mail: simona.ferrari@unicatt.it University of Milano Bicocca. E-mail: paolo.ferri@unimib.it

ABSTRACT

* ** *** ****

In this article we discuss the research model adopted in Lombardia region (northern part of Italy) to develop «Classi 2.0» project, a national innovation programme into which primary and secondary schools were asked to introduce and integrate technological devices in the classrooms. The aim of the project was developing innovative model for supporting teaching and learning processes from different points of view: pedagogical, organizational and technological ones. The article refers about project organization and main outcomes. Keywords: teachers’ training; digital schooling; technology innovation.

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Bridging the gap «Digital natives» debate (Prensky, 2001; Gasser & Palfrey, 2008; Ferri, 2008, 2011; Livingstone et al., 2011; Rivoltella, 2012a; 2012b), despite any considerations about their real existence, has shown what we have to consider about actual schooling and youngsters learning styles, that is the widening gap between formal and informal education, a digital divide between adults and youngsters themselves. In Italy, in the last 15 years, investments on technology were lacking (only 7% of classrooms had an Internet connection, ISTAT 2010), and so were educational policies about digital infrastructures and teachers training programs, except for the commendable «Digital School» project carried out by INDIRE, the National Institute of Ministry of Education for Teaching and Educative Research Documentation. Furthermore, since the average age of Italian teachers is between age 54 and 56, and their technological literacy is limited (often not their fault), it is evident where the digital divide is mainly positioned. We are convinced, and «Classi 2.0» Project — about which this article is — demonstrate this, that it is not technology in itself which modifies educational processes, but concrete practices and work of teachers and students redefining spaces and methods of learning (Moriggi & Nicoletti, 2009), in and outside the school. Communicative and informal practices of the youngsters (Rivoltella, 2006; Ferri & Mantovani, 2008) are defining a new conceptual and operational scenario with respect to learning processes able to bridge the gap between «encyclopedic» and «participatory» teachers’ styles. Digital technologies offer a chance for breaking the schemes of traditional schooling, improving a more equalitarian and democratic educational experience. Learning by doing and discovery (Dewey, 1938) with concrete experiences and reflection on these practices, as well as rational revisions of the acquired evidence, could offer digitally literate students and teachers a critical and more tolerant approach to knowledge acquisition. Inside formal learning practices, a «logic for scientific discovery» is needed to construct a learning strategy and an educational setting which at the same time could be cooperative and able to develop individual knowledge and potentiality.

«Cl@ssi 2.0»: research design, methodology, tools «Cl@ssi 2.0» Project, at the national level, asked regional referents to support school in: 254

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– introducing ICT into the classrooms in a constructive way; – extending virtual learning environment trough the identification of appropriate tools (Learning Management System, web 2.0 tools, etc.); – stimulating the production of digital contents; – personalizing students’ learning processes; – developing collaborative processes among teachers; – evaluating informal learning in its relationship with formal one; – increasing parents involvement in school life. Before analysing the results this project had in Lombardia, we present the model of research and intervention provided by the research team of the universities — Catholic University of Milan and University of Milano Bicocca — in charge of the project. That is talking about actors, coaching plan, and teaching materials we implemented. Research Actors: roles and actions The research team fixed some precise tasks: provide alternative models to one-to-one computing (Negroponte, 1999; Penuel, 2006); stimulate effectiveness ways for didactical planning (Burke & Burke-Samide, 2004) focused on the central role of the student (Freinet, 1967; Sandholtz, Ringsta & Dwyer, 1997); try to imagine new ways of learning (Tremblay, 2010); foster the relationship between technologies and teaching methodologies in the classrooms. The three partners involved in the Project, worked together according this distribution of the different functions: 1. Regional Office (USR-Lombardia) of the Ministry of Education: – coordination of the project; – organization of general meetings with teachers and headteachers; – communication plan; – resolution of specific problems of individual schools; – financial plan; – monitoring the coherence of the project among the national and local level. 2. Universities: – scientific supervision of the project; – coaching activities in the schools; – organization, management, supervision of the work of 12 coaches (one for each school) engaged for the field-part of the research; 255

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– teachers’ seminars management; – teaching materials production. 3. INDIRE1 Regional level: – documentation (providing tools and supporting schools for that); – management of a online space2 to support working groups at a communicational, educational and documentation level; – organize workshops aimed to develop documentation. During the first year of the project (September 2009 – August 2010), this research team worked in an horizontal way, centered on two working groups: a management group and the universities work team. The management group had 6 institutional member (two representatives from each institution) with the specific task of analyse and monitoring the project, develop action planning, indicate tools and guidelines for the 12 «2.0 classrooms» involved. In particular, this group was focused on two functions: – support design process; – organize teachers’ training about methodologies and new technologies. The universities work team, starting from the indications of the management group, selected coaches promoting expertise exchange among them. Aiming to this, coaches meetings were organized for presenting and discussing general guidelines of the work and supporting each coach in his own work customization to the specific requests of the different schools. In the other two years (2011-2012) this horizontal way of working has been gradually replaced by a more hierarchical one. The reason why was communication problems emerged in the institutional working group and to make less redundant the project organization. In these last two years a Scientific Committee was held for managing better all project’s actions. Coaching plan Following the national guidelines about the role of the coaches in the project, the model developed in Lombardia focused on two directions: on 1

INDIRE (Istituto Nazionale per la Documentazione dell’Insegnamento e della Ricerca Educativa) is the Special Agency of Italian Ministry of Education in charge of the documentation of schools activities and of inservice teachers’ training. The Institute, since 2000, promoted the main wide nation actions for implementing technologies in the schools. During the three years of the project, teachers were supported by PuntoEdu, the on line learning environment developed by INDIRE, and a wikispace for sharing experiences.

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one hand supporting teachers’ reflective process (analysing their actions, reflecting on styles and roles in the learning process and designing teaching activities — Schön, 1983; Altet et al., 2002); on the other hand, trying to match the national framework with the local contest. The coaching activities was planned in five main actions: 1. team work meetings, into which decide action strategies of the project; 2. teachers’ training seminars, into which a theoretical framework defined by the universities, provided operational stimulus for teaching and their classroom work. The themes of the 6 seminars has been: planning and design educative action, setting design and teaching method, documentation, virtual learning environment, hardware and software for teaching and learning, evaluating in digital classroom; 3. meetings between schools where teachers take an active and participative role in experience exchange process. A preparatory work done by teachers and their coaches during school visits and through online work was helpful for these meetings planning; 4. school visits. Each year, coaches were asked to visit 3 o 4 time their schools working with the teachers for developing activities each of the classrooms choose. These visits were held with two aims: make possible that coaches could guide teachers in developing and contextualizing ideas carried out in teachers’ training seminar; support the preparatory work for meetings planning; 5. online network. Each of the previous actions were followed up by online activities (mailing, meetings via Skype, online communication in dedicated spaces). Teaching materials For supporting this process the two universities developed some materials for coaches and teachers actions: 1. a Masterplan providing, divided into the following steps to guide the preparation of the project: – Needs analysis (to guide teachers in collecting and define student’s needs as a first step of programming); – Project Framework (general purpose, specific objectives, description, methodology, setting); – Technological choices (features of technology in relation to the objectives of the teaching-learning project); 257

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– Actions Storyboard (for micro-planning); – Evaluation plan (choosing objectives and indicators for teacher’s evaluation of their own action in the classroom); 2. a Repertory of online resources; 3. Training Materials: video and slide of the seminars, study materials. In particular a framework for digital classroom setting building (Garavaglia & Ferrari, 2012); 4. Tools for process evaluation and assessment data collection.

Results and critical issues During the three years of experimentation in schools, the research team has analysed several aspects about the organizational model and the outcomes of the didactic experience in the classrooms. This work was made using the Sequential Exploratory Design (Creswell et al., 2003), a mixedmethods methodology including a «qual-quan» sequence with a final interpretation stage.3 The data presented in this paper were gathered from: qualitative analysis of reports made by coaches about their meetings with the teachers envolved in the project; analysis of e-mail communication between teachers and coaches; answers recorded in the surveys used for the auto-evaluation process. Quantitative results are based on the answers to three anonymous surveys: the first one was administrated to students and is representative (the sample cover 95,10% of population); the second one was administrated to parents and is representative for 11 of 12 schools (covering 85,22% of population); the third one was administrated to teachers and covers only the 65,85% of population, so it’s not possible to set if it is representative (from qualitative results it’s possible to argue that teachers less disposed to the project didn’t answer to the survey). Organizational model The project was characterized by an high level of collaboration among the Regional Office of Ministry of Education and the two universities: the 3

The Sequential Exploratory Design follows the scheme «QUAL data collection – QUAL data analysis – quan data collection – quan data analysis – interpretation of entire analysis», where QUAN stand for qualitative as first primary explorative step, then quantitative and final interpretation (Creswell et al., 2003).

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integration of roles, functions and goals was negotiated and respected by all actors involved without difficulty. Another feature well appraised was the coach role, especially for bringing together the teachers for three years, informing and supporting them for social projecting at the level of classroom staff. The most critical aspect was the one-year stop of the coach support caused by the interruption of the agreement between universities and Ministry of Education: although the informal coaching that during the year was held by the coaches, this stop caused in the teachers a feeling of abandon and serious educational continuity issues because some coaches couldn’t confirm the collaboration after the interruption. Finally, notwithstanding the high level of collaboration cited above, the lack of accurate information led to an excessive staff overwork. Didactic results The project was generally considered useful from every actor involved, in fact the positive answers (5 and 6 values of a 6-grade likert scale) reached the 57,5% of student and the 56,9% of parents and of teacher samples. As shown in figure 1, only less than 4% choose negative answers (1 and 2 values). Analyzing students’ answer it’s possible to affirm that there was 45 40 35 30 25

Students Teachers Parents

20 15 10 5 0

1= not useful

Figure 1

6 = totally useful

Comparison of students, teachers and parents’ answers to the survey question: «What is your evaluation of the project?» (Percentage).

