Giuseppina (Giusy) Cannella, National Agency for the Support of the School Authonomy(ex-INDIRE), Italy
Current responsibilities
Giusy is currently part of the Indire’s Dept. of Documentation and Training which works on the design of blended elearning model with the Virtual Learning Environment Puntoedu for the Italian teachers’ training. This is done by providing advice, organising training courses for e-tutors and teachers at a national level. Her particular responsibilities includes designing Learning Objects prototyes, working with University and school teachers to find learning activities; researching specific metadata standards for the learning Objects produced by the Italian teachers.
One of the projects she handles deals with exploring the use of VLE in school using network of applications such as blogs, wikis and other softwares to improve writing and mathematics skills within education. In the last year my work activities focuses on the development of distance learning school models that were piloted in some school of the small island of the mediterranean sea (namely Marettimo and Lampedusa). The aim of the project were to research the effectiveness of the ICT to overcome isolation and to motivate students in experience social activities using VLE, the internet and other ICT tool such as the interactive whiteboard.
Previous Experience
After a University degree in European Foreign Languages (English and German), she worked as literary translator and did some teaching in a lower secondary school for a couple of years. Her interest in translation led her to go to Bruxelles where she worked for the European Consortium EUN (European Schoolnet, www.eun.org). In EUN she translate projects from English into Italian. The projects were addressed to students and teachers. The topics of the projects dealt with education to the respect of the Environment (Greenweek: http://greenweek2006.eun.org/), e-learning awards (http://elearningawards.eun.org/), children safe use of the internet (Insafe/Dotsafe www.saferinternet.org/). She translated for EUN from 2002 to 2005 either in Bruxelles and on distance, in Italy. From 2003 she has been working for Indire (www.indire.it), based in Florence (Italy). Indire is actually the Italian reference for the EUN office. She started as content editor on the e-Learning training activities, in the Department of school Documentation and Training. After a master degree in Instructional Designer for On-line Learning (2004) she changed her internal position and now she works as E-Learning Instructional designer. In five working years she took part to international meetings and national conferences. She gets used to give presentations, all over the country, about the projects hold by Indire, mainly in the field of Education and ICT: Integration of ICT and learning Objects in daily curriculum in schools; Teachers Training on the main topics of the school reform introduced by the Italian Ministry of Education.
Brief presentation of the National Agency for the Support of School Autonomy (ANSAS, formerly INDIRE)
ANSAS stands for the National Agency for the Support of School Autonomy. It was instituted by legislative decree on the 20th July 1999, following the reform of the Biblioteca di Documentazione Pedagogica. It is a public institution with administrative, financial and accounting autonomy, operating on a national level and regulated by the Italian Ministry of Education.
ANSAS collaborates with the Italian Ministry of Education in the management of EU programs, projects and initiatives including the European Schoolnet. The institute manages the Italian SOCRATES agency (LLP, LongLife Learning Program), the Italian Eurydice Unit and the e-Twinning National Support Service.
Since 2001 it has been conducting research into the use of e-learning for the training of school personnel, teachers, school heads, administrative staff and students. Among the projects which are particularly relevant for the current proposal, it is worth mentioning its participation in the EUN Consortium (www.eun.org).