Abstract:

The work describes the methodological evolution and pedagogical reasons that have enabled the implementation, as from 2007/2008, of a blogroom to teach computer science in the University of Florence’s College of Medicine. An innovation that decidedly upsets the traditional teaching approach by using free or low cost tools but, more importantly, by making students active in their own education.

Course Philosophy

The course is focused on autonomy and personal initiative, on the aptitude to share and collaborate, on the ability to express and communicate. It is created for a world in which companies think less of grades and degrees and more of problem-solving ability and relational abilities.
Technically, a blogroom stems from a set of blogs and the appropriate use of RSS feeds but, obviously, this is not enough. The first thing that a teacher must do in a new blogroom is to create a mood in which all receive the value of sharing as the key driver of learning activities: the teacher teaches, but anyone can become a teacher as soon as he has learned something. The up front lecture and the seminar are the tools to create this mood, and they have to be designed for this purpose. In this context, the teacher’s blog has nothing to do with what seems to be the hype about blogs in the mainstream information and in the blogosphere itself: yearning to tell, yearning to listen, voyeurism, egocentrism, exhibitionism, privacy etc. Instead it is a working tool, which has students as key, but not exclusive, interlocutors. The blogosphere generated by this group of students is a dynamic classroom with transparent and fuzzy walls and it merges with other blog communities in a seamless way. Consequently, the audience of interlocutors expands to other people interested in the same theme, teachers and school practitioners at all levels and in all countries of the world. Each of these blogs is a window to spot how others have done things, to talk, ask, answer, learn…

Summary of the strengths of innovation

• Breaking down of internal disciplinary and “cultural” walls.
• Transparency and openness to the world.
• Creation of a transition area between formal and informal education, with a goal of life-long learning.
• Course’s fluid structure.
• “Guaranteed minimum quality” principle (a.k.a. “effective learning”).
• Humanization of the teaching relationship.

Some Conclusions

The integration of ICT in university education may be truly innovative only if learning activities are throughly redesigned and, therefore, teaching practices are carefully revisited. Educational systems cannot be changed simply by pointing out an ideal model to follow, rather we have to start from what they are, from what they do and from how they do it. We believe that a reversal of the theory-practice relationship is needed, starting with teaching/learning tactics and strategies deployed in the reality, so that “theory” comes after exploration and not vice-versa.

Keywords:

ple, web 2, 0, connectivism, blog, communities of practice.