Francesco Caviglia

WordProf: A Writing Environment on Computer

This paper focuses on the use of computer programs, in particular word processors, in the teaching and learning of advanced skills in text composition. After examining some trends in computer‐assisted teaching of writing skills, the paper describes the theoretical assumptions and features of WordProf, courseware aimed at supporting the development of competence in text production within a writing curriculum. WordProf, which is currently being evaluated, is a normal word processor enhanced with some educational functions devised to support, assist and train an ‘apprentice writer’ in composing text.

Foundational skills and dispositions for learning: an experience with Information Problem Solving on the Web

Active participation in the information society requires the ability to find some order in the chaotic nature of the Web and not to get lost within the endemic presence of inaccurate, misleading, biased and false information. This article presents an approach to Information Problem Solving (IPS) – that is, finding, understanding and assessing information on the Web – and discusses a study carried out in an Italian secondary school, using an experimental and a control group. The study aimed at exploring how to best foster IPS skills, and observing whether and how IPS activities could promote the development of more general learning dispositions and competences. After a period of training with IPS activities, the experimental group showed different dispositions towards learning from a text and engaging with open-ended questions. Despite serious limitations in the depth of analysis, most students were able to reach acceptable solutions; at the same time, they felt empowered and developed an embryonic critical attitude on which it might be possible to build further.

The Web as a learning environment

The Web is typically used, in educational settings, as a repository of contents to be learned. Within this approach, the Web-searching process tends to be perceived merely as an obstacle on the way to the contents. This paper suggests instead that searching the Web requires information problem solving competences which are in themselves key requisites for literacy in a knowledge society and deserve to be fostered as explicit goals in educational settings. Given the complexity of the competences involved, it is suggested that educational intervention focus on practice with information problems which should be thin in content, but rich in opportunities for bringing to the foreground some critical areas of the information problem solving process.

Data Literacy as a Compound Competence

Data literacy can be defined as a compound competence consisting of some level of competence in statistics, data visualization and more generic competencies in problem-solving using different data. Data literacy is closely related to data science but differs in the level of competence. While data science is a specific domain for trained specialists, data literacy is suggested as a central element in education preparing all young people to become citizens in an information society. In presenting two exemplars of resources and practices that both rely on and foster the attainment of data literacy it is proposed that data literacy is best defined as a compound competence that first and foremost can be ascribed to a community of practice rather than the single individual. The definition, therefore, calls for new and further interdisciplinary collaboration that integrates different competencies and levels of skill.