Prof. Lara Fina Ferrari at the Istituto Comprensivo del Vergante in Invorio, in the Province of Novara, describes how she used the CS First Platform to explore English literature with her students.
“CS First was a new experience that I conducted with my students, organising new activities to study English in a different manner. The platform provided me with a new method for didactics and my students with a way to orient themselves with the language, learn about coding, define new relations between elements, learn to design a project and be proud of their work. Coding provided them with a method to test their skills and develop their knowledge through creativity. This allowed them to develop a digital version of the famous balcony scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
The work was then shared with other classes in the school, explains the teacher, who is also a peer trainer for colleagues in the CS First Digital Room and author of the Diversity 3ª D Project [see the presentation on YouTube].
“As an innovating teacher, I believe that it is essential to match each of my courses with a “digital ending,” a final product that can be traced through a QRcode, so that other classes may enjoy it, too.”
Thanks to the activities developed in the classroom, a series of commonplaces and stereotypes on the role of women in STEM also emerged.
“The young women play an active role in class. They concentrate on their assignments and produce concrete analyses of the situation, solving the problems they encounter. They are precise and meticulous and structure their content. However, they still do not emerge as leaders of their groups or classes, although they often help classmates having problems.”
