Presentation Schedule
‘How Did this Weed Get into Our Garden?’ Explorations and Connections Between Nature and Digital (96197)
Session Chair: Kevin O'Connor
Thursday, 2 October 2025 16:40
Session: Session 3
Room: (1F) Sant Sebastià
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation
In outdoor learning, children have the opportunity to make visible their curiosities, interests, glances, but also to demonstrate specific skills and creativity in providing hypotheses and finding solutions (Schenetti, 2022). Nevertheless, education in nature is not to be considered in opposition to Media Education, as both are characterised by their “ecological” aims in promoting balance and awareness, both in the biosphere and in culture, triggering a possible dialogue between technology and nature (Di Bari, 2022). This contribution highlights the results of a didactic and educational pathway, aimed at the study of spontaneous grasses in a school garden, with the objective of problematising the concept of “nature”, co-designed with the Reggio Children Foundation and the teachers of the primary school “M.M. Boiardo I.C. Einstein” in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Qualitative analysis of the collected data (pedagogical documentation, drawings, writings, student presentations, final questionnaires) shows how direct experiences with the natural environment and the use of digital technologies offer possibilities for meaningful learning, which can facilitate, support and promote understanding and knowledge construction. The experience also returns an image of a competent, capable, curious child (Edwards, Gandini, Forman, 2017), who asks legitimate questions, seeks answers, makes attempts, exercises the right to make mistakes. The research offers reflective insights to promote a critical and aware approach to technology, combining it with a projectual and effective use of outdoor and indoor environments, in order to create a continuous connection between contexts and knowledge that encourages different modes, tools and languages in learning processes.
Authors:
Camilla Maria Aviles, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Eléna Sofia Paoli, Fondazione Reggio Children, Italy
About the Presenter(s)
See biography above
See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule
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