Learning4All

FIRB (Basic Research Investment Fund)
-
Start date: 2009-06-09
-
Project abstract
Learning for all (L4All) is a three-years FIRB (Fondi di Investimento per la Ricerca di Base) project, financed by the Ministry of Education, the University and Research (MIUR). L4All investigates the impact of the use of ICT in schools. Nearly 1,000 teachers (from pre-school to high-school), from 20 different regions, are involved in the empirical investigations, based on interviews and quantitative data. The scientific goal is to gain a clear understanding of how technological solutions are used in the classroom, with a special emphasis on the inclusion of students with diverse needs (immigrants, low-proficient students, students with a poor social background…). The empirical goal is to develop a reliable and engineered method to extract evidence from learning experiences; to create public repository (Italian and English); to create a set of guidelines. Several innovations are introduced by L4All: an innovative approach (FEE: FEeature Extraction) allows a scientific and (almost) objective interpretation of interviews to teachers; an engineered workflow allows the creation of a large body of evidence (combining FEE data with surveys data) that will be made public both to worldwide researchers and Italian teachers; an innovative “exploration oriented” repository will allow an interactive and effective exploration of the collected material; the learning/ICT relationship will be investigated with a breadth and precision, so far unattained (worldwide) for real-life environments. With the coordination of Politecnico di Milano there are technological partners (Università Politecnica delle Marche, University of Salento and University of Bari) and educational partners (CNR of Genova, and faculties of Education of University of Bologna and University of Perugia).
Project results
Publications:
- Di Blas N., Ferrari L. (2012). Digital Storytelling at School: What Kind of Educational Benefits? In F. Garzotto, P. Paolini, A. Sabiescu, International Journal of Arts and Technology (IJART) [Special issue]. (in press).
- Paolini P., Di Blas N., Guerra, L. Ferrari, L. Falcinelli, F. Mainetti, L. Costabile, M.F. Falcidieno, B. Leo, T. (2011). Assessing and Sharing (Technology-Based) Educational Experiences. In Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2011, Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
- Di Blas N., Paolini P., Torrebruno A. (2010). Digital Storytelling at School: Does the TPCK Model Explain What’s Going On?, E-Learn 2010 conference, October 18 - 22, 2010, Orlando, Florida (USA).
- Di Blas N., Ferrari L. (2010). Kids Create Multimedia Stories: an “Authentic” Educational Value?, IDC 2010 workshop on Interactive Storytelling for Children, ACM, New York, NY.
- Di Blas N., Paolini P., and Sabiescu A. G. (2010). Collective Digital Storytelling at School as a Whole-Class Interaction. In Vasilakos A. V., Moher T. and Pares N.(eds.), International Journal of Arts and Technology (IJART) [Special issue]. (in press) – 26 pp.
- Di Blas N., Paolini P., Sabiescu A. (2010). Collective Digital Storytelling at School as a Whole-Class Interaction. In Proceedings of IDC 2010, ACM, New York, NY.
- Di Blas N., Paolini, P. Rubegni, E. Sabiescu, A. (2010). Equipping higher education students with communication skills: lessons learned in a three-years experience, in proceedings of the IEEE Professional Communication Conference, July 7 - 9, 2010, University of Twente, the Netherlands.
- Di Blas N., Paolini P., Torrebruno A. (2010). Innovative Technologies And Education: Two Succesful Case-Studies, In Proceedings CSEDU2010, 341-349.
- Di Blas N., Garzotto F., Paolini P., Sabiescu A. (2009). Digital Storytelling as a Whole-Class Learning Activity: Lessons from a Three-Years Project. In: Iurgel I., Zagalo N., Petta P. (Eds.) Proceedings ICIDS 2009, Second International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. LNCS (Lectures Notes in Computer Science) 5915/2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin, Heidelberg Pages: 14 – 25; ISBN:978-3-642-10642-2.