A BLENDED PROFESSIONAL TRAINING EXPERIENCE

In all areas of life, the diffusion of technologies has brought substantial changes also in the educational systems with the introduction of new methodologies of learning and teaching. Education systems have taken note of new challenges by relating to emerging educational needs and the appropriate strategies and tools they require. The lifelong learning is the recurrent principle for the political practices of education and training that allow an immediate approach to knowledge as a response to globalization and continuous technological innovation. The new educational needs require suitable strategies and tools, but traditional teaching methods (especially the frontal lesson), by themselves, do not represent a sufficient and effective answer. In this context, teachers should constantly review and update their methodological skills in order to activate meaningful learning processes in learners and in environments that favour the active knowledge construction. The objective of this work is to identify elements of organizational and methodological innovation in the in-service training courses for teachers who avoid the transmissionist approach and encourage reflection processes and re-elaboration of teaching practices also using digital resources and planning paths in which theories and praxis coexist. In recent years, in the pedagogical field, the blended learning has been affirmed as a teaching methodology that aims to create synergies between moments in presence and on-line activities. In this model, digital resources are not vehicles of information but artefacts capable of sustaining cultural and social processes. This contribution describes a blended training experience for in-service teachers, created by using a custom Moodle platform. The study aims to demonstrate how a good design of a learning experience may contribute to the acquisition of innovative teaching methodologies and increase the digital skills of teachers.