The project idea was born thanks to the meeting between different worlds and research perspectives, linked by the common thread to provide teachers with design devices. Such tools combine attention to the theories on the curriculum and its management, through technological supports that intensify the necessary features in contemporary training contexts:
flexibility
contextualisation in the school and in the class
generativity
collaborative dialogue between teachers and students
DEPIT (Designing for Personalization and Inclusion with Technologies) proposes the development and implementation of a teaching methodology and an application software (DEPIT APP), starting from the needs of the teachers who test the methodology, to make the didactic planning a knowledge. The result is a tool that can be useful for the teacher in the general and daily planning of his classroom work, and for the students to have a clear overview of their own learning path.
The complexity of the present contexts, based on the mobility paradigm, requires a flexible tool, based on the continuous adjustments and revisions that take place during the didactic action, and the necessary restructuring.
For this reason the DEPIT APP was designed as a Graphic Organizer (a graphic structure), viewable with the IWB and usable and modifiable in the classroom.
The reference model is the Diana Laurillard Conversational Framework, which, taking into account the most recent results of research in the fields of learning and teaching, focuses on the figure of the teacher as a professional in teaching design. It promotes the collaboration between teachers in the didactic contents, allows an active role of the students in the didactic interaction, favors a personalized learning for the benefit of the subjects with different abilities.
The didactic model and the APP guarantee an explicit design that supports the management of the class, the use of digital materials within a cloud that communicates with the App. It also favours the guidance of the students who can become aware of the structure of the path, the presence of several parallel paths ensuring the sustainability of personalization and inclusion, sharing between teachers and the production of a pattern archive.
The initiative is an example of synergy between training, research and innovation activities, which provides an innovative working method for trainers and students (even the disadvantage ones) and which relies on the opportunities given by ICT and from digital resources. In addition, the project, through a strong action of mainstreaming, also addressing policy makers, aims to support the innovation of school-educational-training systems, integrating an instrument based on digital technologies and specially created for teaching.
DEPIT adheres to the specific sector priority chosen. It promotes the adoption of new methods and supports teachers and leaders in offering high quality educational and training services. This characteristic and the foreseen inclusion of the methodology and the APP in the academic preparation courses of the future teachers / trainers allow to improve their initial training and to support them immediately in the acquisition of the skills. In addition, the APP provides features targeted both to the cataloging and exchange of materials and reflections on results between teachers and interactive use. It is aimed at teaching activities by teachers and students, with the possibility of high customization of activities, to overcome cultural and territorial disparities and disadvantages (use online and offline on the most common digital supports). Finally, these features support the adoption of collaborative and innovative practices to strengthen leadership roles in education, supporting teacher-level leadership distribution, and therefore institutional changes.
