11/07/2011 - News, Projects
Pinocchio 2.0. From kindergarten to teen, educational continuity for technoscience
Reading time: 2 minutesIn 2008, Italian teachers and educational experts uploaded records from many educational robotics experiences in a new Content Management System called "Pinocchio 2.0", inspired by fictional character that firstly appeared in 1881 in a book by Carlo Collodi. Carved from a piece of pine, Pinocchio was created as a wooden puppet, but dreamt of becoming a real boy. For the kids of the world, this fictional puppet of the cartoon movie recalls the idea of the robot.
Here attached the report by Linda Giannini: Working one year with Pinocchio 2.0
These records uploaded in the CSM of Pinocchio 2.0. pertain to fables, narrations, stories, robotics projects, robotics kits design, handbooks, and many of the educational activities envisaging in some way the role of reproducible elements, and little interactive artifacts: the idea of the robot.
The project “ancestor” of Pinocchio 2.0 began some years ago and was carried out by the same (although, less numerous) network of teachers. Afterwards, with the development of the Web 2.0, teachers and students could upload their records in it: Pictures, drawings, free software, designs, multi-path stories, suggestions, songs, movies, memories, curiosities, games and links. Now, Pinocchio 2.0. takes in, along with the wooden marionette, other fictions characters that inspired several ER projects: E.T.A. Hoffman’s Coppelia1 (the mechanical doll that is the primadonna in a famous ballet), and some of the characters of The Narnia Saga2. All are common legacy of the imaginary world of Italian (and most of the world’s) students, from nursery to University.
Pinocchio 2.0 collects many records of students’ creativity, both artistic and techno-scientific works. It aims to becoming the cradle of many new ER projects. Actually, the fantasy universe of fables and tales encompasses kids and university students – and adult too!
In fact, Pinocchio 2.0 could become one of the most creative incubators boosting the development of educational robotics activities, and new methodological paths. In this sense, the value of continuity is fundamental to bring projects to fruition, ensuring some positive changes in the future educational methodology.
Pinocchio 2.0 works like a fil rouge connecting several educational projects of the school in the
community. It is a kind of a robot that, livening up thanks – this time - not to ICT technologies but through children’s imagination, started to teach and to be used by children as a telemachine.
In our community, Pinocchio embodies every subject and/or object that is designed and shared by many community’s partner – be it shared in vivo o via any telecommunication media.
Pinocchio Community’s partner are:
- Children
- Teens
- Teachers
- Parents
- Experts
These partners act as Geppetto (in the novel, Geppetto is Pinocchio’ foster parent), because they design and implement, alone or in a team-work, an idea, an artistic artifact, a story, a video-clip, a robot. Pinocchio 2.0 is a project gathering partner from kindergarten to college: a Vertical program in technology, art and design, and communication.
The first, key Pinocchio 2.0’ aim is the assessment of learning rising from the educational use of one of more collaborative environment/s, the real ones and the digital. Besides the more traditional intervention, Pinocchio 2.0 made us of some educational paths mediated by ICT technologies.
These tools accounted for:
• Students’ needs for expressing and communicating;
• The previous project’s results, in order to built on past educational experiences;
• The national Guidelines for every schooling program;
• The training and educational opportunities offered by multi-mediality;
• The cooperation with colleagues working in Italian and European schools.
The educational aims are:
- To know, mastering and juxtaposing different communication level, personal and social:
- To know, mastering and comparing communication media, at personal and social level.
The didactic aims are:
- Data collection, processing and interpreting;
- Representing situation, issues and proposing solutions;
- Developing intentional and creative communication skills;
- Tell the paths’ results to outside observers.
- Interrelation and behavioral aims are:
- Understanding the meaning of belonging to a virtual community;
- Developing the ability of team-working, especially the one at local and at virtual level;
- Promoting multi-media didactic, and the use of different languages and codes;
- By way of the use of multi-media, promoting knowledge, socialization, and the development
of logical and operational abilities
- Redefine the key patterns of the literacy process on the basis of the new requirements of
technological evolution;
- Overcoming the fragmented knowledge, accepting complexity.