The FabLearn Italy 2020 is an international conference that gathers researchers, teachers, educators and practitioners that work with the aim to bring the principles of Making and Educational Robotics in formal, non-formal and informal education.

The conference theme is “School facing the COVID-19 emergency: perspectives and answers from Maker, Coding, Robotics, and learning environments”. Lectures, round tables, scientific presentations and posters will discuss latest results on digital fabrication, robotics and AR/VR in education, assistive robotics in education, the “makers” culture, hands on learning and innovative spaces for learning environments, with focus on how such tools can contribute to face and mitigate the effects of pandemic on learning experiences and the whole the education system.

To limit the spread of the SARS-CoV-2, the 2020 edition will be virtual and the participation will be completely free, hoping to have to possibility to meet again soon. Conference sessions will be planned during the afternoon, in order to make it easier for school teachers to attend.

The FabLearn Italy 2020 is associated to the global FabLearn initiative, that advocates and supports constructionist learning experiences for all children. FabLearn is based on the work of Columbia University Associate Professor Paulo Blikstein and the Transformative Learning Technologies Lab (TLTL).

The FabLearn Italy reaches this year its third edition, and has been organized since 2019 thanks to the collaboration between INDIRE and Università Politecnica delle Marche. The event is funded by the PON “Per la Scuola” 2014-2020 Progetto Coding e Robotica (Project code: 10.2.7.A2-FSEPON-INDIRE-2017-1 – CUP: B59B17000000006).

Conference proceedings will be reviewed for their publication in open access.

The FabLearn Italy 2020 will be associated with the students competition “Una gara su Marte con MARRtino” (“A race on Mars with MARRtino”), organized within the frame of the project ESERO by the Associazione Nazionale Insegnanti Scienze Naturali (National Association of Natural Sciences Teachers), in cooperation with the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica e Gestionale (Department of Information and Management Engineering) Antonio Ruberti of Università di Roma “La Sapienza” and the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (National Institute of Atrophysics). The competition, involving students of Higher Secondary Schools, will be completely on-line, by driving remotely the rover MARRtino. More information is available at the link https://www.esero.it/una-gara-su-marte-con-marrtino/.

FabLearn Italy 2020 will also host the MARCHE DRONE-WEEK .This is a national event consisting in workshops for secondary school’s students, drone FPV exhibitions and professional driving competitions. Download the flyer of the event.

Download the FabLearn Italy 2020 conference book