Sicurezza informatica: questa sconosciuta

di Enrico Nardelli

Ha fatto scalpore la notizia del ministro della sicurezza informatica giapponese che ha recentemente ammesso di non aver mai usato un computer. Ma sinceramente mi preoccupa di più il fatto che nella pubblica amministrazione italiana – come ha dimostrato l’indagine della commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta presieduta dal collega Paolo Coppola, prestato nella scorsa legislatura alla politica – in moltissimi ministeri ed organi della PA centrale sia scandalosamente assente la consapevolezza del ruolo dell’informatica come strumento di controllo e di supporto al governo dell’organizzazione (“pensare al digitale come qualcosa di relativo all’acquisto di tecnologia, funzionale e secondario alle decisioni strategiche”, stigmatizzava la relazione come l'atteggiamento dominante nella PA italiana).

Tornando al caso specifico, penso che i ministri debbano soprattutto essere dei politici e non dei tecnici. Il ministro della Sanità non deve necessariamente essere un medico, né quello dei lavori pubblici un ingegnere, o quello della giustizia un avvocato o un giudice. Certamente la conoscenza tecnica del settore potrebbe aiutare, ma considerare un ministro come il massimo riferimento tecnico del suo settore fa perdere di vista l’impatto sociale delle decisioni del suo ministero. Vi possono essere molte soluzioni tecniche per affrontare uno stesso scenario sociale: nessuna è quasi mai la soluzione ottimale sotto ogni punto di vista, perché queste scelte impattano sulla società, nella quale ci sono classi tra loro in conflitto.

Compito squisitamente politico di un ministro è trovare la sintesi tra queste differenti esigenze, nell’interesse generale dello Stato e dei cittadini. Tale sintesi non può mai essere condotta soltanto sulla base di elementi tecnici, che ovviamente devono essere tenuti presenti ma non possono essere i soli a determinare la decisione finale, proprio perché non si tratta di una scelta tecnica. La soluzione dei conflitti sociali è compito della politica: quando essa abdica a favore della tecnica, la democrazia viene pugnalata alle spalle.

Insomma, il ministro giapponese della sicurezza informatica non conosce la tecnologia digitale, però – se è un persona che ha avuto responsabilità di organizzazioni nel governo – saprà ben comprendere le problematiche della sicurezza informatica. Perché in fin dei conti, al di là del fatto che avvengano in un contesto tecnicamente molto sofisticato, queste sono soprattutto problematiche legate al fattore umano e il loro elemento critico è sempre l’uomo.

Sempre di più nella società digitale il flusso dei dati è la linfa vitale di ogni organizzazione, fattore essenziale per l’efficienza e l’efficacia di ogni attività. Lo è sempre stato, come sanno tutte le persone con responsabilità strategiche o direttive sia nel pubblico che nel privato, ma nella società digitale – come gli ultimi scandali legati a trattamenti troppo “distratti” dei dati hanno provato in modo eclatante – è diventato il nuovo “oro nero”. Invece, non comprendere questo ruolo fondamentale dei dati e delle informazioni per la vita di ogni organizzazione, come il loro trattamento automatico attraverso l’approccio rivoluzionario reso possibile dall’informatica sia l’elemento essenziale per determinare il successo o il fallimento di un’organizzazione, è un problema di cui sono molto preoccupato.

I partiti dovrebbero capire che i sistemi informatici introdotti in modo sinergico con la realtà organizzativa e i suoi processi decisionali sono la chiave per realizzare una pubblica amministrazione efficiente ed efficace. Quando sono al governo, questi aspetti dovrebbero esser parte essenziale del loro programma e della loro agenda, e per l’opposizione dovrebbero essere elemento di critica continua e implacabile.

Purtroppo la rivoluzione dell’informatica, diversamente dalla rivoluzione industriale, è avvenuta nel giro di una stessa generazione. Ricordate il 1993? Nella vita dell’uomo della strada non c’erano i social, nelle aziende si iniziava a usare la posta elettronica, giornali e televisioni erano ancora i signori incontrastati dei media. Venticinque anni dopo queste situazioni sono completamente cambiate, mentre l’essere umano è sempre lo stesso, non ha organi di senso per essere direttamente in contatto col mondo digitale in cui si trova però improvvisamente immerso fino al collo.

A questa mancanza si può rimediare solo con un’educazione capillare sull’informatica, la scienza che ha reso possibile la società digitale: che venga attuata verso tutti i cittadini e che inizi per le nuove generazioni sin dai primi anni di scuola, perché ne va di mezzo il futuro della democrazia. Dovrebbe essere un tema condiviso tra maggioranza e opposizione, perché gli studenti di oggi sono il nostro futuro. Il governo del cambiamento sarà in grado di fare la differenza?

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Versione originale pubblicata su "Il Fatto Quotidiano" il 11 novembre 2018.

Coding and informatics: what's the issue?

by Enrico Nardelli

(versione italiana qua)

My previous article, Coding or informatics, that is the question, sparked quite a debate on social media. I was "told off" for supposedly pitting coding against informatics. In reality, not only is that not what I wrote, it was never my intention. I simply wanted to clarify the relationship between coding and informatics. Coding is certainly part of informatics, but framing the teaching of coding as the solution for making schools digital is reductive. The subject that needs to be taught in schools is informatics, as evidenced by the curricula proposed or already in place in the USA, the UK, and France, to name just a few countries.

I will now elaborate on my position, which I have already expressed in several other articles. Some recent examples can be found here, here, and here.

Let me start with an observation that may seem obvious, but is nonetheless useful: words do not have meanings assigned by some higher authority. They take on whatever meaning we give them in practice.

"Coding" until a few years ago had one meaning only: writing computer code, that is, the activity of computer programming. More recently, there has been a push to reinterpret the term as something new and distinct from informatics, with this distinction being repeatedly emphasised.

Arguing that "coding is not informatics" and trying to prove that coding is something separate from it stands in the way of the ultimate goal: having informatics taught in schools as a subject in its own right, recognised and fully regarded as a "science" on a par with mathematics, physics, and biology.

I believe this is a serious strategic mistake, for several reasons.

First of all, history tells us that "coding" is associated with writing code (i.e. computer programs), which is only one part of informatics as a whole and does not even cover the entire software development process. Granted, educational innovators and pioneers invest the term with a broad and noble meaning. But society at large, politicians, and the media do not perceive it that way. The "low", operational interpretation risks winning out. Have you ever come across the criticism that goes: "what's the point of teaching my child to write code — before long, AI systems will be writing all the software anyway"?

