From March to June 2020, Italian schools had to manage all their activities virtually. The transition to online classes brought upon new challenges and needs. The biggest one was that teachers were asked to use these new teaching methods, while they did not wholly understand the IT tools and their impact on formal education.
In September 2020, due to the impending repeat scenario of school closures experienced during the first lockdown, the Foundation, and its partner, ACRA, decided to extend their collaborative efforts. The #WeAreAllConnected initiative was set in motion as of October 2020, reinforcing ACRA’s commitment to the Foundation’s scope of action. The project focused on reinforcing teachers’ skills in managing online tools to assist schools in becoming more familiar and efficient with distance learning techniques. It was then created a specific course geared towards teachers. Its goal was to address the higher IT skills needed to be mastered to navigate virtual teaching successfully.
The 5-module course was designed to allow teachers to create activities that were inspired by outdoor education and stimulate students’ participation. It was developed with the essential support of the ST volunteers. Between November and December 2020, 158 teachers attended the online classes that were dedicated to using GSuite for Education.
The Foundation went even a step further, offering teachers and students “eco-friendly” content to enrich the school’s curriculum. New topics on subjects such as global citizenship and sustainability were introduced, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect, being that the entire globe’s population was facing the same challenge: a global pandemic.
The second edition of this initiative was organized between February and March 2021, and it offered basic and advanced-level courses. The courses’ details are fully presented in the Italian brochures of this initiative.