We live in a digital world and our students are surrounded by technologies: it is essential that they learn how to use the digital tools available for education purposes. As for language teaching, among the most recent technologies we can find online dictionaries. They could play a key role to foster language competences, and yet they are not very popular in schools. In order to increase the use of online dictionaries among students, the University of Turin has promoted the nationwide project 'Esplorare (con) i Dizionari Digitali'. This project makes the most of a Learning Management System (https://esploradizionari.i-learn.unito.it/) that allowed the creation of a student-centered environment. The integration of the platform with an Automatic Assessment System allowed the design and creation of tests to be carried out through the consultation of online dictionaries. In this paper, we analyze the answers given by almost 600 students in 5 different tests on different languages, and we try to understand whether the methodologies and technologies adopted have been influential in making students "meta-linguistic aware" and researchers "meta-design aware". The results obtained show in a statistically significant way that the students who made a larger use of online dictionaries performed better in the tests.
In Italy, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, all schools were closed on March 5, 2020 and it was mandatory to switch to “distance learning”, in order not to interrupt the teaching continuity and to guarantee the right to education for all students. The Ministry of Education suggested several initiatives to teachers, including the PPS national project. In the paper we analyse why and how the PPS project, intended for teachers of secondary schools of the STEM disciplines but opened in the emergency to teachers of all disciplines, was able to provide much needed support and not only. Following this opening and the consequent registration of many new teachers, three different phases were carried out: an analysis phase of the teachers’ needs for online teaching, a phase of support and initial help, and a training phase. The results show an extremely high participation of the teachers and a wide online collaboration. All the teachers of the PPS will certainly have an advantage in the post-covid teaching, since they can take advantage of the work done and the experience and skills gained in the past.
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the need to promote digital education has been felt even more, bringing the DELTA Research Group to reflect on how digital education could optimally facilitate the creation of an educating community able to promote and support educational success exclusively through distance learning. In order to answer, in this paper the experience of the 2019/2020 edition of “Scuola dei Compiti” (a recovery project for secondary schools of the poorest suburbs of Turin) is analysed in the perspective of the priority strategies illustrated in the Digital Education Action Plan for the period 2021-2027. Results will show that this was a forerunner experience perfectly in line with the principles and directions outlined in the document. Moreover, thanks to digital education, even a peculiar edition of the project such as this one has been a success: in fact, it has allowed students to improve from a cognitive and metacognitive point of view, even during a time that was very difficult for some families.
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