Furthermore, in Italy — and not only there, though that is no consolation — people will openly say "I've never been able to get my head around maths," while no one would dare admit "I don't know Italian." Against this bleak backdrop for the sciences, where we also rightly lament that our schools produce students with very little knowledge of our artistic and musical heritage (unique in the world!), I do not think it is wise to use a term with such a hands-on, applied connotation when referring to a school subject. It does not bode well.

Finally, the world and society are now increasingly defined by digital activities and interactions, underpinned by a technology that shapes and permeates more and more of what we do and how we relate to one another — think, for instance, of the issues surrounding privacy and fake news. The notion of being a "digital citizen" has become part of everyday conversation. And yet, for that it is not enough to have grown up surrounded by digital devices we learned to use before we could even speak, nor is it enough to learn how to programme them. What is needed is an education, from the earliest years of schooling, in the science that makes all of this possible. Learning informatics is essential for understanding, participating in, shaping, and contributing to the democratic development of society. It is fundamental to being the authors, rather than mere spectators, of one's own future.

I strongly urge everyone to read carefully the international research on informatics education and the national school curricula proposed in countries such as the USA, the UK, and France. These speak of computing or computer science as the discipline taught in schools, while coding — where used at all — refers to the activity of computer programming.

It is clear that when informatics is used in a "cross-disciplinary" way — that is, in the context of other subjects, to explore and understand related phenomena (which is essentially what happens in coding practice) — it can seem as though something entirely new is taking place. I can understand the enthusiasm of those who feel they have discovered a new continent, but it is informatics all the same.

When mathematics is used in medicine or literary studies, it is still called mathematics, because it is the same discipline regardless of the purpose it is applied to. The scientific power of informatics — equal in this respect to that of mathematics — and its great beauty lies precisely in this cross-disciplinary quality.

One can certainly use the term "coding" to convey this cross-disciplinary application; I have no objection to that, as long as it is made clear that we are still talking about informatics.

Let us keep our eyes on the strategic goal: getting informatics taught in schools. Let us not place coding outside the realm of informatics, and let us not get drawn into semantic squabbles. Let us try to be constructive — our country needs it.

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The original version (in italian) has been published by "Il Fatto Quotidiano" on 5 October 2018.

Schools need more than just coding

by Enrico Nardelli

(versione italiana qua)

Italian schools do not need coding alone — as if coding, together with devices and connectivity, were all it takes to bring them into the modern age. Infrastructure is undoubtedly essential: computer labs with working machines and fast networks are a must. But it is not enough to add "we will teach students coding because it is the new English that everyone needs". That kind of statement is wrong on two counts.

The first is talking about teaching coding (i.e. "computer programming") instead of teaching informatics. It is much the same mistake as confusing multiplication tables with the teaching of Mathematics. The times table is a practical tool through which children develop a feel for arithmetic operations, which in turn provide a conceptual key for understanding the world in quantitative terms. The subject taught in schools is Mathematics, of which arithmetic is just one area.

The second is that informatics is not a language in the strict sense. One might say it is, in the figurative way that Galileo said "the universe is written in the language of mathematics." But comparing it to English creates deep conceptual misunderstandings. Here is why.

To begin with, the languages used to write computer programs — the instructions that computers execute — are a far cry from natural languages. Programming languages have neither the flexibility nor the endless richness of reference to lived experience that spoken language possesses. Using the same word for both is like mistaking a mannequin for a living person.

Moreover, using the term "language" means overlooking the fact that informatics has established itself as an autonomous scientific discipline over several decades, with deep and wide-ranging concepts that have led some to describe it as a fourth great domain of scientific knowledge, alongside those of non-living matter, living matter, and human society.

Finally, talking about a "new English" reduces informatics to a mere tool that requires other skills to be of any real use. It is obvious to everyone that knowing English is not enough to become a successful entrepreneur, any more than it is enough to write as well as Hemingway.

Learning informatics is therefore significantly more than learning to program. It means, for example, understanding how the Internet works and what distributed computing involves. Or grasping how to analyse data and their relationships — both direct and derived — while also being aware of the implications of such analyses for individuals and for society. All of this should be part of every student's cultural toolkit, even if they never write a single line of code in their lives, because they will nonetheless be living in an increasingly digital world. It is also worth noting, en passant, that there is early experimental evidence suggesting that studying informatics at school helps improve performance in other subjects as well.

This is why it is essential to introduce a solid informatics education that enables Italian schools to align their educational mission with the demands of a digital society. In this regard, CINI (the National Inter-University Consortium for Informatics) had already submitted to MIUR (the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research) a detailed proposal, several months ago, for introducing the teaching of informatics into schools from primary level onwards. The proposal was developed by the community of university informatics lecturers, in collaboration with educationalists and school teachers.

In the meantime, the country has undergone significant political changes. The hope is that the new "government of change and of the internet" will grasp the importance of equipping students to be effective digital citizens. Learning informatics is essential for understanding, participating in, shaping, and contributing to the democratic development of society. It is essential to being the authors, rather than mere spectators, of one's own future.

This is a generational educational challenge, one that can only be met through the input and dialogue of all the stakeholders involved — and one that could also create real opportunities for economic growth in Italy. Not least because the informatics sector, known as computing in the USA, has been the leading sector there for new jobs since 2016 (see figure) and since 2017 has surpassed the manufacturing sector in terms of workforce demand.

But also because a "sophisticated" use of informatics — one that does not simply mean buying off-the-shelf solutions (which often work poorly and require constant tweaking) or relying on outside suppliers (who are generally behind schedule and over budget) — can give our productive system a real competitive edge.

Italian production, across most sectors, is characterised by a unique combination of quality and flexibility. In many fields we are among the best because we are able to track closely the shifting demands of the market while consistently maintaining very high quality standards. To continue excelling in this way, it is now essential to incorporate this sophisticated use of informatics into our production processes. That will only be possible if our universities produce a sufficient number of graduates — thereby also helping to reduce the significant gender gap that exists in this field.

None of this will be achievable without an adequate understanding, built up from the very first year of primary school, of what informatics is and of its "great beauty".

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The original version (in italian) has been published by "Agenda Digitale" on 21 September 2018.

Coding or informatics: that is the question

by Enrico Nardelli

(versione italiana qua)

At the start of this year, the European Commission launched an ambitious Digital Education Action Plan. Starting from the entirely sound premise that "education and training are the best investments in Europe's future," it proposes, in order to bring education and training in line with the digital age, to act along three lines of action:

1. making better use of digital technology for teaching and learning;
2. developing relevant digital competences and skills for the digital transformation;
3. improving education through better data analysis and foresight.

