war games

Games for a better world: a training course

Games. I wish I could count how much time we spend on them in our life. In my life, surely a lot – and I do not regret a single minute of that time. While I am going back home after a week-long training course which took place in my beloved venue of Sermugnano, lots of...

vr

VR : virtual reality in a cardboard box

VR [as in Virtual Reality] is the new big thing, they say. Honestly, the idea of a 3D computer-generated reality has been a key aspect of cyberpunk culture, back in the 80s, and Wikipedia says the concept could even date back to the works of Artaud in 1930s. Anyway, the real attempt to get a...

dig-it up

Digital Youth Work: Dig-it Up!

Digital Youth Work: Dig-It up! is the booklet I wrote together with Joanna Wronska and Raphaela Blassnig in 2017. It tells what we discovered, studied and learnt during two editions of our training course aimed at youth workers / educators / etc which is actually called Dig-It Up! – inside you can find the training course’s programme,...

digital youthwork

Digital YouthWork Sessions podcast n. 1 – it’s me!

I am very honored and grateful to have been interviewed in the first episode of Digital YouthWork Sessions podcast, hosted by my friend Juha Kiviniemi from Verke – I wrote about them here already! We spent 45 minutes chatting about what is digital youth work, how to do it properly, how to improve it, etc etc –...

Regali di natale tecnologici

Christmas tech gifts for kids? 5 tips, tested for you

Gifts, gifts … 10 days to Christmas, are you ready? Have you already bought everything? Or have not you even thought about it yet? 🙂 At this point the children will have already written their letters to Father Christmas, and parents will already be grappling with boxes of Lego or other stuff, to be hidden...

eSports

eSports – videogames at the Olympics and more

Will eSports go to the Olympics? Apparently the Olympic Committee is thinking about it, and mentioned it in a recent statement . As foreseeable, such news sparked a mountain of reactions from commentators of a certain level , many of whom, as usual, speak of topics they do not know at all. So I thought...

internetfestival

InternetFestival : videogame – based learning – #IF2017

InternetFestival is a very serious thing, probably the most serious in Italy about network-related topics and trends. Yet 😀 the organization contacted me and my partner-in-crime Carmine , involving us in the T-Tour section, a series of public workshops during the festival. Apart from joking, the InternetFestival machine contacted us at the end of June to...

rogue one

10 things that Rogue One got perfectly right

I really loved Rogue One! As my friends Carmine and Jan wrote in their posts (in English and Italian), it’s definitely deserving to be a full part of the franchise. I don’t want to spend more words on this aspect, so I suggest you to read their posts. Only one note: you are totally right Jan,...

videogames videogiochi

Videogames are more relevant than ever

Video games are really more relevant than ever. I am reading a very interesting Engadget article with this title, during a break in an international conference I am attending in Bologna, about open badges. it’s a system to grant open recognition and assessment of every kind of learning, clearly and directly inspired by videogames achievements’ systems....

Technology “with a soul”: games and education

Technology “with a soul”: games and education

Technology with a soul? Whatever this might mean for you, It’s a trend that I noticed, and I see it growing – I realized it especially after my two latest jobs as a trainer, in two very different contexts. I just came home from a residential seminar of 10 days on storytelling and education in Czech Republic, followed by a week on digital creativity...

Papert with an Apple IIGS the first Lego Mindstorms

Thanks Seymour Papert for changing the world

It’ s been a few hours since we got news of the death of Seymour Papert, 88 years old. He seemed immortal to me, this ingenious and funny old man who always embodied , in my story, everything I think and hope and dream and try to achieve, on the frontier that joins technology and...

pokemonGo

PokemonGO and augmented or decreased education?

PokemonGO , the game based on despicable manga monsters from a few years ago, is definitely the talk of the town during this period. And rightly so: I saw unsuspected graduates falling prey to their most unabashed nerd instincts, getting the app weeks before its release in Italy, to chase Pikachu and friends everywhere, spotting them trough...

school

School: is it really destroying creativity?

Today I had to go to school, but I felt really bad: my famous back pain, faithful companion of many adventures, lately is quite angry and in these two or three days in particular he decided I wasn’t supposed to be able to drive, sit down, bend over, I mean… nothing. Unless you swallow anti-inflammatories like...

Get Storied - storytelling and education

Get Storied: storytelling and education

Storytelling and education? [NB: This post is widely based on original story GET STORIED: Storytelling and education, published “just in time” in English on the blog To Say Nothing About The Cat, written by my friend Carmine Rodi Falanga, my mate in many adventures of non-formal education, including of course this one – basically it is a “free translation”...