The Technological Area supports the Institute’s activities by taking care of the design, construction, research of applications and technological architectures, and of the implementation and management of information systems that are functional to the development of the research itself.

At the same time, the Area carries out independent research in the field of technological hardware and software applications. Based on past years’ experience, we highlighted that a series of fields of study on technologies are not covered by the research structures as deemed purely technical areas. However, these fields would need an in-depth study to evaluate potential repercussions on objectives and strategies of the various research activities.

Since the early 2000s, the technology department has created and managed blended training tools for teachers and school staff, creating environments dedicated to various topics (the so-called “PuntoEdu”), which combined online and face-to-face activities. The PuntoEdu offered users study tools (learning objects, electronic study materials) and collaboration tools such as forums, chats and working groups within which it was possible to exchange documents, organize activities etc. All users’ activities were tracked on the platform in order to certify participation in the training. Participants had various roles on the platforms, including the fundamental ones of tutors and forum moderators, who coordinated the activity of the students and supervised their training path. Over the years, PuntoEdu technology has evolved to accompany the Institute’s activities, at a technological and content level, and the CMS and LMS Pheegaro framework has been created, through which it is possible to create increasingly customized platforms, also with diversified training models. At the same time, where it is needed, training environments are created using third-party platforms such as Moodle or WordPress.

The Technological Area takes care of creating and coordinating the management of all platforms, possibly also expanding them with new tools developed ad hoc. Most of the training platforms are built in a custom way, that is through internal proprietary frameworks (such as Pheegaro) and not based on existing software solutions. This aspect, although onerous in terms of development and maintenance, adds value to the activities of the Institute, which thus manages to offer users tailored tools suitable for training needs.

 

General objectives

 

1. Technological support to the activities of the research structures
2. Study and prototyping of technological solutions that can find subsequent use in the Structures (for example Artificial Intelligence and its potential applications in areas such as user profiling, personalization of learning, evaluation of learning processes).