Digital culture projects

As already described, digital skills have a crucial role to play in our society and have been one of the key factors in allowing economies to achieve a competitive advantage over the past twenty years, as shown by much of the work carried out by the OECD or promoted by the EC. The fundamental problem is that students today are “digital natives” who were born and raised with the new technologies, while schools educating them are far behind in the use of technologies and multimedia teaching tools.

The digital divide between those who effectively have access to the new information technologies and those who are excluded unfortunately continues to be wide even in school environments, indicating a concerning disparity between current teaching and learning methods. The most obvious effect of this situation is that traditional teaching systems are becoming more and more incapable of attracting young people who are used to looking beyond textbooks and are fascinated by whatever allows them to communicate directly with the topic in hand.

Digital teaching is offered to teachers as an active teaching strategy that can enhance the learner’s involvement and test him in a more “real” environment, combining knowledge with know-how in a way that has not been widely tested in the conventional schooling model.

Education that uses the new technologies, combining them with traditional methods, provides teachers and students with the instruments that can pave the way to innovation, necessary for social and technological development in this 21st century.

ICT companies offer instruments for work, sharing and cooperation, allowing teachers to “provide education” in an integrated manner while enhancing the skills required for independent learning. In this context, the support that TIM can provide towards ensuring the evolution of Italian schools is clear and evident.

TIM is participating, as the Founding Sponsor partner, in Programme the Future, un’iniziativa del MIUR che favorisce l’introduzione del pensiero computazionale e del coding nei programmi didattici delle scuole di ogni ordine e grado. Il progetto è attuato dal CINI (Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per l’Informatica) e l’Azienda supporta tutte le attività attraverso tre tipologie d’intervento: sostegno economico, comunicazione e volontariato d’impresa, con oltre 400 dipendenti volontari che offrono collaborazione e attività di tutoraggio a docenti e studenti. In affiancamento a questo progetto l’iniziativa TIM4Codinga MIUR initiative that favours the introduction of computational thought and coding in the educational programmes of schools of all levels. The project is implemented by CINI (Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per Informatica - National Inter-University Consortium for Information Technology) and the Company supports all the activities in three ways: economic support, communication and company volunteering, with over 400 voluntary employees offering collaboration and tutoring to teachers and students. Alongside this project, the TIM4Coding initiative promotes the teaching of the “Coding Hour” in schools as well as at TIM#Wcap accelerators, contributing to training the professionals of the future, including through collaboration with TIM ambassadors Furthermore, in 2016 TIM launched the Digital Learning with TIM project in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR) to bring teachers closer to the digital world and its instruments, offering them an all-encompassing vision of the technological applications that add value and new opportunities to the teaching profession. This is a two year project that involves teachers from schools of all types and levels in 18 Italian regions. In Lazio, which was the first region included at the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year, the initiative involved approximately 500 teachers.

Digital education is also provided in environments and by means which are not necessarily connected to the school system, precisely in order to attract a broader and more diverse audience. This is why TIM produced Start! in 2016. This is a television programme that tells how digital and innovation can make a real contribution to improving people’s lives. A factual entertainment programme presented by Francesco Mandelli and Federico Russo over 10 shows that were broadcast on Rai 2, allowing viewers to discover many innovative and useful startups. This first edition of the program was very successful with the public, with more than 600k viewers per week and an average share of 6.4%. Internet safety is promoted through participation in various associations such as the ICT Coalition for children online, which includes 25 ICT companies for the exchange of best practices between companies and the development of policies and solutions to ensure that children can use internet in a secure environment. In 2016, the general principles of the association were updated. The ICT Coalition organizes a biannual forum, attended by the most significant European and international companies and institutions, certain NGOs and other interest groups. In addition to the ICT coalition, the Group participates actively in the meetings and work of the Alliance to better protect minors online, a platform launched by the European Commission which works with the main players and representatives of the digital sector for the compilation of a code of conduct. The initiative was launched in September and will conclude its first phase in February 2017 with the signing of the statement of purpose, a type of declaration of intent that will be signed by the companies that participated in the work.

Covering these same issues, the CSV Department has launched the Navigare Sicuri,[Surf safe] project, a digital platform (app and website) which is structured along 3 macro areas: a children’s section which aims to make the very young (ages 8 - 12) aware of digital risks while conveying the ten rules to follow when using internet in a playful and appealing way; a section for parents, aiming to make them aware of the dangers of the web based on the FOSI recommendations and a section for teachers.

#TIMgirlsHackathon ¹ aims to help to close the gender gap in the scientific culture. A marathon lasting around 7 hours to introduce school girls to coding. The challenge is to create a real App on a pre-established topic in one day and without any expertise. A training day outside the classroom in a stimulating and challenging environment where there is the opportunity to meet exceptional mentors, a tribute to female leadership that has been able to tear down prejudices and cultural constraints. The topic of #TIMgirlsHackathon was cyber bullying and the informed use of the web. The digital culture is also the scope of projects aimed at bringing high quality cultural content and digital languages together, making the most of the interaction opportunities offered by the Web. In so doing, the Company is asserting itself as an innovative partner in the Italian cultural and artistic world, assuming a role recognised by stakeholders who work alongside it in the various cultural sectors in which digital dissemination initiatives are run.

The partnership with Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia takes the form of the PappanoinWeb project. Conceived for the purpose of bringing great classical music to the Internet audiences. The initiative reached its sixth edition in 2016 and was enriched this year by the WebArena experience, which consists of a space that has been technologically equipped by the company inside the concert hall, dedicated to young people under the age of 30 who are free to connect in order to share photographs, videos, emotions and actual experiences. Over the six years of the programme, the concerts offered have been watched by over 200,000 users in streaming on telecomitalia.com/pappanoinweb, thanks to the listening guides, exclusive interviews and the opportunities to interact with an musicologists at the Accademia during direct broadcasts. Two big open rehearsal also allowed over 3,000 colleagues to experience the excitement backstage, with the protagonists, and to view the real difficulties of high level musical performances.

As part of the “storytelling & performing arts,” note the partnership with Scuola Holden of Turin, founded by Alessandro Baricco, which tests new ways of teaching and sharing ideas, knowledge, and creativity through digital technology. The Web becomes a vehicle for providing lessons with great masters and special events happening in the School. The collaboration which reached its third year in 2016 has allowed a pioneering multimedia laboratory to be set up inside the school, and it also supports, with a working group comprised of the best students, the communication of some of the Group’s sustainability projects.

On the Brazilian front, the social investment strategy implemented by Tim Participações aims to promote the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups in Brazilian society, particularly children and teenagers, by running education programmes that support the corporate “without borders” concept even in the social sphere.

In 2013, the TIM Institute was founded with the aim of defining strategies and providing resources for the dissemination of science and innovation to support the development of the community in Brazil, particularly by means of mobile technology. 

Four areas of activity were identified in which to develop projects:

• education/teaching
• application
• work
• social inclusion

The following is a summary of the TIM Institute’s modus operandi and some of the projects it ran in 2016.

¹ Il The term stems from a combination of the two terms hack and marathon, starting with the IT virtuosity promoted by hackers; it is an event attended, for various reasons, by experts of different IT sectors and the purposes, in addition to technical objectives, may include educational and social objectives.