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Carlo Ghezzi Politecnico di Milano

Deep-SE Group @ DEIB

Formazione in InformaticaL’Europa non può perdere il treno

AICASalerno, 19 Settembre 2013

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Sommario• Bisogna agire a tutti i livelli• Informatics Europe (e ACM Europe)• Il rapporto• Le altre iniziative internazionali• Il futuro delle iniziative di Informatics Europe

Informatics usato sempre come sinonimo di “Computer Science”, “Information Science”, “Computing”

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Urgenza di ripensare la formazione a tutti i livelli

• Limitarsi all’Università o anche al Liceo è tardi• UE -- Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs

- Si stima manchino 900,000 professionisti ICT Europa nel 2015

• Alta formazione‣ Lo tsunami dei MOOCS‣ La possibilità di ripensare l’offerta

• La formazione nella scuola• La formazione continua

Informatics Europe

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• Definita alla fondazione (2006) come European Association of Computer Science Departments and Research Labs

www.informatics-europe.org • Missione‣ Favorire e sostenere lo sviluppo di ricerca e formazione

di qualità in Informatica • si propone come elemento di coordinamento e

rappresentazione della ricerca e alta formazione in Informatica a livello Europeo (in particolare, nei rapporti con l’UE)

• European Computer Science Summit (ECSS) ogni anno (8-9 ottobre 2013, Amsterdam)

Dal documento costitutivo

• To act as the representative of the European Informatics research and education community

• To foster high-quality research in the field • To keep improving the quality of computer science teaching • To help the public understand the contribution of

computer science to economic development and the scientific challenges of the discipline

• To foster the cooperation between education, research and industry

• To establish effective relations between the computer science community and governmental authorities

• To provide links to other national and international organizations with complementary aims

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Membership

Sept 2012

Res labs: •Google

•Microsoft •Intel

•INRIA •CWI

Formazione pre-universitaria (K-12)

• Recente fioritura di iniziative nazionali rivolte a migliorare una situazione di partenza catastrofica

• Rapporto sviluppato da un gruppo di lavoro congiunto Informatics Europe-ACM Europe• http://www.informatics-europe.org/images/

documents/informatics-education-europe-report.pdf

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Una visione

Michael Gove UK Education Secretary 11 January 2012 http://bit.ly/w0FNvW

Imagine the dramatic change which could be possible in just a few years... Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11-year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations… By 16, they could have an understanding of formal logic previously covered only in university courses and be writing their own apps for smartphones.

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Informatics education:

Europe cannot afford to miss the boatReport of the joint

Informatics Europe & ACM Europe Working Group on Informatics Education

April 2013Working group members

Informatics Europe:Walter Gander (chair), ETH Zurich, Switzerland Antoine Petit, Inria & ENS Cachan, France Gérard Berry, Collège de FranceBarbara Demo, University of Turin, ItalyJan Vahrenhold, University of Munster, Germany

ACM Europe:Andrew McGettrick, University of Strathclyde, ScotlandRoger Boyle, University of Aberystwyth, WalesMichèle Drechsler, INRP, Lyon, FranceAvi Mendelson, Microsoft, IsraelChris Stephenson, Computer Science Teachers Association, USA

ACM Europe and Informatics Europe liaison:Carlo Ghezzi, Politecnico di Milano, ItalyBertrand Meyer, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, ITMO, Russia, and EiffelSoftware, USA

Executive summary1. All of Europe’s citizens need to be educated in both digital literacy and informatics. 2. Digital literacy covers fluency with computer tools and the Internet. 3. Informatics covers the science behind information technology. Informatics is a distinct

science, characterized by its own concepts, methods, body of knowledge and open issues. It has emerged, in a role similar to that of mathematics, as a cross-discipline field underlying today’s scientific, engineering and economic progress.

4. Informatics is a major enabler of technology innovation, the principal resource for Europe’s drive to become an information society, and the key to the future of Europe’s economy.

5. European countries are making good progress in including digital literacy in the curriculum. The teaching of this topic should emphasize the proper use of information technology resources and cover matters of ethics such as privacy and plagiarism.

6. Informatics education, unlike digital literacy education, is sorely lacking in most European countries. The situation has paradoxically worsened since the 70s and 80s.

7. Not offering appropriate informatics education means that Europe is harming its new generation of citizens, educationally and economically.

8. Unless Europe takes resolute steps to change that situation, it will turn into a mere consumer of information technology and miss its goal of being a major player.

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4 key recommendations

1. All students should benefit from education in digital literacy, starting from an early age and mastering the basic concepts by age 12. Digital literacy education should emphasize not only skills but also the principles and practices of using them effectively and ethically.

