DIDATTICA PROGETTO ARTECH

Didattica Progetto Artech®: a direct link between the world of schools, museums and cinema.

The educational platform creates a direct link between the school environment and Italy's artistic and cultural heritage. There are two areas of development: the museum circuit and the audiovisual circuit.

Didattica Progetto Artech® is a digital platform aimed at all types and levels of schools. A tool created with the aim of producing and providing teaching modules related to Italy's cultural heritage, through the development of video lessons and in-depth materials.

Offering a one-of-a-kind service, the defining feature of Didattica Progetto Artech®, in addition to the possibility of setting up a network of direct relations between the world of education and cultural entities, is its content format and functions. The organisation of teaching modules and actions available has been designed through direct contact with teachers, cultural operators, education experts, creators from the audiovisual world, and software programmers, in order to optimise the results and respond in a coherent way to specific needs.

Didattica Progetto Artech® is available to teachers, who can use the contents independently, choosing and evaluating how and when to use them with their students depending on the curriculum defined for each class. Video lessons can be viewed via an interactive whiteboard, from a PC with a monitor connection, or on other devices and tools adopted by the school.

The platform is divided into two macro-areas - cinema and art/museums - and is composed of video lessons created ad hoc and presented by professionals with proven experience in the educational field.

For both areas, the modules are structured as follows:
1) 25-minute lesson to watch with students;
(for primary school classes the videos include tutorials on how to carry out practical workshops in the classroom and are made up of short clips of three to four minutes each, forming an total viewing time of 16 minutes maximum);
2) 3-6 minute training clip, aimed at teachers. The purpose of this video is to introduce the video lesson to the teacher and bring specific features for optimal viewing with the class to his/her attention;
3) Suggested exercise. The teacher can decide whether or not to use this with the class;
4) Option of making contact with the presenter of the lesson for possible future meetings either in the school or remotely with a live connection;
5) Option of contacting the museum to arrange an in-person visit or a remote meeting via live stream with a museum education representative. Museums accredited with the platform can in fact reinforce the link between museum and school, contributing to the dissemination of culture and increasing their national visibility with schools registered on the platform. The museum has a customised page highlighting its distinguishing features.

Registration and subscription to the platform is carried out by the individual school, which can then issue teachers with access codes to use the content with no restrictions on viewing or use throughout the school year.

With Didattica Progetto Artech® teachers also have the opportunity to take part in training webinars, designed as tools for sharing, dialogue and training on various topics related to the macro-areas of interest of the platform: cinema and art/museums. These meetings are run by speakers of clear renown and interest in the field covered by each webinar, and the topics are chosen to conform to ministerial guidelines.

The museum has a customised page that highlights its distinguishing features and enables involvement with the organisation of live in-person or remote meetings: a useful tool, especially for those organisations that do not have an updated website and packages of digital material.
Depending on the kind of the subjects that are of interest, the teacher can select which video lesson to watch with his/her students from the list of museum contents on the platform.
The lectures are intended to meet the need of educational institutions to take advantage of original content, which has been specially produced and organised, for use alongside their own educational curriculum, in response to the training/experiential needs related to the relationship with the Museum and its know-how in teaching modules.

The majority of museums operating across the country have in-house structures for the planning and realisation of educational activities aimed at schools of all levels: guided tours, workshops and in-depth content. Now, depending on the type of museum, a school can identify the visit experience that best ties in with its own curriculum and the cultural narrative it wants to bring to the attention of students. The modules produced by video lectures are intended to represent an opportunity for training and understanding, not as a substitute for a physical visit, but as an "extra" element. These contents make it possible to reconcile educational effectiveness, encouraging observation, interaction, dialogue and discussion with an experience outside the museum itself.

The platform makes it possible for the school to request an in-presence visit, a live-streamed guided tour or an in-depth discussion of a topic with a museum education representative.
Designed not only for schools, the platform also gives museums the opportunity to organise webinars or remote live events where the museum director or his/her staff can give presentations and in-depth talks.