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a significant effect of technology overload on project evaluation at the p < .05 level for the five conditions [F(4, 225) = 5,131, p = 0.001], and this is the reason why the students who declared a bigger overload didn’t evaluate the project as totally useful for them. Parents seem highlight the benefits of the project, in fact the 64,6% declare that they are available to buy their children a digital device as school equipment. On the other hand, the most important feature highlighted from teachers, is the impact of the project on lesson management, indeed 22,8% of them said it’s greatly improved and 45,6% declared it’s slightly improved. As shown in figure 2 only 5,1% of teachers said it’s slightly worsened. 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 I am not able to respond

Figure 2

Worsened greatly

Worsened sligthly

No change, it’s the same

Improved sligthly

Improved greatly

Anwser to question: «Is lesson management changed during this exprience?» (Percentage).

The project was also an important opportunity to test new didactic methodologies in the classroom, while 70,9% of teacher tried to used new methodologies also in other classrooms with poorest technology equipment. The most used assignments proposed to students were online research (81%), digital report production and activities of presentation (64,6%) and cognitive maps building (54,4%). Students put in evidence that technologies helped significantly them to study in depth (54%), to make outlines and summaries (53,2%), to link ideas across disciplines (44,2%) and to work in a tidy and organized environment 260

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(43,8%). This clearly implies an increasing internet use, so that parents declared to pay more attention than before to media education issues as rights and responsibility on the web. Critical issues The project presented some critical issues, as the lack of class boards involvement that affected many problems in meetings management and coaching. This was caused by a high teachers turnover and to the fact that information about the project wasn’t given (as on the contrary should be) since the first year of the experimentation. The situation gradually got worse because teachers less skilled with technology weren’t able to deal with technology overload and widespread staff overwork. On the other hand students realized teachers had different levels of skill in the use of technology and declared an impressive gap on lesson management for each class.

Evaluating the Project: final considerations An evaluation of «Classi 2.0» project, as it was developed in Lombardia, could be organized in four main focuses. First of all, on the side of project’s management, we have to point out some critical issues. The project’s staff — as we saw — was made of scholars and researchers of two universities (Milano Bicocca and Catholic of Milan), people by the Regional Office of Ministry of Education, teachers working at the local seat of INDIRE. Such complexity produced problems about the reciprocal role of each actor, redundancy between INDIRÈs and universities’ actions, problems on communication and administrative sides. From the technological point of view, we have to note the stereotypal behavior of the schools participating to the project. What we mean is that, when the school had to choose how spend money for acquiring technology, they opted for the «one to one» model, designing a setting made of an Interactive Whiteboard and a netbook for each student. The reason why of this fact has probably to be found in social discourses dominating the social area at the time of the project. More precisely, in Italy, the Ministry of Education policies and the newspapers debate on technologies in school were based on Interactive Whiteboards protagonism and the efficay of Ne261

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groponte’s «saturation principle». Economical push of IT providers fostered these orientations not allowing the schools could be more free in imaging new and different mix of technologies for the classrooms. On the teachers’ training side, the research team adopted with good results the «BLEC model» (Rivoltella, 2012b) developed by CREMIT, the Catholic University Centre of research about Media and Technology Education. This is a training system based on Blended Learning, that is a «brick and click» education strategy (Pittinsky, 2003) made of a mix of on line and classroom activities. Online activities was organized with reference to Gilly Salmon (2000; 2002) «e-tivities»: micro-activities, developed by teachers and uploaded in a digital portfolio, assessed by a coach. Coaching is the third very important aspect of the model. Each school’s teachers had a coach whose target was: managing groupwork in presence, moderating discussion in virtual classroom, providing resources for reflective learning about the practices each teacher was developing in his/her didactic activity. Finally, project’s evaluation. Ministry of Education, at this level, imagined to build up a experimental setting aiming to verify if technology could foster students’ learning in mathematics and language learning. The hypothesis was to find, in each school, a experimental «technological» classroom (the one involved in «Classi 2.0» project) and a «non technological» one, for comparing how the matter were in both of them. According to us this aim was wrong: it is almost impossible, in a such complex setting as the learning one, to determine exactly if technology (and not motivation, curiosity, teachers’ performance, and so on) is effecting learning or not. Despite this, in our perception it produced a distorsion of the original aim of the project, that was imaging models of innovation for technology integration in the classrooms, and not measuring the impact of technology on students’ learning. Starting from these remarks, what we try to do in this final part of the article is to describe some of the research evidences about technology innovation in school. When technology is integrated in the classroom, it modifies the space organization. This means that the traditional desks distribution is changing, such as the way according to which teachers and students move and work in the setting itself. Freinet said that if we change the classroom we change education: so this is a first interesting outcome of the project. Some indications are coming also in order to how technology has to be introduced in the classrooms. First of all, technology is mainly «classroom 262

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centered» and not «outdoor oriented». What we mean is that teachers of our research prefer to work with technologies in the classroom, more than imagine how mobile devices or a mobile lab could help students’ outdoor work in authentic situations. This is an aspect on to which scholars have to work, for helping teachers to change their orientation. Second, we saw that teachers prefer new media (computer and tablet) more than traditional media (video, radio, image) even if in their new digital releases. Teachers didn’t think to build an editing lab in the classroom, they didn’t choose to buy videocameras, lights sets, tools for audio and video production. Their focus is on «individual» (one to one) and «informatics» (PC) dimension: on the contrary, for us it’s important to help them to develop an ecologic perspective into which all «new» and «old» media could be considered. Finally, the project showed that planning is more present than regulation, that is teachers are more concerned with masterplans realization than with setting management during the lesson. In the future we have to imagine how to coach them to change this orientation, working on storyboards indicating what teacher has to do in the classroom, more than on the traditional ex ante planning activities.Finally, if we should consider what our research has to suggest to policymakers for introducing technologies in the classrooms, we could say: mobile labs for bridging formal and informal environments, what is inside and outside the school; multimedia production centres in the classrooms; repositories into which provide the availability of didactic storyboards.

References Altet, M., Paquay, L., & Perrenoud, P. (2002). Formateurs d’enseignants, quelle professionnalisation?. Bruxelles: De Boeck-Université. Burke, K., & Burke-Samide, B. (2004). Required changes in the classroom environment: It’s a matter of design. The Clearing House, 77 (6), 236-239. Creswell, J.W., Plano Clark, V., Gutmann, M., & Hanson, W. (2003). Advanced mixed methods designs. In A. Tashakkori & C. Teddlie (Eds.), Handbook of mixed method research in the social and behavioral sciences (pp. 209-240). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education, New York: Collier Books. Ferri, P., & Mantovani, S. (2006). Bambini e computer. Alla scoperta delle nuove tecnologie a scuola e in famiglia. Milano: RCS Etas. Ferri, P. (2008), La scuola digitale. Come le nuove tecnologie cambiano la formazione. Milano: Bruno Mondadori. Ferri, P. (2011). Nativi digitali. Milano: Bruno Mondadori.

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Ferri, P., & Mantovani, S., (2008). Digital Kids. Milano: RCS Etas. Freinet, C. (1967). L’Éducation du travail. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Garavaglia, A., & Ferrari, S. (2012). A model for defining digital classroom settings. Procedia: Social & Behavioral Sciences, 46, 1983-1987. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.05.415. Gasser, U., & Palfrey, J., (2008). Born Digital – Connecting with a Global Generation of Digital Natives. New York: Perseus Publishing. Retrieved from http://www.heacademy. ac.uk/assets/York/documents/ourwork/research/NSS_2007_optional_items_statistical_report.pdf. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: NY University Press. Jonassen, D.H. (2006). Modeling with Technology: Mindtools for Conceptual Change. In S. Livingstone, L. Haddon, G.E. Goerzic, & K. Olfsson, EU kids on-line: final report, LSE. Available from http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/39351/. Livingstone, S. et al. (2011). EU Kids Online Final Report, EU Kids Online - short report. London: London School of Economics and Political Science. Moriggi, S., & Nicoletti, G.(2009). Perché la tecnologia ci rende umani. La carne nelle sue riscritture sintetiche e digitali. Milano: Sironi. Negroponte, N. (1999). Being Digital. New York: Knopf. Penuel, W.R. (2006). Implementation and Effects Of One-to-One Computing Initiatives: A Research Synthesis. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 5191 (3), 329-348. Pittinsky, S.M. (2003). The Wired Tower. Perspectives on the Impact of the Internet on Higer Education. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9 (5). Lincoln: NCB University Press. Rivoltella, P.C. (2006). Screen Generation. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Rivoltella, P.C. (2012a). Neurodidattica. Insegnare al cervello che apprende. Milano: Raffaello Cortina. Rivoltella, P.C. (2012b). Beyond Digital natives: European Research on Media education; Challenges of Technology and Pedagogical Issues. Educational Technology, 2, MarchApril, pp. 25-29. Rivoltella, P.C., & Modenini, M. (Eds.)(2012). La lavagna sul comodino. Scuola in ospedale e istruzione domiciliare nel sistema lombardo. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Salmon, G. (2000). E-Moderating. The key to Teaching and Learning Online. London: Kogan Page. Salmon, G. (2002). E-tivities. The Key to Active Online Learning. London: Kogan Page. Sandholtz, J.H., Ringsta, C., & Dwyer, D.C. (1997). Teaching with technology: Creating student-centered classrooms. New York: Columbia University Press. Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books. Tremblay, E. (2010). Educating the Mobile Generation – Using personal cell phones as audience response systems in post-secondary science teaching. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, 29 (2), 217-227. Retrieved from http://www. editlib.org/p/32314.