2. All students should benefit from education in informatics as an independent scientific subject, studied both for its intrinsic intellectual and educational value and for its applications to other disciplines.

3. A large-scale teacher training program should urgently be started. To bootstrap the process in the short term, creative solutions should be developed involving school teachers paired with experts from academia and industry.

4. The definition of informatics curricula should rely on the considerable body of existing work on the topic (the report gives examples).

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Rischi del non agire

“... without effective informatics teaching, a serious risk exists that Europe becomes a mere consumer of technologies designed elsewhere, running on devices also manufactured elsewhere. Such an outcome would have dismal implications for Europe’s future. It is the working group’s opinion that this outcome is not inevitable and that the key to leadership lies in a modern curriculum integrating informatics as well as digital literacy.”

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Digital literacy• Capacità di usare l’IT e i suoi strumenti in maniera intelligente e corretta (“effectively,

safely and ethically”)

• Obiettivo

• dall’inizio della scuola, entro i 12 anni (diciamo, alla fine delle medie)

• Basic skills• Being able to type

• Being able to compose and revise documents, presentations and drawings

• Understanding the fundamental measurement units (size and speed)• Understanding the basic properties of digital files for text, audio, photos and movies

• Knowing how to search, copy and store information as digital files

• Knowing how to organize information by storing files in directories (copy, delete, rename) and to make backups

• Being able to communicate via various media such as email, social networks and forums

• Being aware of the currently most suitable software for these activities and able to search for suitable tools

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Digital literacy: uso intelligente e corretto

• Sapersi comportare in maniera eticamente responsabile sul web

• Saper distinguere tra il reale e il virtuale• Esser consapevoli dei problemi di sicurezza e frode• Saper esercitare cautela e mentalità critica riguardo alle

informazioni reperite in rete• Saper usare in maniera appropriata ed eticamente corretta

l’informazione reperita in rete per i propri usi; in particolare, sapere quando un utilizzo è corretto e quando invece è plagio

• Esser consapevoli dei problemi di privacy: rispettare la privacy degli altri e proteggere la propria privacy

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Raccomandazioni

• Coinvolgere sempre i genitori e gli insegnanti di tutte le discipline con le quali esiste una relazione

• Fornire un ambiente protetto e sicuro, ad esempio rispetto ai problemi del ciber-bullismo (vedi i casi che già si manifestano!)

• Il materiale dovrebbe includere sia concetti inter-disciplinari che l’applicazione ad altre discipline, incluso l’utilizzo dei computers nelle materie umanistiche e nelle scienze

• L’IT evolve molto velocemente: gli strumenti e le tecniche hanno una rapida obsolescenza. Il curriculum dovrebbe preparare sia all’uso degli strumenti attuali che alla capacità di adattarsi ai cambiamenti tecnologici

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Le competenze d’uso NON bastano!

• Governments and the public all too often satisfy themselves that teaching digital literacy is enough to prepare the citizenry for the “Information Society” that Europe has decided to become. It is not. Digital literacy is a practical skill, not a scientific topic or an adequate intellectual preparation for the challenges of a digital world.

• For a nation or a group of nations to compete in the race for technology innovation, the general population must in addition to digital literacy understand the basics of the underlying discipline, informatics. On the road to an information society, informatics plays the same enabling role as mathematics and physics in previous industrial revolutions.

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La scienza dietro l’IT

• Alcuni esempi di aree con risvolti concettuali profondi:

‣ Algoritmi- quando un algoritmo termina? quando è corretto? quali

i limiti di computabilità?- come si definiscono e misurano le prestazioni e la

complessità? differenza tra risolubilità e praticabilità

‣ Strutture di dati, da quelle “in piccolo” ai DB, ai wharehouse, ai “big data” del cloud

‣ Concorrenza (parallelismo) e distribuzione

‣ Linguaggi e loro descrizione

‣ Astrazioni, information hiding

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Le conoscenze di informatica sono vitali...

• Per sostenere lo sviluppo delle tecnologie informatiche‣ Il modello di business di Google da 35 bilioni di EURO non si

sosterrebbe senza algoritmi quali “page rank”, “fixed point”

‣ La sicurezza dell’e-commerce non si sosterrebbe senza la crittografia e conoscenze di complessità degli algoritmi

‣ La rete cellulare e GPS non starebbero in piedi senza sofisticati algoritmi

‣ ... la digitalizzazione della musica e delle immagini, che hanno rivoluzionato la fruizione e la distribuzione di contenuti

‣ ... le reti sociali

‣ Le conoscenze in Informatica sono alla base della crescita di un paese come l’India

- dal nulla un’industria del software da 80 bilioni di EU/anno- dall’outsourcing alla competizione internazionale

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Le conoscenze di informatica sono vitali...

