The most important needs our school, as many others in Italy and around the world, was facing while submitting the application, was coping with the Distance Learning forced by the COVID19 Pandemic. The cancellation of all classes for many months in 2020 and 2021 contributed to the social and cultural isolation of young students. The same needs EU want to meet with the European Education Area and the new Action Plan for digital education. Game Based Learnig and Gamification are excellent strategies to engage and appeal pupils, disregarding differences of gender, race, culture and social status. We do believe that the learning achievements of students with game-based learning are better than those who use the traditional face-to-face teaching. While a “typical” class entails the students dozing off, working on other material, playing on their phones, and the attention level drops off gradually, in gamification the attention level steadily increases as students come closer and closer to time running out. Gamified activities develops digital, language and soft skills (creative intelligence, collaboration skills, work productivity).If used with a cultural narration they also improve cultural competencies.
The Italian school “G. Pascoli” is a newly founded School (in 2012), including Nursery, Primary and Secondary schools with about 1100 students and 90 teachers. All those schools had existed long before but as autonomous bodies. The school Pascoli is specialized in teaching the normal curriculum of nursery, primary, junior secondary schools, with a special focus on new methodologies and technologies. The school offers teachers and students many opportunities to improve digital, methodological and language competencies. Moreover the secondary school has some special music classes, a sport course and an orchestra. In 2009 the secondary school received the label of 2.0 class and since then the school has rapidly changed because of the changing nature of our lives brought on by technologies. All classrooms are well equipped with digital boards and other tools. Importance is also given to foreign languages (classical and modern) with courses and certifications. We also have some CLIL classes and outdoor laboratories (The Reading Garden, the Organic Garden…). The project GAME was aimed at all teachers and school staff. The school has a longlasting experience with international projects.