Mondadori Education launches new initiatives to support teachers
New free tools to help teachers to remotely assess their pupils
As the end of a more complex school year than ever comes closer, teachers at all levels and in all schools, are facing another big challenge: how to assess and grade students at a distance. A key moment in the teaching-learning process. Always a complex activity, in the current situation it is particularly difficult.
In fact, in distance learning, the grading process takes on a different aspect compared with what happens in the classroom. The moments for learning assessment (for example, individual or group activities, digital presentations prepared by pupils with feedback from teachers, the level of participation in lessons) go hand in hand and often replace traditional grading methods (tests and oral exams). The new context has heightened the need for support for the more fragile students and requires inclusive teaching tools and strategies.
Valid support for teachers about to engage in this delicate process is available from Mondadori Education that provides specific content, materials and tools for the certification of skills and the assessment of levels of learning, also remotely: a variety of tests on a range of topics and subjects, maps useful for revision, digital services for each subject and all levels, from primary to first and second level secondary schools. All, even in this emergency period, freely downloadable from the publisher’s web site.
The support path that the publisher offers to teachers will continue in the coming weeks also with a programme dedicated to preparation for the final year exams, as it will be structured this year and, from September, with a practical project for recovery activities in preparation for the new school year.
Of special relevance, regarding assessments, in the HUB Test platform, that is both intuitive and easy to use e semplice and allows teachers to easily manage tests: on the one hand with the possibility of accessing a complete and varied database, and, on the other, to create new personalised tests that can be easily shared with the class.
And then there are activities that focus on teacher training via webinars, with free participation, organised by experts from the publishing house, with explanations and ideas on how to assess, as well as the techniques for assessing both synchronous and asynchronous activities.
On the basis of what has already been done since the beginning of March, as an immediate response to the emergency, to make freely available the entire range digital content for distance learning – over 40 gigabytes of content and more than 12,000 gigabytes of video, audio, customisable maps, playlists, and facilitated texts for inclusion – the commitment of Mondadori Education continues with the proposal of a complete path to support teachers in the three crucial phases of their work: revision and testing, final year state exams and September recovery programmes.
“The emergency that we have faced, and continue to live with,” underlined Aaron Buttarelli, editorial director of Mondadori Education, “has all of a sudden obliged Italian schools to reconsider, in a very short period of time and often without adequate tools, the entire teaching-learning process. We have always been on the side of teachers and students in the pursuit of innovation and the digitalisation of schools, with a range of services for day-to-day teaching which has now taken on enormous relevance. Including the evolution of the textbook, which is no longer a static printed support but thanks to digital has become both live and dynamic, for more personalised learning, with language and formats able to inform and stimulate interest in learning.”
A commitment that is rewarded by the success among teachers and demonstrated by the data traffic metrics on the platform which has recorded a user base of some 1.5 million active users, to which have been added, in the last two months, more than 400,000 new registered users, with an increase of 30 times in the use of Virtual Classes, more than 15 times for Tests and 6 times for the use of reading Apps and traffic on the site that has grown by 8 times on a daily basis.
The HUB Test offer, is part of the services offered by HUB Scuola, Italy’s most extensive database for digital teaching, and which features a number of other tools, including: the Virtual Class, an environment for the management of teaching activities and courses, exchanging comments, setting assignments and homework and monitoring progress; reading Apps to use digital books; HUB Campus for more detail on different subjects; and the HUB Scuola channel on YouTube with over 1,700 videos, organised in playlists.