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Media and technologies in teacher training The SIREM proposal integrating institutional and cultural perspectives Laura Messina* and Pier Cesare Rivoltella**

ABSTRACT

* SIREM Vice-president, Department of Education Sciences of University of Padua, Via Beato Pellegrino, 28 – 35137 Padua, Italy. E-mail: laura.messina@unipd.it ** SIREM President, Department of Education of Catholic University of Milan, Largo Fra Agostino Gemelli, 1 – 20123 Milan, Italy. E-mail: piercesare.rivoltella@unicatt.it

This article presents an ‘open’ proposal aimed at outlining the strategies to incorporate technology into pre-service education, which we hope could be discussed and improved on, but most of all tested in the field. Moreover the goal of the proposal is to promote communication between national research, institutions and political entities, in order that they assume the joint responsibility to tackle the issue of technology and media integration in teacher training in a ‘rational’, systematic way. Keywords: media and technology; teacher training; higher education.

General issues At a time when education policies in our country are re-organising teacher training in terms of time and of method, it seems important for Edizioni Erickson – Trento

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us at SIREM1 to define what the role of media and technology is in this area. We should remember that the history of this field in Italy over the past thirty years has been somewhat chequered, so to speak. On the one hand it has suffered from significant delay, compared to other countries: in Italy there has been neither the integration of Media Literacy as in Canada since the early eighties (Masterman, 1985), nor the in-service support of special agencies, such as CLEMI in France or the British Film Institute and the BECTA in the UK (Rivoltella, 2005a). On the other hand, since the first Programme of Instructional Technology Development (PSTD – Programma di Sviluppo delle Tecnologie Didattiche) 1985, the Italian Ministry of Education (MIUR) has taken significant measures for the introduction of technology in school, heavily investing in teachers’ ITC skills. As has been shown on several occasions by the monitoring of initial teacher training carried out by the agency formerly called INDIRE in PuntoEdu (Rivoltella, 2005b; 2005c), this investment has produced results, if, as it seems, teachers’ skills in using computers have grown. However it has also been shown that much still remains to be done in relation to the development of a genuinely technological culture that consists not only in teachers’ ability to use media and technology in their own teaching practice, but to understand media cultures, especially those close to young people, to promote the apprehension of messages, and to be expert guides in the responsible production of media messages through the languages that are now used in their making (Rivoltella & Ferrari, 2010). These demands are even more urgent today in so far as the development of digital media and the spread of Web 2.0 and social networks have facilitated the reconfiguration of the social and cultural meaning of media tools: the paradigm shift, if we can so put it, is from the media as instruments and environments (two metaphors that have dominated the language of reflection on media and technologies over the last two decades) to the media as the connective tissue of our lives (Silverstone, 2009). In the light of this shift, the tasks of schools are also changing. No longer is it a question of making room for one of the many ‘educational actions’ 1

SIREM is the acronym of Italian Research Society on Education and Media. It was founded in 2007 with the purpose di promote in Italy the interdisciplinary research on the following principal themes: Media and minors; Youth media consumption; Media and learning processes; E-learning; Educational media production; Media quality evaluation; Media and teacher training; Media and teaching methods; ICT literacy; Media education; Instructional technologies; Media ethics; Media and lifelong learning; Media and socio-cultural animation; Media and emerging professions (http://www.sirem.org).

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that in recent years we have asked schools to take responsibility for, but rather to understand that today much of our behaviour and actions as citizens is indeed mediated by the media. Concluding a work of particular significance, Kirschner and Davis (2003, p. 146) argue that «as long as you continue to think of the computer and computer networks as being something special in education, then they will never become “NORMAL”». With regard to our universities, we have the impression that it will take some time for this to happen, but it would be a great success if we could think of technology not only as a device for e-Learning, but also as a fundamental component of integrated knowledge that should be a common heritage of all educators involved in teacher training, fulfilling the mission of universities to «conserve, deepen, increase and share the knowledge that a society considers necessary for its preservation and advancement in time» (Cantoni & Esposito, 2004, p. 5). This, however, is likely to be increasingly distorted by purely structural ‘revolutions’, pursuing the neo-capitalistic logic of «marketization» (Battistelli, 2006) — «education for profit» according to Nussbaum (2011) — although this ideology has already shown, dramatically, its economic, social and cultural (and ethical) perversion. Our proposal, presented in these pages, moves from this awareness: the goal is to promote communication between national research, institutions and political entities, in order that they assume the joint responsibility to tackle the issue of technology and media integration in teacher training in a ‘rational’, systematic way.

The institutional axis: an ‘open’ model for media and technologies integration in universities2 On the institutional side, our proposal is the result of the elaboration of a model designed by Kay (2006), aimed at summarizing the strategies used to incorporate technology into pre-service education. Considering both our reality and other researches, we have included in this model variables which we consider as essential though they are in addition to those examined by Kay. In Figure 1 we represent Kay’s variables, in normal font and between quotation marks, and, in italics, the variables we added. This is an ‘open’ 2

The content of this paragraph is taken from an essay by Messina (2012).

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proposal which we hope could be discussed and improved on, but most of all tested in the field.

Target Needs “Access”

“All” Subject “Courses”

“Single Course” “Workshop” “Multimedia”

Standard

“Authentic Tasks” + “Modelling” + Adoption

Policy Leadership

“Preservice Teachers” “Faculty” “Mentor Teachers”

University Centres Beliefs “Attitude” + Ability + Motivation Emotion Knowledge (TPACK)

“Effective Use” Competences

Evaluation

Figure 1

An open model for the integration of media and technologies in teacher training (from Kay, 2006, with new entries) (Source: Messina, 2012).

The top right-hand corner of the diagram shows a variable common to the whole model, i.e. Needs Targets3 and, immediately after, four system variables which the integration of media and technology in teacher training must take into account: in addition to “access” already included in Kay’s model (2006), Standards, Policies and University Centres. Kay (2006) puts on a higher order “Access” — referring to the availability for use of technologies and the assistance in their use — as it is considered to be an essential variable to design or experience education programmes for teachers. The same observation has to be made for the other three system variables we have added. What is more, unlike in many other countries, as far as Italy is concerned these variables still have to be built into the system. As to Standards, the particular moment education is facing in our country, subsequent to MIUR decree n. 249 of 10/09/2010 on the requirements and the procedures for future initial teacher training — which specifies that «the acquisition of digital competences foreseen in the Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December

We refer to education and teaching needs related to present and future generations, to society itself, and to future challenges (i.e., Jenkins, 2009).

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2006» is an integral part of training — provides an opportunity4 to overcome the instrumental/functionalist approach to digital literacy or the simplistic aim of acquiring a European ECDL license or other similar forms of certification that regard a teacher’s technological competences (e.g., Ravotto & Bellini, 2008). Taking into account the fact that in the European framework “Key Competences for Lifelong Learning”, which specifies the «eight key competences necessary for personal fulfilment, active citizenship, social inclusion and employment in a knowledge society», the basic skills in «technology» are clearly distinguished from the «digital competence».5 There are numerous, useful references in this regard and they are clearly discussed by Falcinelli (2009) in her historical reconstruction with her references to the actions promoted by international organizations aimed at the definition of similar standards of competence in ICT, as also by Parmigiani (2011), who focuses on the standards defined by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE, 2008) and UNESCO (2008a). Standards of course are closed to Policies, both at a governmental and at an intermediate level, that is by individual institutions whether at school or at university, to «implement» or «translate government policy to the classroom», which requires teachers to possess a «detailed knowledge and understanding of the National Curriculum programmes of study, level descriptions of end of key stage descriptions when applicable» — where they exist — and, more generally, «understand the policy dimension of the use of ICT for teaching/learning» (Kirschner & Davis, 2003, pp. 137-138). In our view, the above variables are to be related not only to teacher training but, equally crucial, to the training and professional-didactical development of those who should train teachers, that is university professors (Messina & Zambelli, 2007). This latter case continues to present difficulties even in countries with a strong tradition of innovation (OECD/CERI, 2008), and we believe it is essential to address this issue especially to avoid having to deal with the problem of teachers’ media and technological expertise 4

The use of conditional is necessary given the scenario: “educational goals” and “knowledge” identified for the end of the course (MIUR Decree no. 249 of 10/09/2010) are very general and ‘old-fashioned”, and the ‘outcomes and skills (learning outcomes, according to the descriptors of the European qualification – DM 16/03/2007, art. 3, paragraph 7) are determined by individual university courses, with a predictable national variability depending on the resources of university programmes. Nothing, however, prohibits an adjustment in progress. Joint progress report (2010) of the Council and the Commission on the implementation of the “Education and Training 2010”. (http://eurìlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2010:117:0001:0007: IT:PDF) Verified on 10/06/2011.

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when their career has already begun, that is, preparing training plans and ad hoc training courses targeted at those who are in-service, to try to develop those skills that university education does not seem to be able to provide them with. This situation results from the still dominant disciplinary approach regarding knowledge, which finds it hard to accept that methodological and didactical skills are part of professional know-how, first at university and then in future teachers’ training actions. An answer to this problem could be found in the establishment of institutional centres and specifically University Centres (Messina & Zambelli, 2007, pp. 11-12), inter-connected on a national level, which are responsible, in the first place, for the training of university professors,6 for didactics and for the integration of technology in education, and for university research in education, which has never been able to develop properly in Italy (Galliani, 2007). In the Italian scenario, now all universities have set up a centralized centre for evaluation, but few have considered setting up centres for teaching and learning, which are common in other countries and deal naturally also with evaluation. The most common names for such centres are Centre for Teaching and Learning, or Centre for Teaching, Learning and Evaluation in some cases, and in others, with specific reference to technology and media, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, and their task is to respond to the vocation of universities to achieve excellence in teaching and learning, supporting «teachers in their goal to provide the best possible learning experience for students and to develop themselves as teachers».7 The increasingly frequent and explicit reference to technologies can certainly be due to the diffusion of e-learning (but does not exclude technological support for teaching and learning in class). In this regard, we should reflect on the degree to which at university level ICT is indeed often equated in a very narrow way with e-learning. This latter, though prevalently approached with greater attention for its technological and organizational aspects, is treated as if it has miraculous powers in itself. This is not to say, however, that there is a lack of interest in and work on disciplinary teaching (e.g., Ardizzone & Rivoltella, 2003; Cartelli, 2006). 6

Also Galliani (2007) points to this aspect as “critical for our Country, where young researchers are immediately employed in teaching without having any training”. We quote from the website of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology of Northern British Columbia-UNBC (http://www.unbc.ca/ctlt/), but a quick search in Google (“University” and “Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology”) would give us back thousands of occurrences.

