HOP Online learning: I am on podcast again!

HOP Online learning: I am on podcast again!

HOP Online Learning is a platform created by the European SALTO Eastern Europe and Caucasus Resource Center. HOP is all about online learning, e-learning and the likes of it: they promote online learning in many different ways and are very...

Bandersnatch: a real storytelling revolution?

I had just finished to write a post in the Italian section of the blog, about the interactive cartoon Minecraft: story mode on Netflix, and the streaming platform started promoting nothing less than a Black Mirror interactive episode: Bandersnatch. Even...

Empowered to empower: a Tool Fair Talk… and more

The European tool fair was created 12 years ago already by Salto Youth Euromed and Good Practices resource centre, as a chance for exchanging Learning Tools and practices and reflecting together on the potential of non formal education. It generated...

Future forecast: digital youth work

Fortune tellers – or future tellers, even worse, always struggle with that question: how everything will look like in some years? I wrote an article for issue #26 of Coyote magazine, starting exactly from here, and talking digital youth work. Coyote is the webzine...

Retrocomputing is not retro

I was 11, maybe 12, at the time. It was Italy in the glittering 80’s. Maybe it was for a long and suffered adolescence about to come, but the worst decade ever in my life, I swear — except for computers. Italy...

Games for a better world: a training course

Games. I wish I could count how much time we spend on them in our life. In my life, surely a lot – and I do not regret a single minute of that time. While I am going back home after...

VR : virtual reality in a cardboard box

VR [as in Virtual Reality] is the new big thing, they say. Honestly, the idea of a 3D computer-generated reality has been a key aspect of cyberpunk culture, back in the 80s, and Wikipedia says the concept could even date...

Digital Youth Work: Dig-it Up!

Digital Youth Work: Dig-It up! is the booklet I wrote together with Joanna Wronska and Raphaela Blassnig in 2017. It tells what we discovered, studied and learnt during two editions of our training course aimed at youth workers / educators /...

Digital YouthWork Sessions podcast n. 1 – it’s me!

I am very honored and grateful to have been interviewed in the first episode of Digital YouthWork Sessions podcast, hosted by my friend Juha Kiviniemi from Verke – I wrote about them here already! We spent 45 minutes chatting about what is...

Christmas tech gifts for kids? 5 tips, tested for you

Gifts, gifts … 10 days to Christmas, are you ready? Have you already bought everything? Or have not you even thought about it yet? 🙂 At this point the children will have already written their letters to Father Christmas, and...

eSports – videogames at the Olympics and more

Will eSports go to the Olympics? Apparently the Olympic Committee is thinking about it, and mentioned it in a recent statement . As foreseeable, such news sparked a mountain of reactions from commentators of a certain level , many of...

InternetFestival : videogame – based learning – #IF2017

InternetFestival is a very serious thing, probably the most serious in Italy about network-related topics and trends. Yet 😀 the organization contacted me and my partner-in-crime Carmine , involving us in the T-Tour section, a series of public workshops during the...

10 things that Rogue One got perfectly right

I really loved Rogue One! As my friends Carmine and Jan wrote in their posts (in English and Italian), it’s definitely deserving to be a full part of the franchise. I don’t want to spend more words on this aspect, so...

Videogames are more relevant than ever

Video games are really more relevant than ever. I am reading a very interesting Engadget article with this title, during a break in an international conference I am attending in Bologna, about open badges. it’s a system to grant open recognition...

Defining digital youth work European conference – #DDYW – in Oulu, Finland

I spent a few days for #DDYW in Oulu, Finland, in what looked like a paradise to me. Not for the amazing nature, for the peaceful silence, for the birch trees on the sea shores, for the bright light of...

Technology “with a soul”: games and education

Technology with a soul? Whatever this might mean for you, It’s a trend that I noticed, and I see it growing – I realized it especially after my two latest jobs as a trainer, in two very different contexts. I just came home from...

Papert with an Apple IIGS the first Lego Mindstorms

Thanks Seymour Papert for changing the world

It’ s been a few hours since we got the news of the death of Seymour Papert, 88 years old. He seemed immortal to me, this ingenious and funny old man who always embodied , in my story, everything I...

PokemonGO and augmented or decreased education?

PokemonGO , the game based on despicable manga monsters from a few years ago, is definitely the talk of the town during this period. And rightly so: I saw unsuspected graduates falling prey to their most unabashed nerd instincts, getting the app...

School: is it really destroying creativity?

Today I had to go to school, but I felt really bad: my famous back pain, faithful companion of many adventures, lately is quite angry and in these two or three days in particular he decided I wasn’t supposed to be...

Get Storied: storytelling and education

Storytelling and education? [NB: This post is widely based on original story GET STORIED: Storytelling and education, published “just in time” in English on the blog To Say Nothing About The Cat, written by my friend Carmine Rodi Falanga, my mate in many adventures...