Deascuola

A new generation of AI-powered teaching tools is making its debut on HUB Scuola, the digital platform by Mondadori Education, Rizzoli Education, and Deascuola. The AI Tutor for Digital Textbooks and the AI Tutor for Teachers’ Areas are two innovative tools that enrich the platform used by the three educational publishers of the Mondadori Group, offering advanced methods for both study and teaching.

Artificial intelligence is becoming a valuable resource to make learning more effective, accessible and personalised, both in the classroom and at home, while enhancing the active role of teachers and students within a safe environment. All of this is in line with the guidelines of the Italian Ministry of Education and Merit for the introduction of AI in schools.

“Our commitment to educational and digital innovation is an everyday one, as is our presence in schools. We know that the world of AI is evolving rapidly but we also believe that it already represents an opportunity and a challenge for education. It is a challenge that, as publishers, we must be ready to take on by offering constructive, safe, ethical and sustainable initiatives,” said Paolo Reniero, Director of Digital and Strategic Marketing at Mondadori Education. “With HUB Scuola, we want to offer a model of AI that serves teaching and learning, with an approach that reinforces the central, active role of teachers and students, and digital tools that promote personalised learning paths without replacing individual effort,” Reniero added.

• THE AI TUTOR FOR DIGITAL TEXTBOOKS: A VALUABLE STUDY COMPANION

The AI Tutor for Digital Textbooks is a virtual study companion designed to guide students through their learning journey. It does not replace the textbook but enhances it, acting as an ally that offers clear explanations and targeted examples, reworking textual and visual information to make it more understandable and generating review exercises that help consolidate knowledge.

The AI Tutor’s responses are based exclusively on the textbook adopted in class and its digital resources, ensuring consistency, reliability and full alignment with the school level. This makes studying more personalised, stimulating curiosity and making learning more engaging. Teachers can also use the Tutor to create customised activities based on textbook topics.

With this project, HUB Scuola is taking its teaching approach to the next level, introducing safe and reliable tools built on solid educational principles. The aim is to help lower and upper secondary students make responsible and meaningful use of new technologies in their learning journey.

• THE AI TUTOR FOR TEACHER AREAS: AN ASSISTANT FOR LESSON PLANNING

HUB Scuola also provides a dedicated AI Tutor for teachers, designed to help them create lessons and teaching plans that are coherent with educational goals and tailored to the class profile. Using natural language, teachers can interact with the AI Tutor in the Teachers’ Areas to build complete lesson plans enriched with certified digital resources. The Tutor can handle a variety of teaching methods, including lectures, flipped classrooms, cooperative learning and guided debates, based on the teacher’s input. It can also help balance lesson stages, suggesting strategies for time management and student engagement according to different learning levels and styles.

HUB Scuola (www.hubscuola.it) is the digital learning platform from Mondadori Education, Rizzoli Education and Deascuola, providing teachers and students with digital textbooks, supplementary content and tools for teaching and learning. The three educational publishers of the Mondadori Group offer a complete range of materials for all school levels, from primary to secondary and university. The catalogue also includes cross-disciplinary learning paths focused on inclusion, orientation, STEM subjects, civic education, the environment and digital citizenship.

Deascuola, one of the leading Italian educational publishers from the Mondadori Group, and TikTok, a digital platform with more than 1 billion global users, are launching “Social media and digital platforms: new learning environments”, an innovative course for secondary school teachers designed to learn and discover how to integrate traditional teaching with the common ordinary tools and languages of students.

The world of culture and information is increasingly growing on digital platforms, and schools are also requiring a growing number of teacher-creators capable of offering educational activities aimed at ensuring greater engagement and interest among scholars.

Deascuola and TikTok’s programme will start on November 8 and consists in 3 free online sessions, designed to explain how to best orient oneself or identify the positive and negative effects so as to transform such information into real educational supports usable both in and out of the classroom, and in a free teaching guide that can be downloaded at the end of the 3 webinars.