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Moving to the bottom of the model shown in Figure 1, we have added an essential element, Evaluation (whose absence is also regretted by Kay, 2006), which is a punctum dolens of research and an extremely intricate matter, but nevertheless addressed in the context we are dealing with, though the emphasis is on school practice (e.g., Calvani, Fini & Ranieri, 2010). With regard to teacher training, various aspects are considered: from the prerequisites necessary for the achievement of standards, in some cases ‘elementary’ (e.g., Banister & Vannatta, 2003; Beard, 2011), to the implementation of the TPACK framework we discuss later (e.g., Angeli & Valanides, 2009; Robertshaw & Gillam, 2010). In the middle part, the left of the diagram refers to strategies, already shown in Kay’s model (2006). In certain realities these are used in conjunction and are examples of how the integration of media and information technology in teacher training can be envisaged: as an object of specific courses [“Single Course”], as happens in the case of teachers responsible for the acquisition of technological and computer skills; as operative knowledge [Workshops], which requires conceptual frameworks or theoretical reference already in place; as an additional teaching support [Multimedia], using, for example, case studies on the use of technology, online courses and e-portfolio; as cross-curriculum [“All” Subject “Courses”], the contents being distributed within individual disciplines in relation to their specific interest and where in all probability the integration between technology and disciplinary knowledge is closer, notwithstanding the support given by generic or basic socio-psycho-pedagogical-didactical courses. The next set, which can be referred to the methods, includes: “Authentic Tasks”, intended in a very broad sense, to include for example the designbased models, but also performance tasks inherent in production; “Modelling”, consisting of the demonstration, through concrete examples, of how technology can be used in classrooms (Kay, 2006); Adoption, a variable that should be inserted as a ‘counterpart’ to modelling — usually understood as an imitation and action performed for teachers in training (Kay, 2006) — and include actions performed by teachers in the integration of technology in their knowledge (Toledo, 2005). The third set refers to actors. Among them we must count “Preservice Teachers”, “Faculty” staff and “Mentor Teachers”, whose cooperation is essential (Karsenti et al., 2002). Another essential element, not covered in Kay’s model (2006), concerns the Leadership, referring to deans and/or head of departments, but also to professors, who thanks to their specific expertise 271

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in the field become reference points, or administrative managers who demonstrate a particular understanding in supporting/promoting technological innovation. This is particularly critical to support and develop the integration of technology into the curricula for teacher training (Strudler & Wetzel, 1999) and to promote, through this integration, the quality of teaching and learning experiences. In Figure 1, the label identifying the Leadership item is slightly misaligned with respect to the parentheses grouping actors, as it is considered as the privileged trait d’union to interact with the system variables (institutional and political organizations) already mentioned. The fourth set pertains to the profile of the actors. At this level, as well as “Attitudes” and “Ability”, research indicates as relevant variables — even though they are often studied in isolation — Beliefs (e.g., Angeli & Valanides, 2008; Anderson & Maninger, 2007), Motivation (e.g., Niederhauser & Perkmen, 2010), Emotion-Affectivity (e.g., Kay, 2007) and Knowledge, here considered in the light of the Mishra and Koehler framework (2006) and consequently specified by the acronym TPACK, which is a «specialized form of knowledge» (Mishra, Koehler & Henriksen, 2011, p. 23), resulting from the «dynamic and transactional relationship between content, pedagogy and technology» (Koehler, Mishra & Yahya, 2007, p. 741). The latter variable is of particular importance, taking into account, on the one hand, the massive ‘disciplinarization’ that characterizes the DM 249 of 10/09/2010 and, on the other hand, the persistent marginalization of the content, that is the disciplinary knowledge — the «missing paradigm» (Shulman, 1986) — from research and reflection on the integration of technology in education. The perspective we have chosen, that of Mishra and Koehler (2006), has the advantage not only of re-shifting the focus on content, but also of addressing the issue of integration from a teacher’s point of view (Messina, 2012; Messina & Tabone, 2011; 2012).

The cultural axis: a syllabus for teacher training on media and technologies? The fifth set refers to the output. Kay (2006) includes “Effective Use” as the expected result of adequately conducted training: we have set next to this Competence, an essential variable today and open to new cultural horizons, unlike “effective use”, which appears too bound up with instrumental/functionalist digital literacy standards. For almost two decades this perspective 272

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has been followed at a European level as a logical choice in the pursuit of certification that somehow could refer back to (adapting it to a teacher’s technological expertise) the model of the ECDL (Midoro, 2007; Calvani, Fini & Ranieri, 2010) — as we have already mentioned when discussing the standard. The limit of all these projects was to work taxonomically, without verifying the concrete sustainability of overly analytical and bureaucratic models. More recently, other approaches have appeared, mainly based on research aimed at verifying in the field the actual needs of teachers and the skills they have to display (Cattaneo & Boldrini, 2007). Here the goal is probably to achieve a balanced response for these two requirements: on the one hand the demands of standards-based certification, and on the other teachers’ actual practices in context. Yet there is more. We also have to correct a technology-centred tendency by opening up to other dimensions. We refer, for example, to the UNESCO standard (2008a) — where the technology literacy approach is interwoven with the knowledge-deepening approach and knowledge creation approach — or comparative studies, in line with UNESCO (2008a), deriving skills from best teaching practices (Kirschner & Davis, 2003), or, especially, recent indications resulting from the work of a UNESCO expert group (2008b), which re-locates Media Education in the sphere of competences, as we shall see below (Rivoltella, 2001). The theme of ‘alphabets’ is a cultural constant of great importance in the debate that has developed in the last fifty years around the role played by orality, and especially writing, in the development of the western mind. To mention just a few, and the most important, contributions, we should remember the work of Havelock (1967), Goody (1977), Ong (1982), Olson and Torrance (1991). All these authors reflect on how literacy is not just a matter of learning how to decode and use graphic symbols, but a psychocognitive problem: writing, as a technology used to construct and share meanings, has produced profound changes in the mind and in human societies. ‘Alphabetic man’ is someone who thinks and acts also in relation to the cognitive skills that writing helps him to develop: the habit of analysis and synthesis, the argumentative orientation of thought, conceptualization, the primacy of sight in cognitive appropriation. The metaphor of the alphabet, especially in our country, worked from the 70s to the 90s as a pedagogical category to interpret other non-phonetic alphabets that have imbued the history of western culture. In those years, while in the background the debate in France was led by Metz and Barthes on the semiotic nature of cinema and by the lesson of structuralism (which invites 273

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us to consider as text any expression of culture, and not necessarily only the written text), the Italian school began to talk of ‘new alphabets’. It worked for photography, cinema, audiovisual creations (Castellani, 1986; Galliani, 1988; Lazotti, 1990; Scaglioso, 1977), and from this theoretical view derived a season of great experimentation, especially in secondary schools. In analogy with this perspective (‘other’ alphabets), many studies in recent time have discovered how other technologies — especially the ‘electronic’ technologies introduced through the digital convergence (Jenkins, 2006) — have come into this picture, bringing about with some changes in it. In this regard come to mind the observations of Meyrowitz (1985) on the relationship between digital media and the sense of place, of de Kerkhove (1991) on the digital brainframe, of Fidler (1997) and of Bolter (1991) on the transformation of writing and media. The result of these studies as regards education and training lies in the identification, on the one hand, of new forms of learning thanks to the diffusion of these media and, on the other, of new skills that individuals should develop to interact with them. We have witnessed, then, a proliferation of literacies, or a progressive semantic extension of the concept beyond the limits of traditional literacy skills: Media Literacy (Rivoltella, 2001; Buckingham, 2003), Information Literacy, Digital Literacy (Rivoltella, 2008), Multiliteracies (Pullen & Cole, 2010). All these contributions, as well as supporting the need for a new framework for skills (Jenkins, 2009) that individuals must develop in order to interface with this complex society and its culture, help to define more clearly a new area of research and educational intervention, which, in the words used by Gee (2011), can be defined NDML (New Digital Media and Learning). His theoretical references are: – Theories of situated cognition, according to which knowledge is not the operational application of standard solutions, but always something distributed and contextual; – The New Literacies Studies, which sustain the need to deal with new forms of ‘literacy’ beyond that promoted by the press; – The New Media Literacy Studies, shifting the focus from critical media content appropriation (Media Literacy) to how to interact pro-actively with the reality of multi-media surrounding people. Precisely in this perspective, it is possible to imagine a syllabus for teacher training in media and technology, which would be connected to 274

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the standard that, hopefully also in our country, should define a range of expected performance abilities shown by aspiring teachers. International research in the field of Media Literacy, as well as official documents of the European Union, shows at least three possible levels of articulation, by now almost ‘classics’ in this field, which should be covered in the syllabus (representing also the levels of educational-teaching intervention in the classroom): alphabetical (knowledge of the tools and codes), critical (capacity for critical reflection on the content), expressive (responsible message production). Useful references in order to fine-tune the syllabus are many. Among the most recent, we can refer to the materials of an international meeting organized by UNESCO (2008b, p. 5) which proposes a framework to outline curricula for the «initial training» and the following «in-service professional development» of teachers, combining technology and media, as «inextricably linked», considering systematically «synergies between them» (UNESCO, 2008b, p. 11) and proposing six content areas: knowledge of specific theories; understanding of communication and information; use and reading of media and information (autonomy and critical thinking); educational strategies (promoting learning in media environment); communication, production and participation; operative knowledge (Pérez Tornero, 2008, pp. 23-27). These documents not only raise an issue of extreme relevance to the establishment of standards and competencies — the inseparability of media and technologies, of tools and languages (Ardizzone & Rivoltella, 2008) — but also provide clear theoretical and practical principles, one of the which states that the integration of media and technology8 covers «all forms of learning and all activities», «affects the entire curriculum and permeates all disciplines» (Pérez Tornero, 2008, p. 18).

