“Instant Multimedia” for Educational Setting: A Success Story

Aldo Torrebruno; Paolo Paolini; Franca Garzotto; Nicoletta Di Blas; Davide Bolchini; Caterina Poggi

World Conference on Educational Media and Technology 2008 (Jun 30, 2008) pp. 538–544

Instant multimedia…simplicity, low-cost, and ultra short “time-to-market”. This paper discusses how the above characteristics of instant multimedia are the key of its “success” in educational settings, if we define “success” in terms of...

Topics: Schools, Multimedia

“Learning for All”: is everyone learning?

Luca Ferrari; Nicoletta Di Blas; Paolo Paolini; Alessandro Arpetti; Rosa Lanzillotti; Floriana Falcinelli; Roberto Vergallo; Maria Grazia Ierardi; Elena Pacetti

World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2012 (Oct 09, 2012) pp. 1782–1792

This paper is about collecting and sharing empirical evidence about learning experiences at school (in Italy, for the time being). Our specific purpose is to understand how technologies influence the learning process, and more specifically how they...

Digital Storytelling at School. Does the TPCK Model Explain What’s Going On?

Nicoletta Di Blas; Paolo Paolini; Aldo Torrebruno

World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2010 (Oct 18, 2010) pp. 2239–2248

From year 2006, thousands of students (aged between 5 and 18 years) and hundreds of teachers have taken part in PoliCultura, an initiative by HOC-LAB of Politecnico di Milano calling Italian schools to create multimedia “narratives”. A number of...

Assessing and Sharing (technology-based)Educational Experiences

Paolo Paolini; Nicoletta Di Blas; Luigi Guerra; Floriana Falcinelli; Luca Mainetti; Maria Francesca Costabile; Maria Grazia Ierardi; Tommaso Leo; Luca Ferrari

World Conference on Educational Media and Technology 2011 (Jun 27, 2011) pp. 3150–3157

In this paper we present the “Learning4All” (L4ALL) project, which has the aim of developing knowledge about how technology and pedagogy influence the quality of educational experiences. Our approach is empirical rather than theoretical: instead of...

Educational Benefits: Testing and Evaluation of a Collaborative 3D World

Nicoletta Di Blas; Paolo Paolini; Caterina Poggi

World Conference on Educational Media and Technology 2005 (Jun 27, 2005) pp. 2209–2221

Innovative technologies offer extraordinary opportunities to "traditional" education, but they also open new challenges to educators: what features should be implemented in order to obtain which results? How can results be tested? Evaluating the...

Topics: Evaluation, Educational Technology

Collaboration and Playful Competition in a 3D Educational Virtual World: The Learning@Europe Experience

Nicoletta Di Blas; Caterina Poggi; Aldo Torrebruno

World Conference on Educational Media and Technology 2006 (June 2006) pp. 1191–1198

This paper examines the role of collaborative competition in an educational experience based on a shared online 3D environment. Group collaboration and competition in learning are regarded by motivationalist perspectives as a powerful combination....

Topics: Students, Virtual Environments, Collaboration, Schools, Games

Multi-user Virtual Environments for Education: A European Experience

Paolo Paolini; Nicoletta Di Blas

World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2006 (October 2006) pp. 1383–1394

Multi-user virtual environments have been used for a variety of purposes that, for the majority of cases, have been confined into leisure or entertainment applications. Politecnico di Milano (Italy) has experienced, instead, the delivery of an...

Topics: Virtual Environments, Students, Social Studies, Collaboration, Teachers

Learning by Playing. An Edutainment 3D Environment for Schools

Nicoletta Di Blas; Paolo Paolini; Caterina Poggi

World Conference on Educational Media and Technology 2004 (2004) pp. 1313–1320

SEE (concerning "Dead Sea Scrolls" and related issues such as history, religion, philosophy, literature, etc.), is a very effective learning environment intended for a worldwide audience, of students from 12 to 19 years of age. A massive...

Topics: Students

SEE (Shrine Educational Experience): an Online Cooperative 3D Environment Supporting Innovative Educational Activities

Nicoletta Di Blas; Paolo Paolini; Caterina Poggi

World Conference on Educational Media and Technology 2003 (2003) pp. 1527–1534

What do new technologies have to offer to education? And in particular, can online collaborative 3D environments fulfill high educational goals, combined with the playful and social aspects that make them so attractive? SEE (Shrine Educational...

Topics: Educational Technology, Culture

Media & Communication Literacy in Higher Education: Learning a Foreign Language

Paolo Paolini; Nicoletta Di Blas; Aldo Torrebruno

World Conference on Educational Media and Technology 2009 (Jun 22, 2009) pp. 3210–3220

Learning how to speak through modern interactive channels is not easy for “grown up students”, as those at higher education level. They are used to the multimedia Web, iPod, iPhone, etc. as “personal channels” for their own entertainment but they...

3D Worlds to Learn and Play: 6 Years of Projects with an Engaging, Pedagogically Effective, and Versatile Educational Format

Nicoletta Di Blas; Paolo Paolini; Caterina Poggi; Aldo Torrebruno

World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2008 (Nov 17, 2008) pp. 738–745

This paper describes the evolution of the format for educational experiences based on 3D collaborative worlds developed by the Hypermedia Open Center of Politecnico di Milano. Evaluation data collected over 6 years with approximately 9,000 users...

