Zero Seconds to the Future: Accelerating Digital Innovation in Italian Schools

Promoting digital acceleration, reducing the digital divide, and fostering innovation pathways in Italian schools. These are the goals of the itinerant workshops 'Zero Seconds to the Future', widespread, residential, and dynamic laboratories for students, school principals, and teachers; an open, collaborative space that aims to generate proposals and concrete actions to stimulate digital culture in teaching. The initiative, promoted by the 'IIS Einaudi di Roma' within the 'Futura - the school for tomorrow's Italy' program and funded by the Ministry of Education and Merit, in collaboration with the 'Università Federico II di Napoli', the Municipality of Portici, and the 'I.C. "Don Bosco- Melloni" of Portici, arrives in the metropolitan area of Naples from April 17 to 20 and will be presented on April 17 at 5:30 pm at the 'Sala Cinese della Reggia di Portici.' 'Zero Seconds to the Future' is a series of events that will unfold between Portici and the Sanità district of Naples, totaling 11 thematic workshops that will touch various locations. More than 15 secondary schools will be involved, coming from Campania and other regions, 60 school principals and teachers, and over 60 students. During the 3 days, participants will meet with professors from the University of Federico II, to discuss and imagine the path of education and training for the future. They will work in groups within the super technological spaces of the San Giovanni a Teduccio Campus, in the classrooms of the Apple Academy. The university tutors will have a guiding role, but it will be the participants who will conceive, develop, and produce innovative solutions. Some will pilot drones in the park of the 'Reggia di Portici' and others will narrate, in a video workshop, the emotions experienced by the participants. With the trainers of the Department of Agriculture, students and teachers will talk about biotechnologies, biodiversity, innovation, ecological transition, and sustainability; then it will be the turn of coding, between visual programming and virtual gaming, with the tutors of the Faculty of Engineering, where logic and mathematics, creativity, and imagination will be at the center of the debate; and then moments of discussion and training on SteAm paths and the Metaverse. 'The initiative,' says Marina Di Foggia, vice principal of the Einaudi Institute and creator of the event, 'was born as a laboratory for experimentation, an empathic, multisensory, immersive space that will allow all participants to design and build by sharing. The protagonists will be the students, school principals, and teachers from the Campanian schools, who will be able to compare themselves with their counterparts from all over Italy. A way to broaden horizons and meet the school of the future, where training will be increasingly innovative, technological, and digital.' The motto of 'Zero Seconds to the Future' is 'learning by exploring': discovering the mathematics of nature, the challenges of artificial intelligence, the flight of drones, the representation of knowledge in the metaverse, logical-creative reasoning in computational thinking and experimenting together the 'zero' phase, to cross time and space with the use of exponential technology. To build together the school of tomorrow. On Saturday, April 20, students, school principals, and teachers will finally be guided on a tour to discover the beauties of the Sanità district by the boys of the 'La Sorte' cooperative, an example of redemption and social innovation. The 3 days will conclude on the 20th inside the basilica of San Severo outside the walls with an event to present the results and meet with institutions, introduced by a concert of the Orchestra Sanitansable.