References Anderson, S.E., & Maninger, R.M. (2007). Preservice Teachers’ Abilities, Beliefs, and Intentions Regarding Technology Integration. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 37 (2), 151-172. 8

Actually Tornero uses the terms “media” and “information literacy”, also to deal with similar concepts like “digital literacy”, “computer literacy”, “cultural literacy”, “information literacy”, “audiovisual literacy”, “media Education”, “edu-communication”, etc. (Pérez Tornero, 2008, p. 7).

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Angeli, C., & and Valanides, N. (2008). TPCK in Pre-service Teacher Education: Preparing Primary Education Students to Teach with Technology. Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association New York City, March 24-28, 2008 (http://punya.educ.msu.edu/presentations/AERA2008/AngeliValanides_AERA2008.pdf). Verified on 10/06/2011. Angeli, C., &Valanides, N. (2009). Epistemological and Methodological Issues for the Conceptualization, Development, and Assessment of ICT–TPCK: Advances in Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK). Computers & Education, 52 (1), 154-168. Ardizzone, P., & Rivoltella, P.C. (2003). Didattiche per l’e-learning. Roma: Carocci. Ardizzone, P., & Rivoltella, P.C. (2008). Media e tecnologia per la didattica. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Balanskat, A., & Garoia, V. (2010). National/EU policy: 2009/2010 Insight Country Reports. (http://insight.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/policy/policies/2009_country_reports.htm). Verified on 10/06/2011. Banister, S., & Vannatta, R. (2003). Upping the Ante: Developing and Implementing a Mandatory Technology Skills Assessment for Beginning Teacher Education Students. In Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2003 (pp. 3347-3353). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Battistelli, F. (2006). Dalla torre d’avorio alla McUniversity? Lo studente “cliente” e la valutazione dell’università. In C. Mazza, P. Quattrone & A. Riccaboni (Eds.), L’università in cambiamento fra mercato e tradizione (pp. 113-147). Bologna: il Mulino. Beard, M. (2011). Technology Competency Assessment for Pre-Service Teachers. In Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2011 (pp. 1402-1405). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Bolter, D.J. (2001). Writing Space. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (Bolter, D.J., Lo spazio dello scrivere. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2002). Buckingham, D. (2003). Media Education. Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press (Buckingham, D., Media Education. Trento: Erickson, 2006). Calvani, A., Fini, A., & Ranieri, M. (2010). La competenza digitale nella scuola. Modelli e strumenti per valutarla e svilupparla. Trento: Erickson. Cantoni, L., & Esposito, A. (2004). Prefazione. In L. Cantoni & A. Esposito (Eds.), La qualità nella gestione dei progetti eLearning nelle università italiane. Milano-Lugano: CTU-Università degli Studi di Milano and NewMinE Lab (http://unisi-ch.academia.edu/ LorenzoCantoni/Papers/651813/La_qualita_nella_gestione_dei_progetti_di_eLearning_nelle_universita_italiane). Verified on 5/05/2011. Cantoni L., Succi C., Selvitella L., Esposito E., Bianchi F., & Barni S. (2004). L’eLearning nelle università italiane. Una ricerca sulla qualità. Proceedings of Expo e-learning, 2004, Ferrara, Italy (http://www.torvergata.tv/public/rubriche/radD15FCtmp.pdf). Verified on 10/06/2011. Cartelli, A. (2006). TIC e didattica: due esperienze a confronto. In P. Crispiani & P.G. Rossi (Eds.), E-learning: formazione, modelli, proposte (pp. 145-154). Roma: Armando. Castellani L. (1986). Leggere e scrivere audiovisivo. Come conoscere, decodificare, vivere il linguaggio delle immagini nella scuola. Brescia: La Scuola. Cattaneo, A., Boldrini, E. (2007). ICT … Innovazione, competenze, tecnologie. Analisi delle pratiche e professionalità del formatore. Roma: Carocci. 276

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de Kerkhove D. (1991). Brain-frames. Technology, Mind and Business. Utrecht: Bosch & Kreuning (de Kerkhove D., Brainframes. Mente, tecnologia, mercato. Bologna: Baskerville, 1993). Falcinelli, F. (2009). Educazione mediale e formazione iniziale e in servizio degli insegnanti. REM. Ricerche su Educazione e Media, 1(1), 97-106. Fantin, M., & Rivoltella, P.C. (2010). Crianças na era digital: desafios da comunicação e da educação. (http://www.scribd.com/doc/38870648/Criancas-na-era-digital). Verified on 10/06/2011. Fidler, R. (1997). Mediamorphosis. Understanding New Media. New York: Pine Forge Press (Fidler, R., Mediamorfosi. Milano: Guerini, 2000). Galliani L. (1988), Educazione ai linguaggi audiovisivi. Torino: SEI. Galliani, L. (2007). Le nuove forme della didattica in una Università cambiata. Relazione presentata al Convegno Università Italiana, Università Europea, Camerino, 1 febbraio 2007 (http://www.unicam.it/archivio/eventi/incontri_convegni/UniItaEu_010207/documenti/Galliani.pdf). Verified on 10/06/2011. Galliani, L., & Felisatti, E. (Eds.) (2005). Maestri all’Università. Lecce: Pensa Multimedia. Garrison, D.R., & Akyol, Z. (2009). Role of Instructional Technology in the Transformation of Higher Education. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 21 (1), 19-30. Gee, J.P. (2011). New Digital Media and Learning as an Emerging Area and “Worked Examples” as One Way Forward. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. Goody, J. (1977). The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Goody, J., L’addomesticamento del pensiero selvaggio. Milano: FrancoAngeli, 1987). Havelock, E. (1967). Preface to Plato. Princeton: Princeton University Press (Havelock, E., Cultura orale e civiltà della scrittura. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1983). ISTE (2008). NETS for Teachers: Standards. (http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers/ nets-for-teachers-2008.aspx). Verified on 10/06/2011. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press (Jenkins, H., Cultura Convergente. Milano: Apogeo, 2007). Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the Challenge of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (Jenkins, H., Culture partecipative e competenze digitali. Milano: Guerini & Associati, 2010). Karsenti, T., Brodeur, M., Deaudelin, C., Larose, F., & Tardif, M. (2002). Integrating ICT’s in teacher tr@ining: A challenging balance. Paper presented at the 2002 Pan-Canadian Education research Agenda Symposium “Information Technology and Learning”, 30 April - 2 May 2002(http://www.cesc.ca/pceradocs/2002/papers/TKarsenti_TEN.pdf). Verified on 10/06/2011. Kay, R.H. (2006). Evaluating Strategies Used to Incorporate Technology into Preservice Education: A Review of the Literature. Journal of Research on Technology and Education, 38 (4), 383-408. Kay, R.H. (2007). The Impact of Preservice Teachers’ Emotions on Computer Use: A Formative Analysis. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 36 (4), 455-479. Kirschner, P., & Davis, N. (2003). Pedagogic Benchmarks for Information and Communications Technology in Teacher Education. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 12 (1), 125-147. 277

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Kirschner, P., & Selinger, M. (2003). The State of Affairs of Teacher Education with Respect to Information and Communications Technology. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 12(1), 5-17. Koehler, M.J., Mishra, P., & Yahya, K. (2007). Tracing the Development of Teacher Knowledge in a Design Seminar: Integrating Content, Pedagogy, And Technology. Computers & Education, 49, 740-762. Lazotti, L. (1990). Leggere l’immagine. Educazione visiva e processi di apprendimento. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Masterman, L. (1985). Teaching the Media. London: Comedia. Messina, L. (2012). Integrare le tecnologie nella formazione degli insegnanti, in prospettiva istituzionale e cognitiva. In P. Limone (Ed.), Media, tecnologie e scuola (pp. 65-93). Bari: Progedit. Messina, L., & Tabone, S. (2011). Integrating Technology into Instructional Practices: A Training Research-Intervention with In-service Teachers. REM. Research on Education and Media, 3 (1), 141-163. Messina, L., & Tabone, S. (2012). Integrate Technology into Instructional Practices Focusing on Teachers’ Knowledge. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 46, 1015-1027. Messina L., & Zambelli F. (2007). Formazione degli insegnanti e ricerca didattica universitaria. Università e Scuola, XII (1), 2-16. Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No Sense of Place. The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behaviour. New York: Oxford University Press (Meyrowitz, J., Oltre il senso del luogo. Bologna: Baskerville, 1993). Midoro, V. (2007). Literacy for the Knowledge Society. (http://sunsite.informatik.rwthaachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-310/paper02.pdf). Verified on 10/06/2011. Mishra, P., & Koehler, M.J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Integrating Technology in Teacher Knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108 (6), 1017-1054. Mishra, P., Koehler, M.J., & Henriksen, D. (2011). The Seven Trans-disciplinary Habits of Mind: Extending the Tpack Framework Towards 21st Century Learning. Educational Technology, 11 (2), 22-28. New London Group (1996). A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66 (1), 60-92. Niederhauser, D.S., & Perkmen, S. (2010). Beyond Self-efficacy: Measuring Pre-service Teachers’ Instructional Technology Outcome Expectations. Computers in Human Behavior, 26 (3), 436-442. Nussbaum, M.C. (2011). Non per profitto. Bologna: il Mulino. OECD/CERI (2008). ICT and Initial Teacher Training. (http://www.oecd.org/searchResul t/0,3400,en_33873108_33844437_1_1_1_1_37417,00.html). Verified on 10/06/2011. Olson, D., & Torrance, N. (1991). Literacy and Orality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (tr. it., Alfabetizzazione e oralità. Milano: Raffaello Cortina, 1995). Ong, W. (1982). Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen(Olson, D., & Torrance, N.,Oralità e scrittura. Le tecnologie della parola. Bologna: il Mulino, 1988). Parmigiani, D. (2011). ICT and Teacher Education to Build New Learning Environments. REM. Research on Education and Media, 3 (1), 5-24.