There is nothing to object to in the first line: it is well established that a well-calibrated use of digital technologies can improve both teaching and learning. The challenges all lie in getting that calibration right, but I trust that the new political leadership at MIUR and the experience of our teaching profession — among the finest in the world — will be able to identify and find the right solutions.

The third line is also highly valid: we live in the age of data, which we collect at every level. When properly analysed, data can tell us a great deal about the current state of affairs, at a level of granularity never before achieved. Here too, the devil is in the details: on one side, the need to guarantee people's privacy; on the other, the awareness that there is always a gap between what we measure and reality — a gap that must never be forgotten. Generals who have confused the map with the territory have never distinguished themselves in military campaigns.

I would like to say a few words about the second line, because for its implementation — beyond the accompanying measures relating to awareness-raising, communication, and closing the gender gap (all of them critically important!) — the concrete action proposed is to "introduce programming classes in all schools." Here, "programming" means "computer programming," that is, what the English call coding, a term that by now enjoys considerable currency in Italy too. I have already written (here and here) about why I do not think it wise to use the English term, but I will use it throughout the rest of this article for the sake of brevity.

My central argument is that this approach by the European Commission — centred on teaching coding rather than teaching informatics — is reductive. I draw a comparison between teaching coding and teaching informatics because teaching coding is, to use an engineering analogy, like teaching someone to build a bridge, whereas teaching informatics means teaching someone to design and build the bridge.

Designing means working within a space of needs and constraints and "creating" the solution — inventing a synthesis between competing requirements. This calls for a body of knowledge that goes well beyond what is needed simply to build. As someone trained as an engineer, I know this from experience. Two years of my university education were spent studying mathematics, physics, chemistry, and other foundational subjects that had no direct application to the construction of any complex artefact. Any doctor or lawyer will readily confirm that what sets the designer apart from the operative is precisely the breadth and depth of their foundational training.

Building means following a more or less defined plan that someone else has created. There is no requirement to know much beyond that, because someone else is handling — or has handled, or will handle — everything else. Talking only about "teaching coding" is therefore a reductive approach, because it focuses solely on the final, operational stage of a much more complex design process. It amounts to training a technically sophisticated workforce that will nonetheless remain a working class, subject to the directions of those who decide what to build, for whom, and when.

I note in passing — because this takes us into a political and social dimension that certainly deserves attention, but not here — that history (now more than ever magistra vitae) has shown that the basic levels of the labour force are the first to be replaced by machines. If we want our young people to acquire skills that will serve them throughout their working lives, it is better to train them as designers, not merely as executors.

I do not deny that programming can be a highly creative activity. But if we are talking about mass education, and if we teach only programming without educating young people about all the other aspects that make informatics the rich and multifaceted discipline it is, then we genuinely risk producing nothing more than an army of workers — one that will be easily sidelined by technological advances or turned into an "industrial reserve army."

For young people to have a real chance of finding a fulfilling path in the digital society — within a constantly evolving world of work — they need to be introduced from the outset to the scientific ideas underpinning the digital world, so that they can grasp its full significance.

One might object that there are many examples of successful start-ups born from the ideas of young people who had certainly never studied informatics formally. But if you look at the overall numbers, these are merely the exceptions that prove the rule. For a start, while the founder of Facebook was certainly not a computer science graduate, Google was born from the ideas of two Stanford informatics PhD students — one of the great cathedrals of computing research. Furthermore, for every start-up that makes it, there are at least a thousand that go nowhere, and so at a macroeconomic level — that is, in terms of growing a country — betting everything on start-ups is not a sensible strategy (another development policy debate worth having).

Similarly, there is a tendency to treat exceptions as if they were the norm. When it comes to programming, people cite geniuses like Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux) or Guido van Rossum (creator of Python), who single-handedly produced true masterworks. First of all, genius is an extremely rare quality, and what works for a genius cannot be used as a teaching method for mass education. Second, even those who are genuinely gifted still design: they do it in their heads, and very rapidly, as they develop — but the design phase is there all the same. Third, it is obvious that every project, at the point where it is expressed, requires a language through which to express it — which represents the "encoding" of the project. But this does not mean that the most appropriate term for someone who designs is "coder," or that the word "coding" encompasses the entire area of software design and development.

Let me be clear: incorporating informatics education into schools matters for every citizen's formation, regardless of whether they go on to become doctors or lawyers, musicians or writers. The digital society is here. Failing to teach in schools the science underlying its mechanisms would be like teaching children that babies are found under cabbage leaves, that the plague is spread by poisoners, and that stones move by horror vacui.

What makes a country great in the long run is not its exceptional talents, but the quality of its mass education. Europe's digital development requires the teaching of Informatics in schools, starting from primary level. This is the path that the United Kingdom has begun to follow; these are the trends in many advanced countries, both East and West; and this is what we have proposed as European associations of computer scientists.

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The original version (in italian) has been published by "Il Fatto Quotidiano" on 17 September 2018.

Coding o informatica: questo è il problema

di Enrico Nardelli

(english version here)

All'inizio di quest'anno la Commissione Europea ha lanciato un ambizioso piano d'azione per l'istruzione digitale. Partendo dalla giustissima premessa che “istruzione e formazione sono i migliori investimenti nel futuro dell'Europa” propone, per adeguare la formazione all'era digitale, di intervenire lungo tre linee di azione:

1. migliorare l'utilizzo della tecnologia digitale per l'insegnamento e l'apprendimento;
2. sviluppare le competenze e le capacità digitali pertinenti ai fini della trasformazione digitale;
3. migliorare l'istruzione mediante un'analisi dei dati e una previsione migliori.

Nulla da dire sulla prima linea: è noto che un uso ben calibrato delle tecnologie digitali può migliorare sia l'insegnamento che l'apprendimento. Certo, le difficoltà sono tutte nella buona calibrazione, ma confido che la nuova direzione politica del MIUR e l'esperienza della nostra classe docente (tra le migliori al mondo) saranno in grado di indicare e trovare le giuste soluzioni.

Anche la terza è estremamente valida: viviamo nell'era dei dati, che raccogliamo a tutti i livelli. Se ben analizzati ci possono dire molto sulla situazione attuale, ad un livello di granularità mai raggiunto prima. Anche qui il diavolo è nelle minuzie realizzative: da un lato la garanzia di privacy verso le persone, dall'altro la consapevolezza che tra ciò che misuro e la realtà c'è una distanza che non va mai dimenticata. I generali che hanno confuso la mappa con il territorio non hanno mai brillato nelle campagne militari.

