Programma il futuro - Italy

The initiative “Programma il futuro” was launched in 2014 by Laboratorio Informatica & Scuola –belonging to CINI (Consorzio Interuniversitario per l’Informatica), in strict collaboration with the Italian Minister of Education. The project is financed by three companies which are particularly sensitive to the country’s digital transformation, namely Eni, Engineering and Seeweb, that support the initiative on different levels through their Corporate Social Responsibility programs. 

“Programma il Futuro” is also the Italian partner of the USA based ONG “Code.org”: they have a common mission of providing schools with simple but fun and easily accessible tools, which can effectively teach students ICT fundamentals.

Aims and objectives

The project aims at delivering ICT training using a comprehensive approach: going beyond a basic digital literacy, it also takes into consideration those social aspects which are essential to educate a new generation of consumers, who will be then aware of the possibilities offered by the technological tools they regularly use. 

The initiative indeed provides schools with high quality educational tools, which are designed to be used by teachers coming from different and various backgrounds. In addition, teaching materials focused on how to increase students’ digital awareness are offered in the context of the project, aiming at developing students’ cross-sectional skills and making them perfectly aware of the opportunities and risks of the use of internet.

“Programma il future” also includes training classes specifically designed for teachers, both online and on site.

Why is this a good practice? 

Thanks to the materials offered by the project, teachers can efficiently deliver their lessons, using provided workplans; at the same time students are provided with all the necessary tools to autonomously work and identify eventual mistakes following the system’s instructions. Furthermore, every year there is a contest to which every school can take part and the awarded classes participate into a closing ceremony at the end of the school year, traditionally held at the Ministry of Education.

Italy was one of the first countries in the world to experiment with the structural introduction in schools of the basic concepts of computer science through programming (coding ), using tools that are easy to use and do not require advanced computer skills. The initiative, with the participation in the 2022-23 academic year of almost 3,000,000 students, 42,000 teachers and more than 7,400 schools throughout Italy, places Italy at the forefront in Europe and in the world. During the first nine years of the project, students have carried out a total of more than 1 and a half billion hours of computer science, of which 200 million in the 2021-22 academic year alone.

Furthermore, the project’s Youtube channel counts more than 200 videos, which have reached more than 1,3 millions of total views. 

Every year monitoring activities are carried on by the Research Centre “Themis” to test the quality of the initiative: they include a survey which involves all the participants. It is divided into different sections which aims at evaluating the level of participation, the spread, the approval rating of the initiative and includes some questions related to “digital citizenship”. The surveys’ results have always shown a growing interest to the project’s activities and collected positive feedbacks from all the actors involved.