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Pérez Tornero, J.M. (2008). Teacher Training Curricula for Media and Information Literacy. Background Strategy Paper. International Expert Group Meeting, Paris, June 2008 (http:// portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=20891&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html). Verified on 10/06/2011. Pullen, D., & Cole, D.R. (2010). Multiliteracies and Technology Enhanced Education. New York: IGI. Ravotto, P., & Bellini, R. (2008), Quali competenze digitali per insegnare al tempo del web 2.0?. Intervento presentato al V Congresso SIe-L (http://www.scribd.com/doc/6504734/ Quali-competenze-digitali-per-insegnare-al-tempo-del-web20). Verified on 10/06/2011. Rivoltella, P.C. (2001). Media Education. Roma: Carocci. Rivoltella, P.C. (2005a). Media Education, Brescia: La Scuola. Rivoltella, P.C. (2005b). PuntoEdu: un modello per il monitoraggio della formazione blended degli insegnanti. Quaderni degli Annali dell’Istruzione, 110-111, 133-161. (http://www. annaliistruzione.it/riviste/quaderni/pdf/SDAPI110111.pdf). Verified on 10/06/2011. Rivoltella, P.C. (2005c). Strumenti e metodi per l’analisi dell’interazione online di docenti e tutor. Quaderni degli Annali dell’Istruzione, 110-111, 162-169. (http://www.annaliistruzione.it/riviste/quaderni/pdf/SDAPI110111.pdf). Verified on 10/06/2011. Rivoltella, P.C. (Ed.) (2008). Digital Literacy. Tools and Methodologies for the Information Society. Hershey, PA: IGI. Rivoltella, P.C., & Ferrari, S. (2010). A scuola con i media digitali. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Robertshaw, M.B., & Gillam, R.B. (2010). Examining the Validity of the TPACK Framework from the Ground up: Viewing Technology Integration through Teachers’ Eyes. In D. Gibson & B. Dodge (Eds.), Proceedings of the Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2010 (pp. 3926-3931). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Scaglioso, C. (1977). Il cinema nella scuola e la scuola nel cinema. Firenze: Esperienze. Shulman, L.S. (1986). Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching. Educational Researcher, 15 (2), 4-14. Silverstone, R. (2009). Mediapolis. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Strudler, N., & Wetzel, K. (1999). Lessons from Exemplary Colleges of Education: Factors Affecting Technology Integration in Preservice Programs. Educational Technology Research and Development, 47 (4), 63-81. Toledo, C. (2005). A Five-stage Model of Computer Technology Integration into Teacher Education Curriculum. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [Online serial], 5 (2).(http://www.citejournal.org/vol5/iss2/currentpractice/article2.cfm). Verified on 10/06/2011. UNESCO (2008a). ICT Competency Standards for Teachers. (http://cst.unesco-ci.org/sites/ projects/cst/The%20Standards/ICT-CST-Competency%20Standards%20Modules.pdf). Verified on 10/06/2011. UNESCO (2008b). Teacher-training Curricula for Media and Information Literacy. (http:// portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=27057&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html). Verified on 10/06/2011.

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Specific section: Disciplinary intersections

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Media Education and Motor Sciences Interaction between two educational sectors in the perspective of a renewed system of formation for the teachers of the Italian school Francesco Casolo

ABSTRACT

Centro accademico sportivo «Rino Fenaroli», Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Viale Suzzani, 279 – 20126 Milan, Italy. E-mail: francesco.casolo@unicatt.it

Today as ever the attempt to place the motor and sport sciences at school at a higher level of importance and consideration is really called for. The oldfashioned physical education has been so far put apart in practical-training activities or considered as a mere training for sport. On the contrary, it can become a subject that can add to these contents that are anyhow useful for the motor growth of an individual, a series of knowledge, educational experiences and values of great utility for both the individual and social well-being. This perspective is intentionally ambitious and the aim of this work is not to offer pre-made solutions but to offer a way of reflecting and opening new scenarios of revision of this subject that is being taught for thirteen years and can obtain an educational importance so overcoming the specific objectives of the sector. To start this change we deem it necessary to carry out some strategic tactics: firstly the necessity to consider the teaching of Motor Sciences inside a route of cultural enrichment aimed at the prevention of overweight and obesity and at the planning of healthy lifestyles. Secondly the choice of directing the research and the didactics of motor sciences towards modes and types of teaching that are more updated, technological, of multimedia type and interactive so as to take profit of the research results in media education; at last the conviction to carry out a universal formation of the future teaching of sport and Motor sciences oriented to the pedagogy of movement. Keywords: motor and sport sciences; media education; pedagogy of movement.

Edizioni Erickson – Trento

REM – vol. 4, no. 2, December 2012 (283-292)

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Evolution Age: lifestyles and overweight In the last decades the worsening of the life quality has affected not only the adults, but also the children in a more and more alarming way. The survey «Multiscope» of 2000, carried out by the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT),1 has shown the state of art of children and adolescents’ overweight and obesity. The survey of the overweight situation is proposed nowadays using the BMI2 values and the IOTF3 tables and/or the NCHS4 tables approved by the World Health Organization. According to the tables of the USA National Center of Health Statistics a child is: – underweight when his BMI value is less than the curve of 10th percentile; – normal weight when his BMI value is included between the curve of 11th percentile and the 84th percentile; – overweight when his BMI value is included between the curve of 85° percentile and the curve of 95th percentile. In Italy the phenomenon has been noticed in the last twenty years and this bad relation with the balance is now a continuously recurring phenomenon. the abovementioned research it is shown that the sedentary is one of the main risk factors for this problem and that the overweight increases in the families where the mother is poorly educated (degree of primary school) and there are few economical resources. The last Report «Osservasalute 2009»5 shows as in respect to the situation of 2007, most Italian regions there is an increase of overweight population (35,6% of people that is one Italian over three). As to the children the total amount of those that have a bad relation with the balance is of 36% with a wide regional variability. The same variability can be noticed for the European countries while in the United States the situation seems to be more serious. What are the causes of overweight and what are the factors that determine it? We are convinced that the causes are several and the problem must be faced from different points 1 2

3 4 5

ISTAT data year 2000. The ratio between height and weight is BMI (Body Mass Index) or in Italian IMC and it is calculated with the following Formula: BMI = weight in Kilos/height x height (in mt.). Today this index is considered the most reliable to evaluate the nutrition condition as a part of the health condition as well as the condition of over, under and normal weight since it is well correlated, according to the sex, with the fat mass and the thin one. IOTF: International Obesity Task Force. USA National Center of Health Statistics. Report «Osservasalute year 2009», published by the National Health Observatory in the Italian regions, placed at Università Cattolica in Rome, coordinated by Prof. Walter Ricciardi

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of view. Most experts are convinced that there are three different groups of predisposing factors: – genetic and family factors6 (the tendency to overweight is transmitted by parents and family habits); – psychological (a bad relation mother-child since the neonatal age can generate a research of gratification even through assuming food); – socio-environmental among which: • low socio-economical level; • wrong nutrition behavior; • tendency to the sedentary life. While we can do quite nothing for the first two groups if not to try to take remedial action using pharmaceutical and psychological therapies, the third group can be prevented through a useful process of nutrition transmission and of the culture of movement that is lacking in Italy so far. The guidelines are the ones that the World Health Organization suggests as to nutrition, motor activities and time spent in front of the video in the evolutionary age (OMS, 1997; 1999). In these guidelines there are all the ingredients necessary to face overweight: – Consumption of food and behavior connected to the food assumption: not only is the typology (quality and quantity) of food important but also the modes and behavior connected to the food assumption. – Times and modes of motor-sport activities: we cannot only affect the nutrition, but we must intervene to transform a tendency to a sedentary life into an active one. – Behavior connected to the times spent at video (TV, game-boy, playstation, computer): thirty years ago TV did exist but the period spent in front of was limited; on the contrary today children spend a lot of time in front of TV, computer and different computer consoles.

Media education and play-motor activities Up to now the studies concerning the relation between individuals in evolutionary age and the interactive technology have mainly affected the 6

«To have overweight parents is a risk factor for children and adolescents» (S.Brescianini – Istituto Superiore di Sanità; I. Gargiulo – ISTAT; E. Gianicolo – ISTAT. ISTAT Convention 2002).