Vorrei spendere qualche parola sulla seconda linea, perché per la sua attuazione, oltre a misure di accompagnamento relative alla sensibilizzazione, comunicazione e riduzione del divario di genere (tutte importantissime!) l'azione concreta che viene proposta è quella di “introdurre classi di programmazione in tutte le scuole". Qui con “programmazione” si intende “programmazione informatica", ovvero ciò che gli inglesi chiamano coding, termine che ormai anche in Italia gode di una certa notorietà. Ho già scritto (qui e qui) sul perché non ritengo saggio usare il termine inglese, ma nel resto di quest'articolo lo userò per brevità espositiva.

La mia tesi di fondo è che questa impostazione della Commissione Europea, centrata sull'insegnamento del coding invece che sull'insegnamento dell'informatica è riduttiva. Confronto l'insegnamento del coding con quello dell'informatica perché insegnare il coding vuol dire, per fare un paragone con l'ingegneria, insegnare a costruire un ponte, mentre insegnare l'informatica vuol dire insegnare a progettare e costruire il ponte.

Progettare significa operare in uno spazio di necessità e di vincoli e “creare” la soluzione, inventare la sintesi tra esigenze contrastanti. Questo richiede un bagaglio di conoscenze che non possono essere quelle soltanto finalizzate a costruire. Essendo un ingegnere di formazione, so bene di cosa parlo. Due anni del mio percorso universitario li ho passati nello studio di matematica, fisica e chimica ed altre materie fondazionali, che non avevano nessuna diretta applicazione alla costruzione di un qualunque manufatto complesso. Un medico o un avvocato potranno sicuramente confermare che la differenza tra l'operatore ed il progettista è tutta nella larghezza e profondità della sua formazione di base.

Costruire significa seguire un piano più o meno definito che qualcun altro ha creato. Non è richiesto di sapere molto al di là di questo, perché ci pensa (o ci ha pensato o ci penserà) qualcun altro. Parlare solo di “insegnare il coding” è quindi un approccio riduttivo, perché ci si focalizza solo sulla parte finale ed operativa di tutto un processo progettuale molto più complesso. Significa addestrare una manovalanza tecnicamente sofisticata, ma che sarà comunque una classe operaia sottoposta alle direttive di chi decide cosa costruire, per chi farlo e quando.

Noto di passaggio (perché entreremmo in una sfera politica e sociale che va certamente considerata, ma non in questa sede) che la storia (ora più che mai magistra vitae) ha evidenziato come i livelli base della manovalanza sono i primi che vengono sostituiti dalle macchine. Se vogliamo quindi che i nostri giovani acquisiscano competenze utili per tutto l'arco della loro vita lavorativa, è bene formarli a competenze da progettisti e non solo da esecutori.

Non nego che la programmazione possa essere un’attività altamente creativa, ma se parliamo di istruzione di massa e se insegniamo solo a programmare, senza educare i ragazzi su tutti gli altri aspetti che rendono l’informatica quella disciplina articolata e profonda che è, allora rischiamo davvero di formare solo un esercito di operai, che sarà facilmente messo fuori gioco dall’avanzamento della tecnologia o di un “esercito industriale di riserva”.

Per far sì che ragazzi e ragazze abbiano possibilità di scegliere una strada per loro soddisfacente nella società digitale, in un contesto lavorativo in continua evoluzione, vanno loro esposte da subito le idee scientifiche alla base del digitale, in modo che ne capiscano la valenza complessiva.

Si potrà obiettare che vi sono molti esempi di start-up di successo nate da idee di ragazzini che certamente non avevano svolto regolari studi da informatici. Ma, se si guardano i numeri complessivi, questi sono soltanto le eccezioni che confermano la regola. Prima di tutto, se chi ha creato Facebook non era certamente laureato in informatica, Google è nato dalle idee di due dottorandi in informatica di Stanford (una delle cattedrali della ricerca informatica). Inoltre, per ogni start-up che ce la fa, ce ne sono almeno mille che vanno a spasso, e quindi a livello macro-economico, cioè per far crescere un Paese, puntare tutto sulle start-up non rappresenta una scelta sensata (anche questo è un discorso di politica dello sviluppo da affrontare).

Analogamente, si tende spesso a considerare come tipico ciò che invece è un’eccezione. Per la programmazione, si citano geni come Linus Torvalds (creatore di Linux) o Guido van Rossum (creatore di Python) che hanno realizzato da soli dei veri e propri capolavori. Prima di tutto la genialità è qualità estremamente rara e ciò che va bene per un genio non può essere usato come metodo didattico per l'istruzione di massa. Secondo, anche chi è geniale progetta: lo fa nella sua testa, e molto velocemente, mentre sviluppa, ma è una fase comunque presente. Terzo, è ovvio che ogni progetto, nel momento in cui viene espresso ha bisogno di un linguaggio per la sua espressione, che rappresenta la “codifica” del progetto. Ma questo non implica che il termine più appropriato per chi progetta sia “coder” o che nel termine “coding” rientri tutta l’area della progettazione e sviluppo del software.

Attenzione, l’inserimento della formazione informatica nella scuola è importante per la formazione di ogni cittadino, anche se deciderà di fare il medico o l’avvocato, il musicista o lo scrittore. La società digitale è qui: non insegnare nella scuola la scienza alla base dei suoi meccanismi sarebbe come insegnare che i bambini nascono sotto i cavoli, la peste è trasmessa dagli untori e le pietre si muovono per horror vacui.

Ciò che fa grande un Paese sul lungo periodo non sono le eccellenze, ma la qualità della formazione di massa. Lo sviluppo digitale dell'Europa richiede l'insegnamento dell'Informatica nella scuola, a partire dalla primaria. Questa è la strada che hanno iniziato a seguire nel Regno Unito, queste sono le tendenze in molti paesi avanzati, sia ad oriente che ad occidente, questo è quello che abbiamo proposto come associazioni europee di Informatici.

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Versione originale pubblicata su "Il Fatto Quotidiano" il "17 settembre 2018".

Informatics: the third “power” revolution

by Enrico Nardelli

(versione in italiano qua)

Everyone agrees on the importance of Digital Education for all citizens. But too often action plans to implement it fail to approach the issue appropriately and put an excessive emphasis on technological side of it.

The main problem, in my view, behind these difficulties is conceptual. People consider information technology as just another technology, while Informatics has brought about in the world the third “power” revolution [1], empowering human capabilities to a degree never conceivable before.

