Case study

Giorgio SironiNEST project

Alta Scuola Politecnica 7th cycle

Innovascuola

Description

Portal for fostering digital didactics

1)directory of digital contents

2)education material about technology

3)social network

Public backing (Italian government) Goals

Providing selected, categorized and human-reviewed material

Educating teachers about e-learning Connecting teachers and students in their

communities

Homepage

Homepage

Targets to the three thematic areas Content Didactics (methodology) Social network

Also minor, classic areas Dictionary Prizes Newsletter News

Directory of contents

Directory of contents

Search-based Criteria

Payment required Target students (age) Subject (math, arts...) Textual query

Contains reviews for some of the material Human selection can be activated as a filter

Didactics

Didactics

Dedicated to adults Different channels

By target Professors Parents

By topic Web 2.0 Interviews

By frequency of updating Newsletter Columns

Social network

Social network

Profiles for professors Personal space and newsfeed Classical web tools: forum, chat, wiki Creation

Communities (student census) Content

Goal: connect professors and experiences from different schools

Syndication

Syndication

Feeds for the different channels Can be followed in an aggregator Can be filtered or mashed up in other tools

Public content Creative Commons license Distribution with attribution Non-commercial use, Share-alike (derivative works

must maintain the same license)

Business model

Government funding Targeted advertising from content providers Platform to improve the efficiency of didactic

material market Expand supply Makes supply and demand communicate easily Gathers demand for electronic content

Conclusions

Public-backed initiative, presenting externalities Its goal is not to make money

Take-aways A single platform as a point of reference can

improve the market for digital content Social networks allows for the best targeted

advertising, as user preferences are continuously collected

Educational activity for adults (professors and parents) in this domain must not be ignored