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cognitive skills. In these last years some European projects have aimed at using the Media Education and the ICT potentialities in the play and learning contests. On the contrary the empirical evidences that the experiments used by ICT to support the children’s physical-motor development are few. The research in the psycho-social field have maintained that the informatics technology and the virtual reality swallow up the free time moments taking off the time for the motor-sport activities. Game-boys, desktop and mobiles and, from some years on, I-pods, I-pads absorb most free time so conditioning the more sedentary lifestyles. This is probably true even if a survey carried out in Lombardy (Rivoltella & Carenzio, 2010) on 2500 individuals of 6-17 years shows that outdoor movement and sport games are still present in our children’s minds and are still practised where the environment allows them. As a matter of fact in the last 20 years a deep transformation of the play-motor activity chiefly for children of 5 and over has occurred. In detail, two main meaningful trends have been noticed: 1. Today, the play is more and more mediated by passive physical interaction instruments often devised for the child’s stimulation and psychocognitive development, so neglecting the physical component. 2. Today the play activities are devised to be carried out in conditions of protected environment (Casolo, Mantovani & Eid, 2011). The play experience is carried out by the child at home, mostly alone and interacting with a console or a computer. This involves a loss of a social dimension that contains important cognitive and motor stimulations. But this is not the crucial point. We mustn’t start a speech as an alternative (out-out) but, on the contrary, reflect on perspectives of didactic research (et-et) that can witness the effectiveness of a right use of the culture and the media education means to foster not only an educational aim of a right communication education and mass-media interaction but also the consciousness of the utility of movement. We are deeply convinced that the two apparently different sectors as shown in the Table 1 below can effectively find a lot of opportunities of reciprocal integration in the school educational courses. The following scheme (Table 2) tries to define the various contexts where a possible integration between an educational use of the mass media technology and the motor sport activities can be recreated. Since 2006 experimental studies have been published focusing the attention on the ICT as a source of mediation for the motor implication of the children. In the first study considered (Lanningham-Foster et al., 2006) 286

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media education

motor education

Typology of activities

Cognitive but mostly static

Cognitive but mostly dynamic

Environments and Spaces of use

Almost indoors, limited spaces

In all places with wide spaces with possible exploitation of natural environment

Actors

Individual activities or in small groups

Activities mostly aimed at the participation of several people, even of big groups

Means

Expensive, in continuous evolution, smaller and smaller and portable (Computer, i-Pod, web, internet, e-games)

Cheap, traditional (balls, circles, small ropes, even non conventional)

Present appeal

High

Low

Energy consumption

Low

High

Table 1

Media Education and Motor Education: significant differences.

Computer technologies

research areas for their functional use for the motor-sport and mass media

Cellulars, palm cells

Clips or short films of motor performances to be used as visual feed-back in the situations of motor learning or as task-analysis for the didactic evaluation

Digital video-cameras

Films of full sport events or movement games to get a match-analysis

Play station

Usefulness of sport video games to anticipate the rules and the play situations. The videogames as a means of information and transmission of rules

DVD

Instrument for the transmission of culture in the various transversal contexts (anatomy, physiology and biomechanics). Instrument of integrative didactics (explanation and illustration of new games)

Nintendo wii

Videogame that leads to various typologies of motor activities

LIM

It can be placed even in a gym to have an inter-disciplinary lesson Interactive blackboard starting from the activity of the ongoing movement

Digital paper

With a specific motor-sport section to get a useful sport communication

Electronic Register

to allow data collection also in long term and to check the acquisition of skills during the whole period of the school cycle

Short films of sport context

They allow the transmission of information about the subject, the situation analysis and the reading of the attack and defense strategies, the execution of tactical techniques

Table 2

Possible integration between an educational use of the mass media technology and the motor sport activities.

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«Comparison of the energy expenditure of children with sedentary behavior and children with active behavior in front of the video» 25 children aged 8-12 have been examined. The study has shown that: – watching television and playing video games while seated increased energy expenditure by 20 ± 13% and 22 + 12% above resting values respectively. When subjects were walking on the treadmill and watching television, energy expenditure increased by 138 ± 40% over resting values; – from the sedentary condition of using a video game to the active condition, obtained experimentally by using the Eye Toy of Sony Computer Entertainment and the Dance Revolution Ultramix 2 (Konami Digital Entertainment) the energy expenditure has increased by about 80% and 150%. The conclusions of the study have been that the «activity-promoting video games» might be considered as a valid treatment to prevent the obesity and overweight. The results of several scientific studies of California State University, West Virginia University and John Moores Liverpool University are similar to the ones of the abovementioned study. After monitoring with metabolimeters,7 cardiofrequency meters and accelerometers, all these studies agree that the Nintendo Wii allows, as an average, an energy comsumption over 40 % in comparison with the other consoles. Today a perspective of university research, opened by the abovementioned studies, must concern a new typology of play-motor activities induced by an adequate use of Interactive Technologies with the aim of stimulating in the users a pure cognitive implication connected with the interaction and physical-motor aspects connected with the planning, control and execution of global and segmented gestures.

Pedagogy and culture of movement: the new formation courses of the teachers Considering the two previous parts, we can conclude as follows. The first is that the man cannot help moving to feel well and to prevent the main 7

Today the energy consumption is obtained crossing the data coming from the metabolimeter (it measures the oxygen consumption), cardio-frequency meter (it measures the heart pulses) and accelerometer (it measures the body displacement or one part of it in the space).

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metabolic diseases from hypokinesis caused by an energy deficit. The second is that the media education sectors and the ITC can contribute to create new forms of motor activity as well as to widespread meaningful contents of the movement culture. This second aspect is significant and determinant to raise the motor education and the school physical education (today Sport and Motor Sciences) to a utilitarian and important discipline. We have to point out that our school formation system leads the student t is lacking in those notions that nowadays are oriented to the man’s physical-motor, social-emotional, cognitive-intellectual and expressive-communicative well being. The educational choices of the school system are made according to Ministerial programs that can be surely improved and keep a strong theoretical humanistic and scientific mark, but this doesn’t add any knowledge to the individual’s well-being and it is not very useful for the development of his cognitive-intellectual and socio-relational skills. According to H. Gardner,8 there is a very wide gap between the skills supplied by the school and the ones required by the work environment. The motor-sport culture belongs to a subject that is not much considered in the school system and the Physical Education, even if it is taught for 8 years (in the middle school and in the high school), is still relegated to the role of a practical- training subject. A-level students come out of the high school knowing few gymnastic exercises and simple sport gestures but they don’t know anything about their Body Mass Index. Moreover, they cannot do a simple evaluation of the load of their movement activity through a conscious and precise survey of the heart pulses. Nevertheless, the motor activity involves a lot of ideas, reflections and contacts, which are culturally strong and extremely useful for the individual’s health and well-being and are contained in the school Laws of the last fifteen years. According to the last National Indications,9 the primary school is «[...] conscious that every symbolic dimension spurring the child and his family and social relations cannot be split up from his body [...]»; is the place «where the child gets used to root the knowledge on the experience (to do and to act), to integrate 8

Howard Gardner, American psychologist, born in 1943, is considered the main representative of the theory of the multiple intelligences. He maintains that the classical theory of the intelligence based on the supposition that a unitary factor exists is wrong since the human beings are endowed with a variable number of faculties independent among themselves. Gardner identifies at least seven different typologies of intelligences: logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial, musical, body-related-kinaesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, Indicazioni Nazionali per i Piani di Studio personalizzati nella Scuola Primaria. December 2002.

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systematically the two dimensions [...]»; if we want to evaluate the contributions that the Motor Sciences can give to the child’s development and formation process, these first indications mean that an 11 year child, after the fifth class and after a useful growth course through the motor and sport sciences, should: know himself and his body’s modifications, recognize, differentiate and express the different sensorial perceptions; move in an easy and effective way in the environment; have the capacity of expressing himself with the body; learn to play and practice sport respecting its rules and the players; utilize the spaces and the equipment correctly and safely for himself and his companions. This is quite important, also because the minimum objectives to reach do not affect only the practical-motor sphere, but also the cognitive, expressive-communicative and social-relational sphere. Just for this reason, starting from the school system and even within the present society, the corporeity must be considered as a value and as a starting point to know, to communicate and to act in the environment. The new awareness from the part of the school headmasters (Calidoni & Casolo, 2004) and from the teachers of this dimension can only be transformed into practical choices of enhancement, support and intervention in favour of the motor sport sciences. In this part we can only discuss about the opportunities of interaction and research that Motor Sciences and didactics will have in the new courses of teachers’ formation. After a long waiting, the decree of the Minister of Education, University and Research has been issued with the regulation concerning the «Definition of the discipline of requisites and of the modes of initial formation of the teacher of the nursery, primary and middle and high school».10 This regulation defines the scientific-disciplinary sectors and the formation of the teachers of the whole Italian school system. At this point there is a question: how can we use the ICTs for the formation of the future teachers of motor education? At the moment there are two possible hypothesis of answer, both of them to be verified: the first is a quantitative answer and concerns the spaces and the times of formation in the academic field, the second is a qualitative answer that concerns the criteria for the choice of the subjects of the academic courses and the integrative didactics (training and laboratories). As to the first hypothesis the future Primary Formation will have a remarkable amount of UFC in the fields PED and M-EDF (72 UFC of official teaching, equal to 500 hours of front lessons + 9 UFC of integrative didactics with training and labora10

According to Art. 2 comma 416 of the Law 24th December 2007, n. 244.

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tories equal to 180 hours). This amount of UFC can be used to reserve at least 30 hours of didactics and more 30 hours for an integrated theoreticalpractical course. The hours of theory can be dedicated to the development of the media education and of the digital literacy, as well as to the study of technological instruments, languages and didactics peculiar of the ICTs. During the hours of laboratory the future teachers can be led to reflect and to contextualize their new knowledge related to the Motor Sciences (motor learning and culture of movement). The same solution can be obtained in the formation course of the future teachers of Motor and Sport Sciences in the secondary school where there are 70 UFC of official teaching equal to 480 hours of lessons + 10 UFC of laboratory/training equal to 200 hours. As to the second question we can only rely, in a forthcoming future, on the activation of research multi-sector lines (M-PED + M-EDF) to be carried out in academic courses of Primary Formation and of Motor Sciences. The hypothesis based on this proposal is that the scientific results can testify the effectiveness of this new perspective of teachers’ formation. Obviously, we have to recommend to appoint professors that believe and will believe this new perspective.