The invention of the printing press has been the first “power” revolution, since by making it possible to very easily reproduce texts allowed to bring knowledge everywhere and gave everyone the possibility to access it. It was no more needed to be in certain place at a certain time to learn something from the voice of the master. His knowledge could be reproduced by a book, far away and at a later time, whenever needed. Knowledge is still power, but now this power can be distributed and replicated: the seeds of modern society had been planted. Books, produced by hundreds of millions, changed societies and spread science and technology all over Europe.

The second “power” revolution is the industrial revolution: machines can do the physical work of people and allows mankind to overcome its own intrinsic physical limits. Machines can produce objects days and nights without becoming tired, and machines can produce other machines boosting the physical capabilities of human beings. A single person can move huge earth piles with a bulldozer, quickly transfer with a car, speak at long distance with a telephone, and so on. Mankind is no more powerless in front of the nature and starts dominating earth, sea and air, even if many times forgets our planet still remains very powerful.

Then, in the second half of the last century, after the building of hundreds of billions of machines, the third “power” revolution, the informatics revolution, slowly starts. In the beginning it appears like just another embodiment of the industrial revolution, but after the turn of millennium it becomes apparent it is much more than that. What is replicated now is not the passive and static knowledge of books, what is empowered here is not the physical strength of people, now we have the amplification of the cognitive capabilities of humankind. Digital artifacts, that is software programs, represent and store “knowledge in action” [1, 2] or “actionable knowledge” (“actionable”: ready to be put in action).

As hinted before, there are two critical elements distinguishing the actionable knowledge in digital artifacts from the one of human beings: learning and adaptability. People are intrinsically able to learn what is unknown to them (while digital machines can only learn what they have been designed for) and have learned over million years of evolution to adapt to unforeseen changes in the environment (while digital machines – once again – can adapt only to the foreseen changes).

Therefore, while certainly people can take advantage from the always improving actionable knowledge stored in digital artifacts (the very recent progresses of Artificial Intelligence clearly show this) it is of the utmost importance that everybody is appropriately educated in the science making this digital artifacts possible: Informatics.

That is why Informatics Europe, the association of European departments and research centers in Informatics I am the president of, together with the ACM Europe Council, has presented last March in Brussels to the European Commission the report “Informatics for All” advocating Informatics is taught to all students in school, starting in the primary school.

We suggested a two-tier approach: both

1. to introduce teaching of informatics as specialized subject, starting in primary and all the way up to secondary, and
2. to teach informatics (integrated in other subjects) as a method and a language capable to offer an additional and specific way to describe and explain phenomena.

The former is required to prepare citizens able to actively participate in the digital society in an informed way and to more safely and critically navigate and contribute to a fast expanding info-sphere consisting more and more of algorithms that may be biased or information that may be flawed or incomplete. The latter provides new and additional viewpoints in many scientific fields, by building and manipulating visible representations of physical laws and/or natural/social phenomena. Interactive simulations (i.e., modeling a situation and exploring its possible evolution) made possible by informatics offer a very powerful tool to improve understanding and informatics is unique in its capability of making concrete the abstract models defined by a simulation.

To this purpose, we have argued in our report, it is needed to work in three areas:

1. Curriculum, to develop both school curricula for all levels, and effective learning materials.
2. Teachers, to appropriately educate them and provide them supporting tools and content to be effective in their action.
3. Research, to understand what to teach, when to teach, how to teach (mathematics and other sciences had centuries to discover these, we need to know very soon).

This a grand educational challenge like one could have if Mathematics existed only at the university and – having understood the importance of the capability of exactly defining quantities and their relations – one had to plan to introduce it into all school levels.

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I will now further dwell on consequences of this third power revolution in terms of digital education. In the past, an excessive emphasis has been put on technological skills (for example with the European Computer Driving License), that are certainly important, but which in this area risk to spoil the educational efforts.

More recently, on the one side we hear about introducing “coding” in all schools, since “coding” is the “new English” (needed to work everywhere) or the “new Latin” (needed to reason in any field). On the other side, they say what needs to be taught in all schools is “computational thinking”, the new discipline needed for every student, whichever will be the field she will work in.

Both approach are partly right, but cannot be considered definitive, since they provide only a partial view of the issues at stake. I have to say that this situation is more typical of Europe, since in other countries, e.g. USA or China or Japan, people speaks about teaching “Computer Science” and not “coding” or “computational thinking”.

First of all let us consider “coding”. Informatics is not (just) coding, as Mathematics is not (just) "table of Pythagoras". Multiplication is (just a) part of Arithmetic, which is (just a) part of Mathematics, together with Geometry, Algebra, Probability, Statistics, Analysis, and so on. Similarly, coding (or programming) is (just a) part of the software development process (which includes Analysis, Design, Coding (Programming) – Testing, Debugging) and software is (just a) part of Informatics, together with Data Representation, Algorithms, Programming Languages, Computing Systems, Distributed Computing, Human-Computer Interaction, and so on.

Also, the purpose of teaching "table of Pythagoras" in primary school is not at all that children knows by heart that 3x2=6 o 12:4=3. The purpose is that children understand that when 3 girls have 2 sweets each the total number of sweets is obtained by a multiplication, while if 12 biscuits have to be distributed to 4 girls the number of biscuits per girl is obtained through a division. We are not teaching a tool but a way of understanding and operating in the world: we can call it “mathematical thinking”.

Well, somebody may say, let’s then teach “computational thinking” (CT) in schools. Speaking about teaching CT is a very risky attitude: philosophers, rightly, ask what do we mean by “teaching thinking”; mathematicians appropriately observe that many characteristics of CT (e.g., abstraction, recursivity, problem solving, …) are also proper of mathematics (which they do not call “mathematical thinking”); pedagogists ask how can we be sure CT is really effective in education; teachers want to know which are the methods and the tools for teaching this new discipline and how they can learn to teach it; and parents are on one side happy because it appears school has finally started to align itself to the digital society, but are on the other side worried what will happen to their kids in the future if they just learn to code with the language of today.

I am convinced this approach is misleading: in the long run it will do more harm than benefit to informatics. In schools they do not teach “linguistic thinking” or “mathematical thinking” and they do not have “body of knowledge” or “assessment methods” for these subjects. They just teach (and assess competences in) “English ” and “Mathematics”. Subsequently, the various linguistic (resp. mathematical) competences gained by study of English (resp. Mathematics), beyond being used in themselves, find additional uses in other disciplines. Between CT and Informatics there exists the same relation. Therefore we should discuss what to teach and how to evaluate competences regarding Informatics in primary/ middle/ secondary schools.

