Design Your School: a tool to foster the development of pedagogical experiences based on project-based learning

The paper aims to present the first results of the project 'Design Your School' (DYS), a research project funded by Sviluppumbria s.p.a out of the 'Bando Living Lab' and intended to create an application built on an open-source platform, designed both for children aged 7 to 14 years and teachers. The goal was to test innovative teaching processes based on project-based learning that promote the dissemination of highly inclusive and kids-friendly technological content, supporting also the inclusion of children with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD). The DYS project is led by DENSA Coop Soc (Developing Edutainment for New Skills and Attitude), a social enterprise operating in the field of education creating bridges between pedagogical research and experimentation in the field of art and new digital technologies to develop digital skills in children, and it was carried out with the scientific support of the Department of Education Sciences and the School of Design of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Perugia. The research phase involved a group of final users who participated in in-depth studies on pedagogical methodologies and the application of edutainment tools. This first step, presented below, involved the analysis of the context and benchmarking of the digital products currently available, with the goal to identify and analyze their strengths and weaknesses, so that they could form the basis of the subsequent design aimed at defining the features of the platform.