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Code Week Italy: virtual coding trips, code-hunting games, and at-home unplugged activities

 

Interview with Code Week ambassador Prof. Alessandro Bogliolo, and teachers Paola Masciulli (Italy) and Dhurata Cuka (Albania)

Last year, there were almost 10.000 Italian activities organised for the EU Code Week. Prof. Alessandro Bogliolo, and teachers Paola Masciulli (Italy), and Dhurata Cuka (Albania) share their experiences with code hunt, CodyTrip and different coding@home activities, which were a great success, despite the challenges of the past year.

How it all started …

“I’m quite active in Italy with teachers’ training, and especially, the topic coding. Code Week is the main event that convinced me to devote a big portion of my time to teachers’ training because I am firmly convinced that the best way to reach out to pupils is by means of their teachers.”

-          Prof. Bogliolo

The CodyTrip started as an initiative for schools across Italy that could visit Urbino as a UNESCO heritage site and explore the surroundings while at the same time participating in coding activities as part of their school trips.

With educational field trips suspended due to the pandemic, the team in Italy had to come up with a new solution: virtual CodyTrips, which started in May 2020.

“We came up with the idea of organising an online trip that was as similar as possible to the physical Cody Trip. This meant that instead of only providing videos or showing the main monuments, we organised a virtual two-day school trip. In this way, we manged to create a very engaging event where pupils could feel part of something. For this purpose, we developed a new tool, called active viewer that allowed students to interact with me. This included not only watching the live stream but also having remote control, clicking on buttons, zooming in on details or giving me real-time instructions which direction to take, much like how computer algorithms actually work.”  

-          Prof. Bogliolo

The initiative rapidly gained popularity among schools in Italy and the last virtual trip to Urbino in December enjoyed 15,000 student participants who were joined by their parents and relatives. After that, the project caught the attention of Save the Children organisation, aiming to minimise the socio-cultural gaps the pandemic caused, and expanded to other locations like Florence, Turin, Naples, and Salento.

“It was great because the audience was huge. There were 15,000 pupils participating in the school trip that we organised in Urbino in December. Since the students also involved their parents and relatives, the number of people who took part in the school trip was more than 80,000, all interacting together at the same time, it was amazing. I really enjoyed the school trip and right now we are organising many other trips with other partners in Florence, Turin, Salento, and Naples.”

-          Prof. Bogliolo

Many teachers saw this as a great opportunity to engage their students in interactive remote activities and give them the opportunity to discover new places and learn coding at the same time.

“We were very happy to join this adventure. When we got the invitation for this very new way of approaching students, we accepted knowing how important motivation is in the learning process. The CodyTrip was one of the highlights of the year. What our students really enjoyed was discovering a new place in a safe way, which was a way to get out of your box when you’re asked to stay home.”

The CodyTrip even went beyond borders all the way to Albania, thanks to the online edition in 2020. There, the Code Week leading teacher Dhurata Cuka took it upon herself to translate the experience for her students and participate remotely.

“The most impressive thing about this was: After the lesson, we were going home and I was saying: Okay, don't forget to go on zoom in 15 minutes, we meet there! And then the parents asked: Where are you going? We are going to Italy, we are going to Italy!” – Dhurata  

While staying apart and staying at home, Code Week gave the students a great possibility to experience something together. They learned how to code and how to be interactive on TeamViewer, in a fun way!

“My most important tip to follow: Coding is fun. Go ahead, you can do nothing wrong. You will only learn something new when you start coding.” - Dhurata

The CodyTrip was one of many activities Italian students took part in during Code Week 2020, some of their favourites - robotics, unplugged activities and QR codes. They even took part in Erasmus projects, like “What’s your code”, connecting with other countries like Sweden, Latvia and Greece.

“The coding activities that I proposed during CodyTrip were all unplugged, because in this way, the participants never had to leave the web page. Like that, we made it usable and accessible for everyone.”- Paola

Last year’s Code Week has shown: coding brings together people from all over the world, even if they are oceans apart. We look forward to another successful Code Week with exciting activities in this year.