Developing Digital Competences. Work learn trajectories in Italian School System

The work based learning is the core European dispositions on educational and training issue and a pillar of the Europe 2020 strategy (EUCOM 2009/C119/02). Therefore, the educational system has to increase the quality of standards and learning results in order to response adequately to competence needs and to permit the successful entrance of the youth in the world of work. The SWA is a coherent reaction. Indeed, the current literature lead to reflect on the SWA as a new prospective of school and world of work relationship (Arlotti and Barberis 2015), and as a resolution for the skills mismatch (Caputo and Capecchi 2016; Froy, Giguere, Hofer, 2009; A. Green, Hasluck, Hogarth, Reynolds, 2003). In a context which needs a different school that provides different types of skills, it is desirable that a policy instrument such as the SWA – became mandatory by the reform “La Buona Scuola” (Law 107/2015) – is included in the scientific debate, especially for its potential to contribute to renewal of the school system. Many authors encourage the scientific debate regarding the question to clarify the peculiar characteristics of the SWA model in Italy and to begin effective reflection on its revolutionary impact for the school system. According to Tino and Fideli (2015), the SWA is a process, not only as an experience, a fundamental methodology to promote the knowledge of the world of work and the development of competences (professional and citizenship) thanks to the interconnection between formal-informal learning and creative combination process between theory and practice

Innovative Teaching and Digital Literacy in Preschool. App Content Analysis and Experimental Case Studies in a Sociological Perspective

The objective of this article is to illustrate, from the theoretical and methodological perspective, the construction of an experimental process of a “digital education app” in several preschools in the municipality of Rome. The general objective the project fits into is related to a sociological analysis, based on the relationship between theory and empirical research, of the effects of introducing digital media into preschool didactics. Preschools are a privileged site for observing and analyzing the formation and development of children’s capabilities (Nussbaum, 2000), since the plasticity of the child’s thought begins to be configured as early as preschool and evolves progressively taking into account the perceptive, sociocultural and behavioural conditions emerging from different educational agencies (Piaget, Inhelder, 1950). The article refers to the research project of the Mediamonitor Minori Observatory of the Sapienza University of Rome entitled “Media Usage in Pre-school. Analysis and Evaluation of the Influence of Digital Media on the Socialization of Children between 0-6”. The article retraces in particular the stages of the research strategy designed to structure a formative, experimental protocol to be experimented in some case studies in Rome and illustrates the main results

Universal design in sport : a catalyst for social inclusion?

University of Technology Sydney. UTS Business School.This study investigates social inclusion and universal design in the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic volunteer programs through the lens of actor-network theory (ANT). An ‘ethnography of performances’ of volunteers’ journeys tracks the development and changing nature of interactions in the relationships between actors. Document analysis, media analysis, participant observation and semi-structured interviews with key volunteer program informants were used to document the voices and actions of Rio2016 managers, team leaders and volunteers. A thematic analysis and process coding of the actions undertaken by the volunteers, team leaders and managers during the Games was conducted. The analysis provided evidence of how the social unfolds through the practices that volunteers carried out interacting with non-humans. The study revealed the numerous ways in which non-humans acted to facilitate or/and inhibit social inclusion in the volunteer program. The social emerges from the practices enacted in the volunteers’ program by humans and non-humans. Some practices resulted in inclusivity, while others did not have this effect. A novel conceptualisation of social inclusion that is related to practices and of UD as emergent design of the interactions between actors in practices is presented. UD emerges also as method to investigate the social in practices in a sociomaterialistic perspective by studying the interactions, the components that participate in the interactions, and the way these interact to underlie practices. The findings of this research could inform practitioners, future organising committees for the planning and operationalising of inclusive practices, and researchers for future study

Digital Competence Assessment. A Proposal for Operationalizing the Critical Dimension

The European Commission considers the development of digital competences a strategic action to spread and to develop a more active digital participation of citizens. The objective is to increase the level of digital competence in the European citizens up to 2015 and to reduce the number of those who don’t use new technologies and don\u27t surf the net. At the base of an active citizenship there are creativity skills, the ability to support one’s own point of view, the ability to quest, to have a critical reflection, communicative, collaborative, problem solving and listening abilities. Scholars have started to create shared digital skills definitions, to find and to create reference indicators. This paper wants to focus on the critical dimension of the digital competence, trying to simplifying it through more specific analysis levels and though cognitive tools and methodological data that can be useful to educators and researchers to create evaluation tools applicable to different contests and targets.In this paper, we offer a theoretical definition of the critical competence starting from the European framework; an operational definition of the critical competence starting from semiotic and linguistic patterns in literature; and a compilation of an evaluation rubric

