Featured project: MOL or empowering students to communicate across cultures
Maria Teresa Asprella teaches at Liceo Ginnasio Matera in Italy. She is in charge of MOL, the Matera’s Online Newspaper, a project aiming to enable students with different cultural backgrounds to share information on a number of subjects.
The project addresses European and non-European students, including the students of Liceo Classico "Duni", in Matera, Italy. In the past five years, MOL was published on the web site of the newspaper “The Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno”. It has been recently moved to its own website: http://www.molnews.it
The online newspaper is a virtual room where young people get to know each other, debate, share their projects. In this way, the new technologies serve as a vehicle of critical meditation and their conscious use allows cultural enrichment and, why not, also entertainment.
MOL has got several awards such as “Netdays Europe 2001”, “Ted 2002 Exhibition” and “Cable & Wireless Childnet Award". The project also was among 24 finalists of the Stockholm Challenge Award 2004. In 2004 the on-line newspaper was also awarded in Rome, in the initiative “Cento Progetti” (a hundred projects), promoted by Formez and by the Ministry of Public Office.
The project has been chosen by a Committee of members of Basilicata IRRE (Regional Office for Research and Education) and of Basilicata Regional School Management as the best project carried out in our Region and it has been included by INDIRE (National Office for Change and Educational Research) in Gold (Global On Line Documentation) a national data base among the innovative didactic practice, shown as good examples for schools. Other prizes include the Global Junior Challenge and Compagnia di San Paolo of Turin, inside “Centoscuole (A hundred schools) 2004 competition”.
The project is an example of how schools prepare students to face the tomorrow’s challenges in terms of using technologies to communicate inside and outside their cultural environment. More information about the project is available on its website.
