Abstract:

The paper aims to present the first results of the project 'Design Your School' (DYS), a research funded with the Living LAB call of Sviluppumbria s.p.a and pointed to create an application built on an open-source platform, designed both for children aged 7 to 14 years and teachers. The goal was to test innovative teaching processes based on project-based learning that promotes the dissemination of technological content highly inclusive and kids-friendly, supporting also the inclusion of children with specific learning disabilities (SLD).

The DYS project is led by DENSA Coop Soc (Developing Edutainment for New Skills and Attitude), a social enterprise operating in the field of education by creating bridges between pedagogical research and experimentation in the field of art and new digital technologies to develop digital skills in children.

The research aims to create a tool that both makes it easier for children to develop projects and helps teachers organize the material, through:
- the development of pedagogical experiences based on Project Based Learning;
- the standardisation and archiving of the materials produced during the teaching processes;
- the valorisation of the steps of the learning/project process.

Specifically, the paper presents the results of the first phase of the research, carried out with the scientific support of the Department of Education Sciences and the School of Design of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Perugia. Representatives of the final users also participated in this phase for in-depth studies on pedagogical methodologies and the application of edutainment tools. The Discovery phase involved the analysis of the context and benchmarking of the digital products currently available, to identify and analyse their strengths and weaknesses, so that they could form the basis of the subsequent design aimed at defining the features of the platform.

The first step of this phase consisted in the identification of similar products already on the market developed for digital education.

These include:
a) all-in-one platforms integrating content creation tools together with student-teacher communication solutions and material storage,
b) digital learning environments, focused on the general management of learning structures,
c) creative tools designed for the facilitated and guided generation of various types of content.

The analysis of the case studies isolated several common features and recurrent functions of the products under consideration.
In the second step, typologies, specificities and strengths of some educational games and popular games in the age group under examination were analysed, to identify and convey in the new project elements able to involve and capture the attention of children.

At the same time, several tools developed to help children with SLD with reading and text comprehension were identified.

In summary, the DYS project responds to two main needs of the end-users, identified by the analysis of the subjects operating in the educational field:
- pedagogical and innovation of teaching methodologies: for the dissemination among school teachers of "Project Based-Learning";
- technological innovation of didactic and cultural processes: to favour investments in research, planning, prototyping and implementation of innovative tools, whose theoretical basis is based on the Project Pedagogy.

Keywords:

Project-Based Learning, pedagogical experience, kids-centred design, phygital learning experience, edutainment.