Dear Friends, here a postcard from Milan, Lombardy and I don’t need to explain you what it means in these days an empty square. Furthermore, I’m part of the population “immunosuppressed”, so you can understand my feelings, seeing the pandemic growing day by day. The good news is that I can’t stop to work for a single day even during the weekend: all our universities are trying to move online and "Digital Learning" has been my job during the last 20 years. In this transition some univerist are succeeding, other are still on their way, but everybody in Italy is struggling with the idea that is our precise personal, ethical and social duty to guarantee a continuity in the teaching-learning dialogue.
So, very high motivation everywhere as never before, but some obstacles are anyway stumbling the path. And it is not the usual “cultural resistance” of teachers to innovation.
It is something different, and it is coming from the top, not from the bottom.
In general, I can say that the movement in Italy is fully “technology driven”: the political decisions at all levels (from the national level to the institutional level) are serenely ignoring the great patrimonies gained by digital learning in these decades of experiences, researches, practices and are basing they decision on technological/commercial aspects as they were the only ones relevant on the table.
But technology driven decisions are forgetting a simple truth: that in the real world, in Italy and in Lombardy in particular, teachers are not citizens of another safe and happy world. They are facing a personal crisis, they are missing relatives, they are afraid and they are suffering pain and concern for the sick or missing loved ones. For continuing to be effective Teachers, they don’t need just technology, they need support, dialogue, discussions, sharing of ideas, methodological reference points. And you can’t be a good teacher if you aren’t coping with the unbelievable reality you and your students are facing with. You can't just forget it ad start your lesson.
We have chosen to leverage this need of “integrating the reality” in ourselves to bring the wealth of pedagogical reflections back into dialogue. In my personal experience, with METID at Politecnico di Milano we have found our way by supporting teachers in a social pedagogical reflection downstream of political decisions technology driven.
So, we have chosen to give pedagogical and reflective online support with a great attention to human and mutual exchange, taking in account the technology as an input, or a constraint, that we can and we must shape together in the best way, always taking in account the real, terrible situation in which we are struggling, not by pretending to be in a digital safe “elsewhere”.
Apparently it is working, many teachers are participating in online meetings (one seminar a week open to everybody about a general topic, three-four working groups a week with limited number of participants, a daily individual help desk) and, till now, everybody are experiencing satisfaction and gratitude.
Apart from that nice feedback, we are monitoring the actual effect on the online teaching practices. Thank to this support are they managing interactive and collaborative online classes? Are they encouraging constructive dialogues with students and among students dropped in the reality? Are they giving frequent, effective and encouraging feedbacks to student? We are going to discover it. I will tell you the sequel.
Take care and stay safe.
Susanna
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