Politiche di inclusione nelle aree fragili: i migranti e l’approccio territoriale della Strategia Nazionale per le Aree Interne

The theoretical reflection on development policies, at national and international level, has focused attention on the need to identify new strategies for social inclusion able to promote local development by putting in the center the quality of life and the rights of citizenship. This is all the more valid in the rural and marginal areas of our country, where the lack of access to essential resources and services and the distance from the central poles of supplying basic services are a strong limit to the wellbeing of the inhabitants and the development of their capacity for actively live and therefore promote the development of the territory. In Italy, internal areas are historically affected by migratory routes and the rooting of a new population is the lever through which to combat depopulation. The substantial presence of the population with non-Italian citizens reveals some exogenous criticalities of the new approaches (resident foreigners are not citizens with full rights), but can constitute a potential for regenerating the identity and economies of the internal areas, if the policies public authorities are able to include and activate the skills of this portion of the population according to a model of sustainable local development

A game-theoretic approach to computation offloading in mobile cloud computing

We consider a three-tier architecture for mobile and pervasive computing scenarios, consisting of a local tier ofmobile nodes, a middle tier (cloudlets) of nearby computing nodes, typically located at the mobile nodes access points but characterized by a limited amount of resources, and a remote tier of distant cloud servers, which have practically infinite resources. This architecture has been proposed to get the benefits of computation offloading from mobile nodes to external servers while limiting the use of distant servers whose higher latency could negatively impact the user experience. For this architecture, we consider a usage scenario where no central authority exists and multiple non-cooperative mobile users share the limited computing resources of a close-by cloudlet and can selfishly decide to send their computations to any of the three tiers. We define a model to capture the users interaction and to investigate the effects of computation offloading on the users’ perceived performance. We formulate the problem as a generalized Nash equilibrium problem and show existence of an equilibrium.We present a distributed algorithm for the computation of an equilibrium which is tailored to the problem structure and is based on an in-depth analysis of the underlying equilibrium problem. Through numerical examples, we illustrate its behavior and the characteristics of the achieved equilibria

IGF-I induces upregulation of DDR1 collagen receptor in breast cancer cells by suppressing MIR-199a-5p through the PI3K/AKT pathway.

Discoidin Domain Receptor 1 (DDR1) is a collagen receptor tyrosine-kinase that contributes to epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and enhances cancer progression. Our previous data indicate that, in breast cancer cells, DDR1 interacts with IGF-1R and positively modulates IGF-1R expression and biological responses, suggesting that the DDR1-IGF-IR cross-talk may play an important role in cancer.In this study, we set out to evaluate whether IGF-I stimulation may affect DDR1 expression. Indeed, in breast cancer cells (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231) IGF-I induced significant increase of DDR1 protein expression, in a time and dose dependent manner. However, we did not observe parallel changes in DDR1 mRNA. DDR1 upregulation required the activation of the PI3K/AKT pathway while the ERK1/2, the p70/mTOR and the PKC pathways were not involved. Moreover, we observed that DDR1 protein upregulation was induced by translational mechanisms involving miR-199a-5p suppression through PI3K/AKT activation. This effect was confirmed by both IGF-II produced by cancer-associated fibroblasts from human breast cancer and by stable transfection of breast cancer cells with a human IGF-II expression construct. Transfection with a constitutively active form of AKT was sufficient to decrease miR-199a-5p and upregulate DDR1. Accordingly, IGF-I-induced DDR1 upregulation was inhibited by transfection with pre-miR-199a-5p, which also impaired AKT activation and cell migration and proliferation in response to IGF-I.These results demonstrate that, in breast cancer cells, a novel pathway involving AKT/miR-199a-5p/DDR1 plays a role in modulating IGFs biological responses. Therefore, this signaling pathway may represent an important target for breast cancers with over-activation of the IGF-IR axis