Augmented didactics in Kindergarten12: an Italian case history

Abstract

This paper describes an experiment in 'augmented didactics' made in Italy in 2012 and 2013 and has the aim to suggest a set of tools and actions to enlarge the learning offer for students and the evaluation spectrum for teachers in secondary school with 11-13 years old students. This experiment tries to build solutions in which the formal relationship between the roles of teachers and students changes radically, to benefit natural relationships between person and person, between person and group. The augmented didactics approach has been applied to a little set of current topics in secondary school first degree in Italy: music, visual art and mathematics. But we started with an extra discipline: sociology. This subject allows reasoning with students on behaviours and relations, on attitudes and prejudices; and thanks to social network we have analyzed them like objects. We are working to apply other formats for other subjects: history, geography, natural sciences and we are refining current formats in order to spread this approach in other schools. The first part of this document describes formats on which is based the experiment, achieved through the use of the most popular social networks, mobile technologies, and free access to cloud services and APPs. The second part tells the initiatives carried out with children during the past two years with some feedbacks by teachers and students and it suggests some possible evolutions.