Registrations are managed via the following link: https://l.deascuola.it/TikTok/index.html

“More and more youngsters currently use digital platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, to stay informed, socialise and follow innovation in a wide variety of fields. How can schools transform such tools into real educational supports to be used both in and out of the classroom and how can the same be transformed into new learning environments? The 3 meetings planned, and involving experts in sociology, neuroscience, pedagogy and education, were designed to respond to such question”, explains Luca Vajani, General Manager of D Scuola S.p.A.

“TikTok is also increasingly becoming both a primary reference for the world of education and the most popular medium used to share knowledge and train, by simplifying complex subjects and contents through its immediate language and inclusive approach, thus making them more accessible to all. Such project is very important as it allows us to support the scholastic activities of teachers and the education of their young students in a concrete way, by promoting intergenerational dialogue”, says Luana Lavecchia, Institutional Relations Manager of TikTok Italy and Greece.

The first meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, November 8, from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m: Social media and digital platforms: perceptions and impacts.

Michela Balconi, psychophysiology and cognitive neuroscience professor at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, Giovanni Boccia Artieri, sociology professor at the University of Urbino, and Valentina Ghetti, teacher and content creator, will delve into the social and cognitive aspects involved by analysing successful projects, so as to help teachers understand the mechanisms implicated in students’ use of social networks before finally addressing issues aimed at promoting a correct, safe and useful use of digital platforms. An insightful neuroscience, sociology and BookToker meeting.

The second meeting, Social media and digital platforms: teaching tools, scheduled for Thursday, November 23, from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., includes the participation of Emmanuele Massagli, Education and Pedagogy researcher at Lumsa University, and Stefania Manca, researcher at the Institute for Educational Technology of the CNR, who will illustrate some successful projects on how to use TikTok for teaching.
Digital media modify learning by changing the way our body and environment perceive their effects: technology is absorbed by the user, thus becoming part of it. Both verbal (“new alphabets”) and non-verbal (social networking netiquettes) language is also changing. Various research projects were implemented by focusing on such elements, in particular, a project on the use of TikTok, based on studies of the educational and pedagogical aspects, will be explored to transmit the Shoah memory and to preserve the collective historical one. Users can share experiences, historical facts and personal reflections on the Holocaust through short creative videos, thus reaching a wide audience of young people and creating awareness on this tragic event.

The last meeting, entitled At TikTok School, will be held on Wednesday, December 12, from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. Secondary school teachers and content creators of different subject areas – humanities, science and foreign languages – will share their experience under the guidance of Elia Bombardelli, teacher, creator and author at Deascuola. This will be a unique opportunity to interact with the creators Federico Benuzzi, @federicobenuzzi, Norma Cerletti, @normasteaching and Alessia Giandomenico, @studiafacileconale, and to learn how to apply the videos and materials they make to the educational practice.

This course allows teachers to better understand and explore digital platforms so as to bring them closer to their students.

D Scuola S.p.A is one of the leading Italian educational publishing operators focused on schools at any level. Part of the Mondadori Group since December 2021, the company operates through the the following brands: Deascuola, De Agostini, Petrini, Garzanti Scuola, Garzanti Linguistica, Marietti Scuola, Valmartina, Liviana, Ghisetti & Corvi, Cedam Scuola, Cideb, and Black Cat. The University offer is entrusted to UTET Università, Città Studi and ISEDI. Deascuola is present online via deascuola.it (books, additional digital contents, eBooks, portals and study and teaching applications), formazione.deascuola.it (initiatives and courses on the most current educational issues for schools and teachers), garzantilinguistica.it (linguistic dictionaries) and blackcat-cideb.com (books and materials for learning languages) and has a widespread presence on the social media.

A MIUR-accredited Training Body since 2013, D Scuola organises courses for schools and teachers. The wide range of free webinars, seminars, conferences and courses developed in partnership with educational experts, internationally renowned neuroscientists, established science popularisers and leading authors, makes it possible to get acquainted with the various systems of paid training projects, which include customised programmes and online courses for schools and teachers, in line with the training priorities identified by the Ministry of Education.

TikTok is the leading environment for short videos from mobile devices. Our mission is to inspire creativity and liveliness. TikTok has offices worldwide, including in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo. http://www.tiktok.com.