UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI SALERNO, DIPARTIMENTO DI INFORMATICA, ITALY
The University of Salerno has very ancient origins as it is one of the oldest universities in Europe together with Paris and Bologna. The Salerno School of Medicine was founded in the 8th century and was the principal institution in Europe for the study of medicine, reaching its utmost splendor during the Middle Ages. The School marked an enormous step forward in the evolution of medical science and easily fitted into the city of Salerno, which had been thriving economically and culturally since it had been part of Magna Graecia. The university remained active until 1811, when it was closed by royal decree while in 1944 the university was re-opened by king Vittorio Emanuele II, and the Istituto Universitario di Magistero “Giovanni Cuomo” was founded, which became state-controlled in 1968 as the Facoltà. Within a few years
other faculties were founded and they formed the basis of an important university. In 1988, the University, which now has over 43,000 students, moved to the village of Fisciano in the Irno valley, a few miles from Salerno. The Department of Computer Science, a Department of Excellence (officially nominated at national level) has almost 30 years of research and teaching activities (previously called Dipartimento di Informatica ed Applicazioni), being one of the first Computer Science departments established in Italy. The department enrolls 35 full time professors, offers didactic support for Bachelor, Master and PhD Degree courses in Computer Science (about 1600 students) and has a variety of interest in Computer Science, including Distributed Systems, Algorithms, Networking, Parallel Computation, Security and Cryptography, Languages, Formal Codes and Computer Graphics. Within the department, ISISLab is the research laboratory that has been mainly in charge of the participation in the Horizon2020 Project: ROUTE-TO-PA. ISISLab was established 16 years ago. Its research is carried out on a wide range of topics including distributed systems, CSCW and CSCL, information visualization, interactive virtual environments, peer-to-peer architectures and web proxies. Among its activities, ISISLab hosted 12 Ph.D. candidates and more than 130 Master Degree students in Computer Science.
ISISLab has been in charge, as Coordinator, of a European Project (Horizon 2020, “ROUTE-TO-PA: Raising Open and User-friendly Transparency-Enabling Technologies for Public Administrations”, € 472,500). He has been involved also in other European programs (IST-2005-028027 ,“Lead: Technology- enhanced learning and problem-solving discussions”,
EU VI Framework, €394.155). Moreover, he has been involved in various research projects funded by regional government (Centro Regionale di Competenza per lo Sviluppo ed il Trasferimento dell’Innovazione Applicata ai Beni Culturali e Ambientali, € 453.373,86), and national programs (Fondo per gli investimenti della Ricerca di Base (FIRB), Ministero della Università e della Ricerca, €520.000). Nowadays, the ISISLab Laboratory is coordinated by 2 Full Professors, 1 Associated Professor and 1 Assistant Professor (Researcher). Moreover, it hosts almost 15 Master Degree students, 8 Ph.D. students and other members of the staff (with Postdoc or research fellowship positions).
Vittorio Scarano is Full Professor of Computer Science and co-director of ISISLab. He received in 1995 the PhD in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Naples (Italy). After visiting as Research Scientist the University Eotvos Lorand in Budapest (Hungary), the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (USA) and Mount Holyoke College (USA), he is (since 1995) at the University of Salerno, first as Assistant Prof., later (2001) as Associate Prof. and now as Full Prof. (2019). He is the author or co-author of more than 120 papers in internationally refereed journals and conferences of IEEE, ACM, etc. and he has been Deputy Director of the Department of Computer Science. He is responsible for the remote teaching of the Departiment, in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alberto Negro is is Full Professor, former Chairman of the DI. Alberto Negro received the Laureate degree (cum laude) in Computer Science in 1981 from the University of Salerno. Since 2001 he has been a Full professor of Computer Science at the
University of Salerno that he joined in 1984 as a researcher. He has been a visiting researcher at the Department of Computer Science of Oregon State University (1985), at the Carleton University of Ottawa in 1986. His main research isin Distributed Algorithms and Data Structures.
Wise & Munro
Wise & Munro is a small company involved in international research and development on computers and learning. The company is a pioneer in developing and using technology in educational settings since the very beginnings of Internet.
.
Jerry Andriesse is a senior researcher, a learning scientist, involved in international research and development on computers and collaborative learning. He is a pioneer in developing and using technology in educational settings since the very beginnings of Internet. He started his career with studying the role of computers for supporting coherent idea generation and sentence production in writing, where the computer had the role of expert and didactician. He also studied the role of intelligent computer support for learning. During the nineties, he experimented extensively with the use of discussion forums in higher education. He studied educational uses of argumentation, and collaborated in projects during which computer support for argumentation was developed.
Jerry became involved in large collaborative international projects, which all focused on new forms of learning. These projects gave him much satisfaction and possibilities to work with other experts in the field, but time to spend on these projects at university was limited. So he started his own company to be able to have more time for these and other projects. His research shifted to understanding the ethical dimension of collaboration, through analysis of emotions, as well as the educational context. Lately, pioneering in governemental contexts, with understanding of professionals in computer supported collaboration (see routetopa.eu) is a new research area.
Mirjam Pardijs holds a master’s degree in Education Sciences, and specializes in educational design, collaborative learning and teacher training. After working in different contexts (educational publisher, vocational education, university etc.) she joined Jerry in this company to be able to work on projects more close to her heart and have more time for research as well.