The main problem, in my view, behind these difficulties in appropriately approaching digital education is conceptual. People consider information technology as just another technology, which is wrong [3]. Automation supported by Informatics substitutes human intelligence with machine intelligence: this is a radical change of paradigm in the entire history of industrialization, which never happened before. Notwithstanding the success of Artificial Intelligence , informatics systems do not have the flexibility and adaptability to successfully tackle an ever changing reality and to learn by one’s own mistakes, like human beings do.

Actually, speaking about CT has the purpose to explain people why informatics need to be taught in all schools. We aim at teaching the scientific and cultural aspects of Informatics: not system and tools, but principles and methods. Differently from what happens with language and maths, we are forced to explicit this distinction since computers are what embodies informatics for most of people.

On these grounds, for example, in the USA Computer Science (their name for Informatics) has been added, on par with other scientific disciplines, to the “well rounded subjects” that students have to learn in schools. This is not because they think the “computer scientists’ way of thinking” (a simple explanation of what CT is) is better than others, bust just that it offers a complementary and useful conceptual paradigm to describe reality. Informatics provides cognitive insights and a common language for all subjects and professions.

Every discipline has its own set of concepts to describe the world. For a mathematician are quantity, relation, structure… For a physicist masses, forces, fields… A biologist uses cell, organism, metabolism. An informatician uses algorithm, program, automata, …

Digital society is already here and we are not adequately preparing our students and citizens. They need to learn Informatics so as to be able to understand, participate in, influence and contribute to the democratic development of the digital society. A the same time, this will provide a significantly improved opportunity for recruiting and educating the large number of IT specialists Europe needs to maintain and improve its position in the digital world economy.

We need to act now!

References

[1] E. Nardelli, Senza la cultura informatica non bastano le tecnologie, Il Fatto Quotidiano, April 2014.

[2] E. Nardelli, La RAI che vorrei: diffondere la “conoscenza in azione” per far crescere l’Italia, Key4Biz, April 2016.

[3] E. Nardelli, The maintenance is the implementation OR Why people misunderstand IT systems, European Computer Science Summit, (ECSS-2010), Prague, 2010.

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The original version has been published by "Broadband 4 Europe" on 18 April 2018 and on 20 April 2018 (archived copies, the original site is no more available).

Digital skills and the teaching of informatics: confusion reigns under heaven

by Enrico Nardelli

(versione italiana qua)

For many years now, Europe has been hearing about the importance of developing digital skills in the workforce, so that the various productive and service sectors can become more effective and efficient. Digital technologies are indeed one of the factors that has contributed most to productivity growth over recent decades.

Yet they are also the factor whose role in production and services is most frequently and widely misunderstood. The automation brought about by information technologies entails a cultural and conceptual leap that requires appropriate support and adequate preparation on the part of the people involved.

In this article I will therefore develop two reflections connected to the role of informatics both in productive processes and in the education sector.

The automation made possible by informatics is something very different from traditional industrial automation. The latter first replaced the physical actions of people with the power of machines, under the guidance of human cognitive faculties. It then successfully mechanised bureaucratic tasks of low cognitive complexity: transferring money from one account to another, purchasing a good and processing its payment, checking stock levels and ordering replenishment.

When more complex cognitive tasks are at stake, however, the automation driven by informatics is attempting to replace human intelligence with a machine: this is a radical paradigm shift that contemporary society has not yet fully absorbed or understood.

One of the essential capacities of human intelligence is adaptability to changes in the environment — the flexibility to handle new or modified requirements. People have an innate ability to evolve in response to change and to learn from mistakes. Computer systems do not, and nor are the recent advances in machine learning able to provide this capacity, or likely to do so in the near future.

It is therefore not enough simply to computerise business processes. It is not sufficient, because the month after computer systems are installed they will need to be modified to adapt to changed conditions. And this maintenance process goes on without end, because a computer system is not a human being who adapts to new developments and learns from its mistakes. The automation of informatics therefore requires human supervision, in order to achieve the flexibility it does not innately possess.

I discussed the challenges posed by this mechanisation of cognitive aspects in greater depth almost ten years ago at the 2010 annual conference of the European informatics association Informatics Europe.

Precisely because of its profound conceptual implications, this subject cannot be fully grasped through a handful of digital skills training courses. This is also one of the reasons why the transition to Industry 4.0 will be long and difficult: what is needed is the absorption of ideas and concepts, rather than simply knowing tools and being proficient in their use.

It is necessary to start early and to begin in schools, and it is essential to do so with serious, well-designed education. Try to imagine — by way of comparison — a situation in which mathematics were taught only at university, and, having recognised the fundamental role that the ability to define quantities precisely and rigorously manipulate their relationships plays in an advanced society, we had to introduce the teaching of "mathematical thinking" into schools. I do not think that leaving it to the free initiative of individual teachers to decide what to teach, when, and how, would serve the country well in the long run.

Precisely because of the rather widespread confusion surrounding the teaching of digital skills, we at CINI (the consortium of more than 40 universities engaged in informatics research and teaching) had already been working for some time on how to incorporate informatics education into Italian schools. This is an area in which some countries — the UK, USA, France, and Germany, for example — are already in the implementation phase (to say nothing of Japan and South Korea). To give just one detail: in the USA, informatics (and not coding!) has been placed, on an equal footing with other scientific and technological disciplines, among the subjects that must form part of a modern well-rounded education. An important role in this educational effort is played, in our country, by the Programma il Futuro project, of which I am the coordinator. To date — now in its fourth year — it has altogether introduced almost 3 million students to a "serious" informatics education (which we call computational thinking, to avoid the misunderstanding, extremely common, that teaching informatics means teaching how to use digital tools).

At the recent conference "Informatics culture as a driver of development," organised at the Chamber of Deputies together with the Innovation Inter-group, we made public our community's proposal — representing more than 1,500 professors and researchers in informatics and computer engineering — in the presence of MIUR. It is an articulated document, the fruit of a lengthy consultation process that involved not only our community, but also educationalists and teachers who have long been engaged in teaching informatics in schools.

Why does teaching informatics in schools matter? First of all, let us be clear that it does not mean teaching programming (i.e. coding, as it is now fashionably called). Any more than teaching mathematics means teaching arithmetic. Take primary schools, where the study of mathematics begins with learning the times tables: the aim is not so much to know by heart that 3×2=6 or 12÷4=3, but to understand that if 3 girls have 2 sweets each the total number of sweets is obtained by multiplication, while if 12 biscuits are to be shared among 4 girls the number of biscuits per girl is obtained by division. We are not, therefore, teaching an operational tool so much as a key to understanding reality — "mathematical thinking."

