The necessary digitization
(by Giovanbattista Trebisacce, Professor of General Pedagogy at the University of Catania and AIDR Member) January 23, 2020 will represent an important date in future history books; a day that will mark the future of the whole world. On that day, China decided to close all businesses, including schools, in the Wuhan province and to present the Covid 19 virus, the undisputed protagonist of the last 8 months, to the world. The virus, in the following weeks, goes around the world and Italy is among the first countries hit hard, after China. In Italy, the first school closures, in the Lodi area, start on 21 February. On 1 March the closures expand and the DPCM (Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers) begin, which allow schools, in the territories involved in the health emergency, to activate, after consulting the teachers' college, for the duration of the suspension, of distance learning. On March 4, a new DPCM establishes the closure of schools and universities throughout Italy, transforming the indication relating to the use of distance learning from optional into compulsory. A few days later, with the Prime Ministerial Decree of 8 March, Italy stops with the sole exception of essential activities. These measures will gradually be adopted by other European countries and, soon after, on a global scale.
With a series of extensions linked to the uncontrolled health emergency in Italy, the closure of schools and universities continues until the summer holidays and today, a few days after their reopening in some regions, the situation still appears uncertain and very problematic.
The closure has "imposed" a "gigantic collective experiment in online teaching" which has generated inevitable difficulties and many discussions steeped, many times, in sterile controversy.
I do not want to dwell on it, but I would like to start from a consideration that, I think and hope, is now definitively acquired: the school of tomorrow will not and cannot be that of the past, not only immediately and in the months / years of the necessary physical distancing, but also and above all in perspective. The "experimental and emergency" use of new tools and methodologies, the need to reorganize spaces in a more flexible and modular way, the need to have smaller groups of students, must represent, in my opinion, opportunities to rethink, overall, the teaching methodologies. It will be necessary, necessarily, to remove the "temptation" to forget this emergency period with a clear return to the past, just as it will be necessary to avoid continuing "to rely without reflection or mediation" on the technological tools known and used in recent months. Before "falling" into sterile polemics it must be understood that the use we made of it in the emergency period is light years away from what would be desirable in a situation of adequately organized and planned normality.
What was done in Italy was not distance learning, but rather an emergency teaching experiment, based on an obligatory but incorrect use of tools created, instead, to be used in other ways, in a different context. , flanking and not replacing the presence. Based on these considerations and, above all, on the basis of my personal experience (the courses of History of Pedagogy and Philosophy of Education at the Disum of the University of Catania) I can say that online teaching (if done well) does not prevent to develop fruitful and meaningful human relationships and is not necessarily passive and transmissive, but can be active, participatory and constructive. This does not mean that distance learning can replace face-to-face teaching: schools and universities are physical relational environments where a thousand forms of non-formal and informal learning are “born”. I am surprised by the many "misunderstandings" of colleagues and "experts" who have spent so much time and energy to criticize the forms in which teaching and learning have had to take place in recent months. The contrast between distance teaching and face-to-face teaching is wrong: face-to-face teaching provides and has always provided for "distance activities", while, on the other hand, online teaching and learning tools aimed at the school world are designed to complement and not replace presence. The online teaching tools that in recent months we have been forced to use in an improper way and in an emergency moment, represent instead for schools and universities very useful technologies, together with others, to implement the quality of teaching. During the emergency I had the honor of organizing 7 meetings for my students with colleagues and guests of international standing, which I would hardly have had in Catania), accompanying and integrating the work in the presence and certainly not replacing it.
In the experienced emergency situation, considering the enormous "inequalities" not only of technological equipment but also and above all of skills, given the many reports published (CENSIS, IPSOS, CISL-SCHOOL), we can say that the online teaching experiment worked far beyond the brightest prospects.
In conclusion, we can say that the emergency distance teaching has worked discreetly, reaching the vast majority of students, but has not achieved unequivocally positive results: the inequalities that have emerged are undeniable, the absence of clear operational methodologies, the confusion between school emergency and school of the future. It is necessary to try to distinguish the real problems (lack of skills in primis) from the many clichés that risk diverting attention from the real problems (and there are many) and produce sterile and populist discussions.
The hope is that this health emergency will be treasured and moved to a complete digitalization of the learning environments and school facilities throughout the country and that a serious policy for the training of new teachers and those in service will be drawn up.