Mirjam works on projects in education (all levels) and teacher training. She develops educational programs and workshops focused on collaboration and understanding each other (for instance by using narratives). In projects, her contribution lies in introducing new (complex) concepts to the table and analysing development and facilitating the (change) process.
Bimed
Biennial of Arts and Sciences of the Mediterranean Association of Local Bodies for Educational and Culture (BIMED) is an association composed by local authorities and institutions working in the field of education and culture. Its purpose is to determine opportunities for meetings and exchanges between the Mediterranean areas and Europe. The interested areas are history, art, music, dance, foreign languages, education and training in general. This is an institution whose primary purpose is to improve the methods that are put in place within the school and in the social sphere aimed at qualifying the contexts by considering the inclusion, equality and peace, brotherhood, legality. Bimed is a training institution accredited by MIUR, the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (Prot.N. A00DGPER 6495-4 /
08/2011). It is also an institution that certifies linguistic skills and computer skills. Its main purpose is to improve cultural skills and persistent pragmatic attitudes in disadvantaged social areas. Bimed operates in direct correspondence with what has been issued by the European community on the basis of active citizenship. This means that the institution is committed to the dissemination of the eight key competences on which it imposes a commitment of particular relevance for what regards the listening competence, fundamental for restoring equilibrium in the interaction between peoples. In the national and international field Bimed has more than a thousand schools that work in interaction with the institution around the optimization processes of the training offer. Bimed also has relations with a lot of local authorities and institutions committed to affirming the value of legality and inclusion as determinants of the development and qualification context.
Bimed works mostly with those so-called marginal and internal areas that represent, to the state, a weakness of the Mediterranean euro system and which can, on the other hand, become the role of ancient sea and Europe. Bimed has been organizing Exposcuola since 2000, the exhibition of the comparison between the training proposals of Europe and the Mediterranean, with more than 200,000 visitors at the University of Salerno. At national and international level Bimed has more than thousand schools that work in interaction with the institution around the processes of training optimization.
Bimed also has relations with a lot of local authorities and institutions committed to affirming the value of inclusion as a determinant of the context development and qualification. Bimed works mostly with those so-called marginal and internal areas that represent, at the moment, a weakness of the European system. The Association has a consolidated experience in initiatives and activities aimed at all age groups, with particular reference to the issues related to the eight key competences and to a ninth: the listening activities. Here are some of the projects implemented by Bimed over the years:
- W children, Erasmus+ project of Bimed with Pegaso University and schools from 4 different countries. WIN is the acronym of Writing for inclusion and european citizenship. The project is based on the transfer and implementation at a European level of an innovative good practice called “Relay of Creative Writing and Legality” which aims at providing students the necessary instruments for reading, writing, doing and being during the academic curriculum.
- Exposcuola
- South School Park
- PazzJam
- Relay of Creative Writing and Legality
Andrea Iovino, a graduate in Literature and Philosophy, specializes in Mass Communication and Art History. He is currently director and president of the Biennial of the Arts and Sciences of the Mediterranean (BIMED) which is an association with legal personality accredited to the Ministry of Education, Universities, and Research (Italian: Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca, MIUR) as a Training Body for Teachers. Engaged in the field of associations in favor of legality for years he has been dealing with writing as a fundamental tool for growth and for the optimization of school. He has published several titles for Franco Angeli Editori and for other publishing houses with texts and articles relating to pedagogy.
Giovanni Del Sorbo is responsible for Relay of Creative Writing and Legality, Community projects, management and analysis international cooperation projects.
The National Boarding school Institute “Giordano Bruno” located in the south of Italy, Maddaloni, covers PRIMARY education and SECONDARY education (Middle and High school). Many projects have been implemented over the years, both with National funds called PON (Operative National Programme) and internal resources. Most of these projects aim to give to each single student an important role in the choice of his/her educational path, thanks to a wide range of courses meant for increase the multiple skills of each pupil. We pay lot of attention also on pupils who do not have the economic resources to participate in some activities, giving them the possibility to actively participate in order to increase their culture and improve their education (e.g. foreign languages courses aimed to acquire linguistic certifications, etc.)
Among the variety of activities that we carry out, the courses focused on the creativity and imagination play an important role. During these activities pupils give free rein to their creativity, imagination and also logic to create a story that would be based not only on the traditional narrative criterions but involving also their personal vision and inventiveness. In this way the broadening of their cultual horizons is promoted, increasing their independence of thought and their creativity, improving their language skills and their ability to create stories and plots.
Navegador Rodrigues Soromenho is the host school of a group of schools that integrate pre-primary, primary and secondary education. It is located in Sesimbra, a small fishing village south of Lisbon, fifty kilometers away.
At primary level, there are children between 4 and 9 years old. This year – 2021, we have 401 students and 25 teachers, and the total number of students in the group of schools is 1032. The grouping of schools assumes itself as a space for the construction of citizenship, based on universal values of freedom, tolerance and responsibility, providing students with quality education, rigorous in scientific, humanistic, cultural and environmental training; developing creativity, initiative and autonomy. The surrounding region is part of a natural park, Arrábida Natural Park, consisting of a small mountainous region of limestone rocks that ends at Espichel Cape. Also the coastal zone is part of a biological marine reserve – Luiz Saldanha Marine Park, where dolphins can sometimes be observed.