The Future of Education

The article aims to illustrate the experiences of using digital technology in the internship of future teachers at the University of Bolzano - Faculty of Education. The National Digital School Plan – NDSP- (2015), focused on teacher training in continuation of initial training (actions #26 and #27) and later expanded into the National Training and Teachers Plan – NTTP- (2016-2019). In these plans, it is stressed that digital training is necessary not so much from the IT point of view, but as a necessary ground for the development of competences oriented towards innovation in teaching practice, according to the considerations in the OECD report (2015), which draws priority attention to the teaching/learning process versus that to technology. As the NTTP states, universities are asked to build, in alliance with schools, the real spaces for the evolution of professional knowledge. Professional knowledge that should include an updated perspective of the basic skills (DM 249/2010) of the teaching profession (pedagogical-didactic-relational) that can be effectively supported by the use of digital technology, according to the model TPACK (Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge) (Mishra, Koehler, 2005). From this perspective, a competent teacher is able to connect three dimensions: pedagogy, content and technology. Therefore, not so much (not only), competent in the relation to technology itself, to pedagogy and to the specific content of its subject, but especially competent in those uses of technology that support adequate pedagogical strategies for teaching (di Blas 2018,). The University of Bolzano (UniBz) is part of one survey (Di Blas,Fabbri, Ferrari, 2018 ) on the actions taken by Italian universities in relation to NSDP, in which Unibz has been activated some lectures related to media pedagogy and technology and educational workshops. However an important part of this pedagogical-didactic innovation is played in the traineeship. Since 2016, students of Faculty of Education have been using a digital device, an e-portfolio to document and reflect on their personal and professional path (Ravanelli, 2017), and during the various indirect training workshops they share reflections and artifacts of individuals, couples or groups works in a digital platform. The use of the digital portfolio contributes to the development of documentation, reflective and ethical-deontological skills.  Sharing artifacts implements social skills and relationships that are part of the repertoire of the teaching profession, while the construction of digital artifacts in the form of digital posters, storytelling, podcasts, videos, interactive presentations, allows the experimentation of tools that actually support an active, multi-channel, student-centered and fundamentally inclusive teaching. In this way, the internship is configured as a real playground for the development of those professional skills aimed to innovate teaching practices that characterize the NDSP, where it is highlighted that digital helps to build the logic of educational innovation.

Keywords Digital competence, teaching innovation, traineeships, NDSP, University;

References:
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