The same applies to informatics, a discipline that — like other sciences — has its own particular perspective on the world, its own "conceptual paradigm" through which it describes and explains phenomena. This "perspective" is that of "automatic processes of information manipulation." So, just to give a few examples: just as quantity and its relationships are essential concepts for a mathematician, or molecules and reactions for a chemist, so algorithm, language, and automaton are essential concepts for a computer scientist.

It is never superfluous to point out that each of the great scientific paradigms — the human and social sciences, the life sciences, the physical sciences — can be used to describe the same reality, and depending on the case and context, one of them may be the most useful for understanding and explanation, or it may be their combination. Informatics adds a fourth great paradigm, that of "automatic processes of information manipulation," which opens up new and useful ways of explaining what happens across many domains, from biology to economics, from social relations to medicine.

Informatics is therefore not just programming — that is, how to use a language to give instructions to a computer. It means knowing how the machine (the automaton) that must understand our instructions is built. It means understanding how to express those instructions (the programming language). It means knowing how to develop algorithms capable of expressing instructions effectively. Our proposal sets out a comprehensive framework for introducing the teaching of informatics into schools.

The importance of this issue is also being discussed in Europe. One need only read the recent report on the state of informatics teaching in European schools, prepared by the two principal associations of European computer scientists: Informatics Europe (of which I am President, bringing together university departments and corporate research centres) and the ACM Europe Council (the governing body of the European chapter of ACM, the world's largest association of computing professionals and researchers).

Its first and most important recommendation is that all students must have curricular access in school to informatics education (preferably beginning at primary level), since this scientific discipline must form part of the cultural toolkit of every citizen in the digital society. The second is that, to this end, it is essential to provide adequate training for teachers, tailored to the different levels of schooling.

The matter will be discussed again on 15 March 2018 in Brussels with the European Commission.

FURTHER READING

CINI proposal on the teaching of informatics in schools: https://www.consorzio-cini.it/gdl-informatica-scuola

Results of the Programma il Futuro project (in italian): https://programmailfuturo.it/progetto/monitoraggio-del-progetto

Conference "Informatics culture as a driver of development" (in italian): https://programmailfuturo.it/notizie/cultura-informatica-fattore-di-sviluppo

The state of informatics teaching in European schools: http://www.informatics-europe.org/news/382-informatics-education-in-europe-are-we-on-the-same-boat.html

Why teach informatics in schools: Do we really need computational thinking? Communication of the ACM, 62(2), February 2019

Informatics: the fourth great domain of science: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computing-0

"RAI Scuola" lecture "Discovering informatics" (in italian): https://www.programmailfuturo.it/come/alla-scoperta-dell-informatica

Informatics Europe: https://www.informatics-europe.org

ACM Europe Council: https://europe.acm.org

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The original version (in italian) has been published by "Agenda Digitale" on 24 January 2028.

Competenze digitali ed insegnamento dell’informatica: grande è la confusione sotto il cielo

di Enrico Nardelli

(english version here)

Da parecchi anni in Europa si sente parlare dell’importanza di sviluppare competenze digitali nella forza-lavoro, in modo che i vari settori produttivi e dei servizi diventino più efficaci ed efficienti. Le tecnologie digitali sono infatti uno dei fattori che più ha contribuito all’aumento di produttività degli ultimi decenni.

Sono però anche il fattore il cui ruolo nella produzione e nei servizi è più frequentemente ed estesamente frainteso. L'automazione realizzata dalle tecnologie dell'informazione comporta infatti un salto culturale e concettuale che richiede un appropriato accompagnamento e un’adeguata preparazione delle persone coinvolte.

Svilupperò pertanto in questo articolo due considerazioni legate al ruolo dell’informatica sia nei processi produttivi che nel settore educativo.

L’automazione resa possibile dall'informatica è qualcosa di molto diverso dalla tradizionale automazione industriale. Quest’ultima ha dapprima sostituito l’azione fisica delle persone con la forza delle macchine, sotto la guida delle facoltà cognitive delle persone. Poi ha meccanizzato con successo compiti burocratici di bassa complessità cognitiva: trasferire denaro da un conto ad un altro, acquistare un bene ed effettuarne il pagamento, controllare il livello delle scorte e ordinarne il rimpiazzo.

Quando sono in gioco compiti cognitivi più complessi l'automazione dell'informatica sta però tentando di sostituire l’intelligenza umana con una macchina: si tratta di un radicale cambiamento di paradigma che la società contemporanea non ha ancora pienamente assorbito e compreso.

Una delle capacità essenziali dell’intelligenza umana è l’adattabilità ai cambiamenti dell’ambiente, la flessibilità nel gestire esigenze nuove o modificate. Le persone hanno una capacità innata di evolversi per fronteggiare l’evoluzione e di imparare dagli errori. I sistemi informatici non ce l’hanno e neanche i recenti avanzamenti dei sistemi di apprendimento automatico (machine learning) sono in grado di fornirgliela o saranno in grado di farlo in un prossimo futuro.

Non basta quindi informatizzare i processi aziendali. Non è sufficiente, perché il mese dopo che i sistemi informatici sono stati installati dovranno essere modificati per adattarsi alle mutate condizioni al contorno. E questo processo di manutenzione va avanti senza fine, perché un sistema informatico non è un essere umano che si adatta alle novità ed impara dai suoi errori. L'automazione dell'informatica richiede quindi la supervisione delle persone, per ottenere quella flessibilità che non possiede in modo innato.

Delle problematiche poste da questa meccanizzazione degli aspetti cognitivi ne ho discusso più in profondità quasi dieci anni fa al convegno annuale dell’associazione degli informatici europei Informatics Europe.

Proprio per la sua profonda portata concettuale, questo tema non può quindi essere compreso appieno soltanto con qualche corso di formazione sulle competenze digitali. Tra l’altro, questo è uno dei motivi per cui la transizione all’impresa 4.0 sarà lunga e difficile: bisogna aver assorbito idee e concetti, più che conoscere strumenti ed essere abili nell’usarli.

È necessario partire da lontano ed iniziare nella scuola, ed è indispensabile farlo con una formazione seria e ben progettata. Provate ad immaginare – per fare un paragone – una situazione in cui la matematica venisse insegnata solo all’università e, avendo capito il fondamentale ruolo che svolge in una società evoluta la capacità di definire le quantità in modo esatto e manipolare in modo rigoroso le loro relazioni, dovessimo introdurre l’insegnamento del “pensiero matematico” nelle scuole. Non penso che lasciare alla libera iniziativa dei docenti la facoltà di definire cosa insegnare, quando e come, sarebbe fruttuoso per il Paese sul lungo periodo.

