#LearningConnects – What Turin can teach

To help the countries where we work deal with learning under lockdown, we have been talking to people dealing day-to-day with keeping education and training going despite social distancing to cope with the COVID-19 crisis.

On 1 April we met key actors from the City of Turin and one of its major vocational education and training providers, who are working hard to keep teachers, students and families connected through learning following the school closures, in effect in Italy since 5 March 2020.

Creative solutions and community approaches have been key, building on existing initiatives. The city has been mobilising all its partnerships, public and private, to ensure no one is left behind in term of access to equipment, connectivity or content. Education and training providers have been using all the tools at their disposal to keep contact between teachers, students and their families, especially the most vulnerable ones.

Turning a challenge into an opportunity

Marco Pironti, Deputy Mayor of Turin, responsible for Innovation, spoke of the role of the city in the COVID-19 crisis.

“It’s not the role of the city to create solutions” he said “but to create the ecosystem to make it possible for all players, public and private, citizens, practitioners and students to develop solutions together”.

Turin has been working over the years to develop the technological infrastructure, and has set up Torino City Lab as a platform where all players can get together to develop practical solutions in real urban conditions.

“The problem is not technology” said Mr Pironti, “but the human capability to capture all its potential...by developing new skills and new innovative training methods.”

As part of Torino City Lab, an initiative called Torino City Love has been launched in response to the COVID-19 crisis. It brings together actors from across the city to deliver a range of on-line services and solutions for families, schools, businesses and public administrations to help them deal with the challenges of living, learning and working at a distance.

“This is a crucial period for Turin, for Italy and the whole of Europe.” said Marco.

He stressed the importance of building on existing skills and technological developments to address the specific demands of the COVID-19 emergency, and at the same time to change the paradigm of how we learn, how we work and how we collaborate.

“Don’t be afraid of this period, and don’t be afraid of innovation.” He said. “It is a huge opportunity for us to demonstrate that we are able to do it and be ready to restart very quickly. As we say in Italy: tutto andra bene – all will be well”.

Creating communities, of teachers, students and families

Isabella Del Vecchio is Head, Pedagogy and Gender Opportunities, at ENAIP Piemonte,

a major training provider in the Italian region of Piedmont with 16 training centres and a catering school. She described what they are doing to continue their activities and switch from face-to-face teaching to online and distance learning.

“We are trying to refresh our teaching to keep contact with all our students and continue our mission which is about the centrality of the person and his or her enhancement.” she said.

ENAIP is working to transfer all the best practice and ideas and skills they have developed in online learning. She stressed the importance of keeping contact with teachers, tutors and above all students, especially those most vulnerable. About 40% of ENAIP’s students have disabilities, language difficulties or special educational needs. We use cooperative learning and peer education methods, and we are trying to move those online.

“We are lucky in vocational education” she said “because we have tutors as well as teachers, and we have teams that work together and share best practice, including psychologists and counsellors, to support vulnerable students.”

Isabella stressed the value of creating a community of teachers to share content and best practice. This has enabled ENAIP to rapidly deliver online teaching and training to students.

“Our teachers are doing a great job in difficult circumstances” she said.

Learning from students

Davide Gelati, a teacher and tutor at ENAIP Piemonte who specialises in digital learning, explained that ENAIP has been using G-Suite and Google Classroom since 2015 to support blended learning and flipped activities in their classrooms, and help teachers deal with mixed levels and different learning styles.

“When the lock down was imposed” he said, “we were ready to shift to online learning.”

ENAIP is using Microsoft Teams for online lectures, and Google Classroom to assign activities and provide feedback. School is first and foremost a space in which learning activities happen, and that can be done online. But it is also a place where students can have real-life experiences and cultivate relationships, and this can only happen in real-life situations. He stressed the importance of using all the tools available - mobile apps, e-learning systems, phone calls - to maintain a relationship with students, especially as not all students have a computer and an internet connection. It is vital also for teachers to sustain and help each other.

“It’s a good opportunity to learn from our students too.” said Davide. “They surprise us with their activity. They’re doing a great job and I am very proud of them.”

Connecting abundance with need

Nicola Farronato is a tech entrepreneur and advisor on innovation to the City of Turin. He stressed the need to find creative ways of overcoming problems and finding new solutions.

“Learning is one of the keys to this transition, this technological and behavioural leap that we all need to make in our context” he said.

Supporting learning means meeting hardware needs, connectivity needs, and content needs. Through Torino City Lab, the city’s universities are being asked to lend or donate computers, tablets and smart devices they are not using to families, schools and students. This scheme will be extended to business. The aim is to create a marketplace in a circular economy logic to reuse equipment.

“We aim to connect the point of abundance with the point of need” he said.

To solve the connectivity problem, Torino City Lab is trying to bring open public wifi with the support of network operators to reach families that lack connectivity. Another initiative, in cooperation with Torino City Lab partners is provide families with data-enabled SIM cards.

“We are trying to leverage any creative way to equip as many families as possible with proper devices and connectivity to do e-learning” he said.

At the same time, Torino City Lab is bringing together content, services and equipment and giving it for free to citizens, companies and schools.

“We’re trying to mobilise all our partners” said Nicola.