Digital instruments for school learning

Abstract

Given the speed with which the modern world changes and digital tools become part of everyday life, even the teaching and learning of them must be introduced to the lower age – at primary school. But before developing the skills in the pupils, the teachers in the first place must know how to use digital tools, knowing how to use them in the teaching of subjects other than the computer science. Digital competence is then required not only for the business purpose, but more and more often we are faced with the need to know how to learn and improve our knowledge in the professional field through digital tools. Based on this analysis we formulated our research question: how prepared are the students of primary education in the digital environment? Could they think and write projects for children in the area of knowledge of the territory through digital tools? To help our students prepare and achieve this goal during the course of Educational Psychology with the students of the fourth year of Primary Educationat the University of Macerata, we have created the “Digital education and discovery of the territory” workshop, proposing to the students to use some innovative tools and thinking about how they could be included in the activity of primary
schools that concern the study of the territory they belong to (the city, the province, the region). The work has been dividedinto 3 phases. During the first phase, tools were presented that would be used (The application MyCicero developed in our Marche region, Maps of OpenStreetMaps and Vikidia) The second phase was both individual and collective work on the cognitive map that concerned the term “Promoting the territory”.The theme of promotion and knowledge of the territory it belongs to is part of the primary school curriculum and certainly help schildren to understand their roots and appreciate them. During the third phase the students had to think and write a project that they could help the
pupils learn something about their own territory through the digital tools mentioned above.
The digitalage or information era, as we understand it, is the historical phase characterized by the widespread diffusion of the various digital products and the whole series of social, economic and political changes that occurred with the advent of the digitization of most of the access to information. Today’s children are already born in the digital age and must be ready to use it also in learning that makes our work in the preparation of their future Teachers even more important.