References AA.VV. Proceedings of international conventions ECSS (European Congress of Sport Sciences) Atene 2003, Salisburgo 2004, Clermont Ferrand 2005, Belgrado 2005, Losanna 2006; SFALL (Sport for All Congress) Roma 2004, Pre Olimpic Congress Salonicco 2004. Calcerano, L., & Casolo, F. (2003). Educazione motoria e sportiva. Brescia: La Scuola. Calidoni, P., & Casolo, F. (2004). Per uno sport dell’educazione. Dirigenti Scuola, VII/VIII. Casolo, F. (2002). Lineamenti di teoria e di metodologia del movimento umano. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Casolo, F., & Melica, S. (2005). Il corpo che parla. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Casolo, F., Mantovani, B., & Eid, L. (2011). Imparare giocando. Vademecum di giochi per la scuola primaria. Milano: Libreria dello Sport. Gardner, H. (1987). Formae mentis. Saggio sulla pluralità dell’intelligenza. Milano: Feltrinelli. Goleman, D. (1997). Intelligenza emotiva. Milano: Rizzoli. Hotz, H. (1989). L’apprendimento qualitativo dei movimenti. Roma: Società Stampa Sportiva. Lanningham-Foster et al. (2006). Energy expenditure of sedentary screen time compared with active screen time for children. Pediatrics, 118 (6), e1831-e1835. Mazza, V. (2002). Usare la TV senza farsi usare. Torino: Sonda.

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OMS. (1997). The World Health Report 1996. Geneva. OMS. (1999). Basic Documents, Forty Second Edition. Geneva. Piaget, J. (1975). La nascita dell’intelligenza nel bambino. Firenze: Giunti Barbera. Rivoltella, P.C., & Carenzio, A. (2010). A che gioco giochiamo; Rappresentazioni e pratiche di gioco tra infanzia e adolescenza. REM. Research on Education and Media, 2 (1). www.cdc.gov/growthcharts.htm, National Center for Health Statistics per CDC Growth Charts 2000.

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– the maximum length of articles – Studies and researches – is 12 pages, or about 30.000 characters, including spaces (and including graphics, tables, notes and bibliography); – footnotes, if any, should be progressively numbered, and should have only an explanatory function (no bibliographical notes); – the different paragraphs (with bold title, no numbering) and sub-paragraphs (with italic title, no numbering) should be clearly marked by leaving one line between title and text, and two lines between a paragraph and the following title; – to highlight text portions or foreign words, italics should be used, never bold or underscored; – quoted text from sources listed in the bibliography should follow the APA rules, such as in the following examples: (Bruner, 1986); or (Bruner, 1986, p. 11); or (Bruner, 1986, pp. 11-12); or (Tufte, Rasmussen & Christensen, 2005); or (Mayer et al., 2005), or (Ardizzone & Rivoltella, 2003). – iconographic documentation (igures, graphs and other documents to be included as originals) should be provided in original form (no photocopies); images extracted by newspapers or other low-quality sources should be avoided. Digital images (supports: 100 MB ZIP or cd-rom) should conform to these characteristics (the printed image will have the same size of the provided image): line drawings (in black and white) 600 to 1200 dpi resolution; grayscale images 300 dpi resolution;

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in any case the images, as also the tables, must be referred to in the body of the main text, provided with legends and progressively numbered. The editorial board reserves the right of slightly modifying the placement of images for printing purposes. As images are often copyrighted, it will be the author(s) responsibility to acquire written permission to reproduce both images and material which is part of previous publications, or not owned by them. In the case of pictures portraying people, the author(s) will have to obtain publication permission from the subject(s). Quoted texts must be listed in bibliography following strictly the standards set by APA Publication Manual (http://www.apastyle.org/) – by alphabetic order of author’s names, and in chronological order (from the oldest to the most recent publication) where works by the same author are concerned. Depending on the kind of work quoted, bibliographical reference should strictly follow these models: a) Journal articles: Messina, L. (2007). Valutazione dei prodotti mediali: il “collaudo” di Gnam! Il cibo in gioco, CADMO, XV (1), 87-114. b) Journal Articles in Press: Ricciardi, M., & Bossi, V. (in press). Convergenza tecnologica e creatività digitale. Economia dei servizi. c) Books: Rivoltella, P.C. (2006). Screen generation. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. d) Italian version of a foreign book: – if in the main text, only author and date are quoted: Novak, J.D. (1988). Learning, creating, and using knowledge: Concept Maps as facilitative tools in schools and corporations. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (Novak, J.D., L’apprendimento signiicativo: le mappe concettuali per creare e usare la conoscenza. Trento: Erickson, 2001). – if in the main text author, date and page(s) of the Italian edition are quoted: Novak, J.D. (2001). L’apprendimento signiicativo: le mappe concettuali per creare e usare la conoscenza (pp. 0-0). Trento: Erickson. (Novak, J.D., Learning, creating, and using knowledge: Concept Maps as facilitative tools in schools and corporations. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988). – if in the main text author, date and page(s) of the foreign edition are quoted: Novak, J. D. (1988). Learning, creating, and using knowledge: Concept Maps as facilitative tools in schools and corporations (pp. 0-0). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (Novak, J.D., L’apprendimento signiicativo: le mappe concettuali per creare e usare la conoscenza, Trento: Erickson, 2001). e) Books «edited by»: Ricciardi, M. (Ed.) (2008). Interfacce della memoria. Napoli: ScriptaWeb. Rivoltella, P.C. (Ed.) (2008). Digital literacy: Tools and methodologies for information society. Hershey: IGI. f) Contributions to a collection or anthology: Limone, P. (2006). Videogiochi e pedagogia. Training level ed applicazioni didattiche. In T. GrangeSergi, & M.G. Onorati (Eds.), La sida della comunicazione all’educazione. Prospettive di media education (pp. 129-142). Milano: Franco Angeli. g) Congress papers: Galliani, L., & De Waal, P. (2005, June), Learning face to face, in action and on line: Integrating model of lifelong learning. Paper presented at Eden Annual Conference, Bringing e-learning close to lifelong learning and working life: A new period of uptake, Finland, Helsinki. Messina, L., Personeni, F., Tabone, S., & Manio, S. (2008). Lello & Lella international research project. In L. Gómez Chova, D. Martí Belenguer, & I. Candel Torres (Eds.), INTED2008 Proceedings. International Technology, Education and Development Conference (pp. 216-224). Valencia: IATED. h) Quotes from web sites: Rivoltella, P.C. (2006). Media Education e ricerca. (http://www.ilmediario.it/cont/articolo.php?artic olo=313&canale=Terza&nav=1).

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Centro Studi Erickson – Formazione CORSI DI APPRENDIMENTO ONLINE I corsi di apprendimento online sono strutturati in 4/5 moduli didattici e hanno una durata di 50 ore, comprensive dello studio dei materiali e dello svolgimento delle prove di veriica. Prevedono l’assistenza di un docente/tutor esperto della materia. Al termine del corso viene rilasciato un attestato di partecipazione ai corsisti che hanno svolto tutte le prove proposte dal tutor.

PROGRAMMA GENNAIO 2013 Bisogni Educativi Speciali e inclusione Autrice: Angela Dallago

Col cavolo la cicogna: metodi e strumenti per promuovere percorsi di educazione sessuale Autrice: Barbara Tamborini

Disturbo specifico dell’apprendimento (DSA) della letto-scrittura: caratteristiche generali e approccio didattico Autrici: Giorgia Sanna e Monja Tait

Educazione razionale-emotiva Autore: Mario Di Pietro

ICF Autrice: Mara Buffoni

Impariamo ad imparare. Percorso introduttivo sul metodo Feuerstein Autrice: Maria Luisa Boninelli

Individualizzare la didattica Autore: Carlo Scataglini

La comprensione del testo scritto Autrice: Susi Cazzaniga

Lavorare con le famiglie musulmane Autrice: Milena Salvetti

LIM – Strategie didattiche Autore: Michele Facci

Procedure di servizio sociale nella tutela minorile

ACCEDERE E PARTECIPARE AI CORSI ONLINE È FACILE! Unico requisito fondamentale per iscriversi a un corso online Erickson è avere una casella di posta elettronica (indirizzo e-mail) e un computer con l’accesso a internet. Costi e modalità di iscrizione Il costo dei corsi è di € 160,00 + IVA 21% (€ 193,60), quello dei corsi avanzati è di € 180,00 + IVA 21% (€ 217,80). > sconto 10% per gli abbonati alle riviste Erickson > sconto 20% per chi si iscrive a più di 2 corsi Per informazioni: Segreteria organizzativa, Centro Studi Erickson, Via del Pioppeto 24, Fraz. Gardolo – 38121 Trento; Tel. 0461 950747- Fax 0461 956728; E-mail: formazione@erickson.it

Maggiori informazioni sul programma dei corsi online su www.erickson.it

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SPECIAL ISSUE: ICT IN THE CLASSROOM ICT in the classroom: a new learning environment Floriana Falcinelli Monographic section: Studies and research on ITC in school Pedagogy vs. Technology in the TPCK Model: Evidences from a Large Case-Study Nicoletta Di Blas and Paolo Paolini Digital Culture and new and old problems in the context of the «One Laptop per Child» program in Brazilian schools Monica Fantin Emerging digital profiles during 2.0 activities at school. What are the main learning environment features? Valentina Pennazio, Andrea Traverso and Davide Parmigiani Spanish policies on Information and Communication Technologies in Education Rosabel Roig Vila «Re-tweet the teacher…» Are Italian teachers «followed by» or «following» the Web 2.0 culture? Gabriella Taddeo and Simona Tirocchi Web 2.0 as a catalyst in training and education processes between school and local territory. The Didaduezero project in the province of Trento Corrado Petrucco and Marina De Rossi Could Technology encourage Innovation in School? An overview of «Cl@ssi 2.0» Project in Lombardia (Italy) Pier Cesare Rivoltella, Andrea Garavaglia, Simona Ferrari and Paolo Ferri Media and technologies in teacher training: The SIREM proposal integrating institutional and cultural perspectives Laura Messina and Pier Cesare Rivoltella Specific section: Disciplinary intersections Media Education and Motor Sciences Francesco Casolo

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