• Per sostenere lo sviluppo di ogni altro settore‣ l’Informatica è il fattore abilitante

- dalla fisica, alla medicina, alla meccanica, alle discipline umanistiche, all’arte

‣ l’Informatica è ciò che produce innovazione e vantaggio competitivo

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Imparare dal passato• Over the past century, a key factor in establishing today’s industrial society has been to

include as compulsory subjects in the secondary school curriculum, with some preparation in primary school, such fundamental scientific disciplines as mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. It is not that one wants to train every student to become a mathematician, physicist, chemist, or biologist; rather, society has recognized the need for every citizen to understand the basic concepts of these sciences, as there is no technology and no sound economic reasoning without mathematics, no engineering without physics and chemistry, no medicine without biology.

• This requirement remains as valid today as it was in the past.

• The new factor is the emergence of a new scientific subject, informatics. In today’s world, and even more as we move towards an ever more computing-intensive world, being familiar with informatics is as critical to every citizen as being familiar with traditional scientific disciplines. To be prepared for the jobs of the 21st century, students must not only be digitally literate but also understand key concepts of informatics.

• The emphasis on informatics as a science as opposed to just using digital technology also helps a proper gender balance in the field: the scientific value as well as the emphasis on the human issues (such as understanding users and their needs) is attractive to students of both genders.

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Valenza formativa dell’informatica (1)• Computational thinking (J. Wing)‣ Include due aspetti:

1. “Problem-solving techniques”- Representing information through abstractions such as models and

simulations. - Logically structuring and analyzing data. - Automating solutions through algorithmic thinking, involving carefully

described sequences of steps taken from a well-defined catalog of basic operations.

- Identifying, analyzing and implementing possible solutions with the goal of achieving the most efficient and combination of steps and resources, including both human and hardware resources.

- Formulating problems in a way that facilitates the use a computer and computerized tools to help solve them.

- Generalizing the problem-solving process to a wide variety of problems.

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Valenza formativa dell’informatica (2)

• Computational thinking....2. “Intellectual practices”

- Confidence in dealing with complexity (since software systems commonly reach a degree of complexity far beyond what is routinely handled in other forms of engineering).

- Persistence in working with difficult problems. - Tolerance for ambiguity (to be reconciled with the necessary rigor

in ensuring the correctness of the solutions). - Ability to deal with open-ended problems. - Ability to deal with a mix of both human and technical aspects; the

human dimension (user needs, quality user interfaces, appropriate training, user psychology…) is always essential in IT systems.

- Ability to communicate and work with others to achieve a common goal or solution.

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Valenza formativa dell’informatica (3)

• Favorisce la creatività‣ Molti i modi per risolvere un problema.

• È costruttiva‣ Si producono “cose” (ancorchè virtuali).

• Consente di dominare la complessità‣ Si risolvono problemi complessi, altrimenti irrisolvibili

in altre aree.• Favorisce il ragionamento rigoroso‣ Scrivere programmi funzionanti richiede precisione e

rigore.

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Concludendo...

It is no longer sufficient to wait until students are [at university] to introduce these concepts. All of today’s students will go on to live a life heavily influenced by computing, and many will work in fields that involve or are influenced by computing. They must begin to work with algorithmic problem solving and computational methods and tools in K-12.

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La situazione in Europa

Stagnazione o regressione dopo i tentativi iniziati negli anni 70/80

Recenti segnali di risveglio

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La situazione in Francia

Rapport de l’Académie des sciences Il est urgent de ne plus attendre

Mai 2013

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La situazione in Inghilterra

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• 31 Gennaio 2013, lo UK Education Secretary ha annunciato che informatica (“computer science”) diverra` argomento dell’esame della scuola secondaria EBacc (English Baccalaureate), al pari delle scienze tradizionali. Sostituisce lo “ICT Curriculum” focalizzato sulla “digital literacy”.

Grido di dolore dalla Grecia

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• Petizione internazionale riguardo alla decisione recente del governo di eliminare la formazione ICT dalla scuola secondaria superiore (avrebbe dovuto essere ratificata dal Parlamento a fine Agosto)

Iniziative di Informatics Europe

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• Best Practices in Education Award (funding di Microsoft)‣ nel 2013 riservato alla formazione nella scuola

• Osservatorio Europeo (iniziativa congiunta con ACM Europe)‣ membri dello Steering Committe nominati da IE- Antoine Petit (INRIA), Jan Vahrenhold (UniMunster),

Barbara Demo (UniTo)

Contattatemi se siete interessati a collaborare

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