Practice research in Scuola Novalis

The HERMMES project has reached a phase where there is a draft curriculum and a draft document with suggestions for the whole community approach of media education. This is the moment in the project when those documents are tested by our two partner schools: Wittering.nl and Scuola Novalis. The schools were asked not only to look at these documents and give feedback on them, but also to add their own ideas, practices, and approach to media and digitalisation in education.

From the 28th to the 30th of November, Pieter Bastin, from our partner organisation the Federation of Flemish Steiner Schools visited Scuola Novalis to help start this process there. Pieter is a teacher in primary and secondary school and is involved in media pedagogy in the Federation. He also has years of practical experience working in the audiovisual sector.

Scuola Novalis is a Steiner Waldorf school in Northern Italy near Conegliano. Nearly 300 children from kindergarten to the end of secondary school attend Scuola Novalis. The school gathers about 50 teachers and offers general secondary education, but also a biodynamic farming and building strand.

“Since the schools’ teachers ultimately get to work with the students, I wanted to inspire them. We worked on both theoretical and practical content, always with an age oriented approach, using practical examples out of the HERMMES project. For example we first talked about algorithms, binary code, virtual reality, AI, etc. and then there was an active practical moment about how we could teach this in a class with the students. Starting from playing sorting games with the kindergartners, all the way to explaining AI by playing Hexapawn in secondary school.

The project offers a lot of opportunities to work with the age group from 7 to 14, which is the range of students in this school. The reservations towards working with digital media has been transformed into an open attitude and willingness to work with the HERMMES media curriculum.”

“Because sensible ICT and media use is not limited to a specific place or time of day, the HERMMES project has an important component of collaboration between teachers and parents. The school formed a working group with teachers and parents, in which all sections of the school were represented. There was a good exchange about everyone’s role in looking for sound solutions in education in these changing times.

We discussed questions like: what do parents expect from the school, what vision does the school convey to the outside world and what can parents do at home? Conversations surrounding health, resilience, screen time and the development of media competences were an important part of this work. Daring to name the problems and sharing successful experiences, both on the teachers’ side and the parents’ side, worked incredibly unifying.”

“My presence naturally also created the opportunity to talk to the pupils themselves. Their need to talk openly about digital media turned out to be particularly great. They are the experts, the producers but also the consumers and the targets.

It was enough to create an open space in which they could talk safely. This encouraged their self-reflection and critical thinking about their own media use and that of developers. When a teenager asks himself the question, “Why do I actually have multiple accounts on the same platform?” you can only be satisfied.”

“For Scuola Novalis, I wish for the courage to engage more directly with all kinds of media and to examine and map their existing curriculum through a media lens. They have so many great analogue and digital media projects on offer. They should definitely cherish and value these.  Thank you for allowing me to be your guest and inspiration.”