Proprio per la confusione un po’ dilagante in materia di insegnamento delle competenze digitali, avevamo già da tempo iniziato a ragionare come CINI (il consorzio delle più di 40 università che fanno ricerca e didattica in informatica) su come inserire la formazione informatica nella scuola italiana. Si tratta di un aspetto su cui alcuni paesi (per esempio UK, USA, Francia e Germania) sono già in fase realizzativa (per non parlare di Giappone e Corea del Sud). Solo per dare un dettaglio, negli USA l’informatica (e non il coding!) è stata inserita, alla pari delle altre discipline scientifiche e tecnologiche, tra i soggetti che devono far parte di una moderna istruzione “a tutto tondo” (well-rounded subjects). Un ruolo importante in quest’ambito educativo è svolto, nel nostro paese, dal progetto Programma il Futuro, di cui sono coordinatore. Finora (è adesso nel suo quarto anno) ha complessivamente avvicinato quasi 3 milioni di studenti ad una formazione informatica “seria” (che chiamiamo pensiero computazionale per evitare l’equivoco in cui moltissimi incorrono che insegnare l’informatica significhi insegnare l’uso degli strumenti digitali).

Nel corso del recente convegno “La cultura informatica come fattore di sviluppo”, organizzato presso la Camera dei Deputati con l'Intergruppo Innovazione, abbiamo reso pubblica la proposta della nostra comunità (più di 1500 tra professori e ricercatori in informatica e ingegneria informatica) alla presenza del MIUR. Si tratta di un documento articolato e frutto di una lunga fase di consultazione, che ha coinvolto non soltanto la nostra comunità, ma anche pedagogisti e docenti da tempo impegnati nell'insegnamento dell'informatica nella scuola.

Perché è importante insegnare l’informatica nella scuola? Prima di tutto chiariamo che non vuol dire insegnare la programmazione, (cioè il coding, come si dice adesso per essere alla moda). Non più di quanto insegnare la matematica voglia dire insegnare a fare i conti. Prendiamo le scuole elementari in cui si inizia a studiare matematica imparando la tavola pitagorica: il fine non è tanto sapere a memoria che 3x2=6 o 12:4=3, quanto capire che se 3 bambine hanno 2 caramelle ciascuna il numero totale di caramelle si ottiene con la moltiplicazione, mentre se 12 biscotti devono essere distribuiti a 4 bambine il numero di biscotti per bambina si ottiene con la divisione. Non stiamo quindi tanto insegnando uno strumento operativo, quanto una chiave di comprensione della realtà (“il pensiero matematico”).

Lo stesso vale per l’informatica, una disciplina che – come altre scienze – ha il suo particolare punto di vista sul mondo, il suo “paradigma concettuale” in base al quale descrive e spiega i fenomeni. Tale “punto di vista” è quello dei “processi automatici di manipolazione dell’informazione”. Quindi, giusto per fare alcuni esempi, così come sono concetti essenziali per un matematico la quantità e le loro relazioni o per un chimico le molecole e le reazioni, così sono concetti essenziali per un informatico quelli di algoritmo, linguaggio, automa, e così via.

Non è mai inutile sottolineare che ognuno dei grandi paradigmi scientifici (scienze umane e sociali, scienze della vita, scienze fisiche) può essere usato per descrivere la stessa realtà, ed a seconda dei casi e dei contesti uno di essi può essere quello più utile per la comprensione e la spiegazione oppure può esserlo la loro combinazione. L’informatica aggiunge un quarto grande paradigma, quello dei “processi automatici di manipolazione dell’informazione”, che permette di ottenere nuovi e utili modi per spiegare quanto accade in molti ambiti, dalla biologia all’economia, dalle relazioni sociali alla medicina.

Informatica non è quindi solo programmazione, cioè come usare un linguaggio per dare istruzioni ad un computer. È conoscere com’è fatta la macchina (l’automa) che deve comprendere le nostre istruzioni. È capire in che modo esprimere queste istruzioni (il linguaggio di programmazione). È sapere come elaborare algoritmi in grado di esprimere efficacemente le istruzioni. La nostra proposta indica uno scenario completo per l’inserimento dell’insegnamento dell’informatica nella scuola.

Anche in Europa si discute dell’importanza di questo aspetto. Basta leggere il recente rapporto sullo stato dell’insegnamento dell’informatica nelle scuole europee, preparato dalle due principali associazioni di informatici europei: Informatics Europe (di cui sono Presidente, che raggruppa dipartimenti universitari e centri di ricerca aziendali) e ACM Europe Council (Consiglio Direttivo della sezione europea dell'ACM, la maggiore associazione mondiale di professionisti e studiosi).

La sua prima e più importante raccomandazione è che tutti gli studenti devono avere accesso curriculare nella scuola alla formazione in Informatica (iniziando preferibilmente alla primaria), dal momento che questa disciplina scientifica deve far parte del bagaglio culturale di ogni cittadino della società digitale. La seconda è che, a questo scopo, è necessario formare adeguatamente gli insegnanti, in funzione dei diversi ordini di scuola.

Se ne riparlerà il 15 marzo 2018 a Bruxelles con la Commissione Europea.

LINK DI APPROFONDIMENTO

Proposta del CINI sull’insegnamento dell’informatica nella scuola https://www.consorzio-cini.it/gdl-informatica-scuola

Risultati del progetto Programma il Futuro: https://programmailfuturo.it/progetto/monitoraggio-del-progetto

Convegno “La cultura informatica come fattore di sviluppo”: https://programmailfuturo.it/notizie/cultura-informatica-fattore-di-sviluppo

Lo stato dell’insegnamento dell’informatica nelle scuole europee: http://www.informatics-europe.org/news/382-informatics-education-in-europe-are-we-on-the-same-boat.html

Perché insegnare informatica nella scuola: http://mondodigitale.aicanet.net/2017-5/articoli/MD72_02_abbiamo_davvero_bisogno_del_pensiero_computazionale.pdf

Informatica: il quarto grande dominio della scienza: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computing-0

Lezione per RAI Scuola “Alla scoperta dell’informatica”: https://www.programmailfuturo.it/come/alla-scoperta-dell-informatica

Informatics Europe: https://www.informatics-europe.org

ACM Europe Council: https://europe.acm.org


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Versione originale pubblicata su "agendadigitale.eu" il 24 gennaio 2018