Listen to a Web Site

Marco Speroni; Nicoletta Di Blas; Paolo Paolini

World Conference on Educational Media and Technology 2004 (2004) pp. 5224–5225

Accessibility to the web is becoming a major concern for all institutions, especially for those wanting to educate their users on content-related to Cultural Heritage. Nowadays web accessibility guidelines provided by the W3C Consortium are very...

Topics: Accessibility, Information Communication Technologies

Distributed TPACK: Going Beyond Knowledge in the Head

Nicoletta Di Blas; Paolo Paolini; Sandra Sawaya; Punya Mishra

Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2014 (Mar 17, 2014) pp. 2464–2472

The TPACK framework has received a lot of attention lately. For the most part, it has been seen as a form of teacher-knowledge residing within the head of individual teachers. Teaching with technology, however, is a complex task and often requires ...

Topics: Technological, Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Distributed TPACK What kind of teachers does it work for?

Nicoletta Di Blas

Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society Vol. 12, No. 3 (Jun 22, 2016)

Technology at school can be either integrated as an everyday support to normal, curricular activities or as a trigger for special projects. Drawing on the distributed cognition theory, the distributed TPACK (Technology, Pedagogy and Content...

Sustainable Chatbots supporting Learning

Nicoletta Di Blas; Luca Lodi; Paolo Paolini; Barbara Pernici; Niccolò Raspa; Donya Rooein; Fabrizio Renzi

EdMedia + Innovate Learning 2019 (Jun 24, 2019) pp. 1376–1381

This paper proposes iMOOC (an innovative approach to adaptive learning) and iCHAT (, a novel approach to the use of chatbots (and conversational interfaces) in education. iCHAT is an original technology to develop sustainable, relatively inexpensive ...

Topics: Personalized learning environments

Schools as Protagonists in the Valorization and Communication of their Local Cultural Heritage

Giulia Bertone; Micaela Bordin; Camilla Casonato; Nicoletta Di Blas; Valeria Pracchi; Marco Vedoà

EdMedia + Innovate Learning 2019 (Jun 24, 2019) pp. 1562–1568

Cultural heritage education is an important part of the identity-making process of the citizens of every nation around the world. While its relevance is widely recognized and advocated by several governmental pronouncements, the design, deployment...

Topics: Digital and social media for engaging youth about cultures, Authentic, contextualized, and real-world learning, Participatory learning and media

Robots at School: Supporting Humanities Teaching Through Robots-Based Storytelling

Flor Angela Bravo; Enrique Gonzalez; Nicoletta Di Blas; Andrea Bonarini

EdMedia + Innovate Learning 2019 (Jun 24, 2019) pp. 162–175

Most robot-based activities are used to foster the acquisition of benefits in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) area. However, educational robotics also have a great potential to support the learning and teaching processes in...

Topics: Simulations for learning, Mobile teaching and learning technologies

Il modello TPACK nella formazione delle competenze digitali dei docenti. Normative ministeriali e implicazioni pedagogiche

Nicoletta Di Blas; Manuela Fabbri; Luca Ferrari

Italian Journal of Educational Technology Vol. 26, No. 1 (Jun 06, 2018) pp. 24–38

A partire dalla definizione concettuale del modello TPACK (Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge, in italiano “Conoscenza della tecnologia, della pedagogia e del contenuto\u201d), un modello che sottolinea i domini di conoscenza coinvolti nei...

Knowledge Flows as a Way to Understand Learning Processes

Stella Casola; Nicoletta Di Blas; Paolo Paolini

Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2018 (Mar 26, 2018) pp. 921–926

This paper proposes an innovative method for analyzing learning processes, involving groups of students Moving from TPACK and its evolution, the method (named DDK-flows, Distributed & Dynamic Knowledge-flows) proposes the analysis of flows of...

Topics: Research & Evaluation, Technological, Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK)

Distributed and Dynamic TPACK: Evidences from a (Large) Case Study

Nicoletta Di Blas; Paolo Paolini

Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2016 (Mar 21, 2016) pp. 2815–2821

The concept of “distributed TPACK” (SITE 2014) suggests that “distributing the knowledge across a system of resources and support is a more accurate and realistic depiction of what teachers actually do in the real setting of a classroom” with...

Topics: Technological, Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), Teaching and Learning with Emerging Technologies, New Possibilties with Information Technologies

Designing and Delivering MOOCs that Fit all Sizes

Stella Casola; Nicoletta Di Blas; Paolo Paolini; Giuseppe Pelagatti

Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2018 (Mar 26, 2018) pp. 110–117

This papers describes an innovative methodology, iMOOC, for designing and delivering online courses that can be highly customized. The goal is to make the learning experience corresponding, as much as possible, to the profile of each learner, to...

Topics: Distance/Flexible Education, Research & Evaluation, Teaching and Learning with Emerging Technologies

A Portal of Educational Resources: Providing Evidence for Matching Pedagogy with Technology

Nicoletta Di Blas; Alessandro Fiore; Luca Mainetti; Roberto Vergallo; Paolo Paolini

Research in Learning Technology Vol. 22 (2014)

The TPACK (Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge) model presents the three types of knowledge that are necessary to implement a successful technology-based educational activity. It highlights how the intersections between TPK (Technological...