Categoria: Didattica

Evoluzione ed innovazione

Le tecnologie informatiche hanno diverse vie evolutive in base a quelle che si suppongono essere le esigenze del mercato e i campi più “urgenti” di applicazione. Partendo da questi ultimi, le tecnologie rivolte alla sostenibilità ambientale e alla salute o alla alimentazione paiono essere quelle più sotto osservazioni da parte di industria, governi e società civile. Leggi tutto “Evoluzione ed innovazione”

Le condizioni del funzionamento delle TIC nell’apprendimento

L’incremento dell’uso della tecnologia durante la scuola ai tempi della pandemia ha rilanciato il dibattito sterilissimo tra tecnofili e tecnofobi, il che avviene tutte le volte che assistiamo ad una accelerazione nel percorso abbastanza “obbligato” di implementazione delle TIC. Un esempio di tematica “accelerante” era stata la LIM, che a sua volta ha una storia oscillante nel trust-rank didattico: oggi “risorge” col bando sui monitor interattivi.
Il sostanziale fallimento della DAD (che oggi viene riproposta come ripiego estremo per il risalire dei contagi variante omicron) ha infatti rintuzzato la polemica contro la tecnologia; poiché in ambito educativo non tutto è sostituibile dalla macchina, l’aspetto positivo della polemica è che forse si potrebbe capire “fin dove” le TIC possono arrivare. Anche noi sosteniamo che le TIC sono quasi inutili, laddove replicano protocolli desueti, poiché il loro scopo sarebbe proprio quello di superarli e modificarli. Il rischio è quindi quello di dimenticare di affrontare il vero problema e cioè una seria riforma della didattica. Dobbiamo finalmente chiederci quali sono le condizioni del funzionamento delle TIC nell’apprendimento.

Looking for an easy guilty

Mention of another good article by prof. R. Maragliano (in italian)
A little of utopia…
Più che di tragedia della DaD parlerei di tragedia della cultura nazionale in fatto di scuola.
I primi studi nazionale sulla determinazione sociali degli studi risalgono a sessant’anni fa. Questa predisposizione economico-sociale al successo o non successo scolastici non è mai stata negata né lo è mai stata la sua articolazione geografica nord/sud – est/ovest, elemento che incide pesantemente a livello di scuola secondaria e al di sotto del quale sta, pesantemente confermato dentro la cultura formativa nazionale, una disposizione gerarchica degli indirizzi scolastici. Sono fattori residuali dell’impianto ottocentesco, aristocratico, centralistico, autoritario, e che spiegano anche perché c’era già un’inaccettabile disparità nei risultati, prima della pandemia.

Leggi tutto “Looking for an easy guilty”

How moving on after COVID and DAD experience?

No recent event make us talk about school more than COVID.

“DAD” (didactic on distance) was probably one of the keywords of the pandemic era. However, the most widespread opinions, supported by statistics, speaks about that as an educational failure, actually.

Technology, hailed as the best and only solution (and financed on the same way), is now a convenient scapegoat: the useless debate between “apocalyptics” and “integrated” has regained strength. But technology favors or allows only some of the processes involved in educational dynamics, and, though powerful, a “medium” remain just a “medium”.

At the end of the day, the quality of work depends on the quality of people; and the quality of teachers is an even more complicated subject than COVID. And it is so for a thousand reasons, first of all the fact that the outcome of “good teaching” is difficult to recognize and certify, which is why for years we have been floating between the “coldness” of INVALSI data, the more or less plausible comparisons with foreign systems and a system that has transfigured this difficulty into a taboo, a category that does not accept evaluations of any kind or even structural changes (by “structural” change I mean, for example, the request for approaches that do without the textbook and improve using of technology).

However, as I said, at least it has been talked about, because the truth is that the covid era has highlighted mostly pre-existing difficulties.

The “educational success” depends by many reasons and it would be important to analyze them all. There are responsibilities of families, of politics, of the students themselves.
But now I must talk about school.
While the people feels (or like to feel) that everything has been done “in parentheses”, and wants to come back to the good old days, as if nothing had happened, we find ourselves in the embarrassing situation in which some schools did a lot of things and want to be thanked for, and some did nothing or should have better done nothing. Some teachers were absolutely good and some absolutely wrong.
We don’t speculate on percentages of good and bad ones but I have to notice that just 6% of Italian teachers were involved in training course in the past two years. If the situation was so difficult, I would have expected, along with the decree mandating the implementation of the Plan on Integrated Digital Teaching, at least the temporary training obligation.
Looking forward to another similar school year, managers and teachers should have spent the second half of June and the first half of September NOT teaching to the students, but studying and discussing, to understand what to propose this year. I’m talking about goals and methods, but also about tools, of course.
I think it was worthwhile even at this time.
I, too, maintain that the Support Decree was made with good intentions and good objectives. Moreover, schools have already had a lot of money to implement these activities. But in practice, what are the prevailing activities? Have they really been selected based on the criteria of the decree? Who will control them? How understand if activities were working?
In conclusion the problem of student recovery is less urgent than quality of teaching.