Section: Dissemination

Popularization

Michael Lodi and Simone Martini have carried out extended work of scientific popularization, including the following.

• They are members of the technical committee of Olimpiadi del Problem Solving (at Italian Ministry of Education), http://www.olimpiadiproblemsolving.com;

• S. Martini has given various talks at institutes and workshops on the teaching methods for Computer Science, including a talk on “Educare all'informatica nella scuola?’’, working day on “La cultura informatica come fattore di sviluppo’' Roma, Camera dei Deputati, December 2017.

• S. Martini is coordinator of some initiatives for the `Hour of Code' (see e.g., http://www.programmailfuturo.it). M. Lodi is also involved.

• M. Lodi is in charge of preparing material “unplugged” to teach the principles of computational thinking in elementary schools.

• M. Lodi has been involved in meetings aimed at forming teachers of elementary and high schools in the Bologna province. These include a 15-hour course “Coding e robotica: tecnologie e metodologie per una didattica integrata nella scuola secondaria di I grado”, and a 12-hour course “Scratch avanzato: funzionalità e applicazione alla didattica”, both organised by Fondazione Golinelli (Bologna).

• M. Lodi has given talks on computational thinking and programming languages for teaching computer science to children, including: “Coding - Che cosa è e perché?” and “Coding con Scratch”, at Mathesis Piacenza; “CoderDojo: Pensiero computazionale e informatica creativa... anche a scuola?”, Convention Diesse; introduction to computer science for high school students, as part of an event of introduction to management (“Giardino delle imprese”), Fondazione Golinelli, Bologna; “L'illusione del coding” and “TeacherDojo”, at the contest “CoderDojo Coolest Projects Milano”, Milan; “Ragazze, siate coraggiose: la vostra intelligenza puo' crescere (ma il “coding” non basta!)”, at “Festival della Cultura Tecnica 2017”, Bologna; a talk and youtube video “Quattro domande sul pensiero computazionale” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANlwOckhcVU).

• M. Lodi has has been member of the evaluation commission for the awards “Programma le Regole”, set by Italian Ministry of Education and Research (MIUR) and “Programma il Futuro”.

D. Hirschkoff takes part in several popularization activities in schools, in Lyon (association "Maths en Jeans").

Other duties

S. Martini is Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Bologna, for the term 2015-2018.

G. Zavattaro is coordinator of undergraduate studies at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Bologna (Informatica per il Management).