A Reading Promotion project for teens.. with robots.

Started in 2022, the project co-funded by CEPELL (Centre for the Book and Reading Promotion of the Italian Ministry of Culture) and carried out by Scuola di Robotica Educare alla Lettura closed on 19 December 2023 with a conference: For an Engineering of Storytelling, which was held on 19 December 2023 in Genoa at the International Children’s Library “A. De Amicis” in which more than sixty primary school students with their teachers  took part, animating with Scratch some passages from Italo Calvino’s short story, Il Visconte Dimezzato (The Cloven Viscount).

The project For an Engineering of Storytelling, co-funded by CEPELL’s Call for Proposals Educare alla Lettura (Educating to Read) aimed at reading and storytelling education promoted by the use of digital technologies, is dedicated to promo grade secondary schools, but primary and secondary schools also participated.

Digital natives have now acquired technological storytelling tools that are different from traditional ones. And we ‘digital migrants’ also frequently use media other than the traditional book.

Reading promotion activities must therefore take this transformation into account, using the benefits that these tools can bring in terms of promoting what is called Media Literacy, accessibility and inclusion.

Today we can read and narrate using paper books, books and narratives on smartphones, tablets, videos, commercials, music, songs, images, and so on. Therefore, whether we start with coding to programme a visual narrative or reading for the sake of reading, the paths are similar.

Indeed, coding technologies enable the updating of teaching methodologies on reading, text comprehension, storytelling, critical sense, communication and expression skills and multilingualism.

Reading, telling and programming an animated story.. together

The event at the De Amicis Library was not a traditional lecture: participants (schools, families) were  invited to use the tablets made available to them to create a narration inspired by reading aloud from narratives, stories, fairy tales using the Scratch software.
At the end, children and adults shared their narratives, which will be published on the project platform: libripermaker.org

For information: operto@scuoladirobotica.it