In the 19th and 20th centuries, Giuseppe Peano [1], born in the northeastern Italian region of Piemonte [2], was one of the greatest living mathematicians. The Industrial Technical Institute [3] named after him serves the 5th district of the city of Turin, which is the capital of Piemonte and headquarters for the XX Olympic Winter Games [4] next February.

Linux and the Plone [5] content management system are a consolidated presence at the Peano School. Its Information Technology department has a history of offering students both proprietary and free software platforms, to make sure that they have as complete a vision as possible of the software landscape.

What makes Peano different from the other schools I featured in this series are its regular contacts with local Linux Users Groups (LUG) and, above all, its e-learning portal. Nowadays, the school board knows that LUG members have the experience and technical skills needed to provide advanced technical support for the school's IT projects. In addition to the technical reasons, the partnership also is an excellent opportunity for the department to be exposed to fresh ideas and to absorb some of the passion and enthusiasm that usually emanate from LUGs.

In this context, two years ago Peano started to host the afternoon session of the Turin Linux Day. During the event, every novice can discover free software in what Sophia Danesino (sophia.danesino@libero.it [6]), one of the most enthusiast Linux supporters at Peano, defines as "a really enthralling atmosphere". Besides the usual InstallFest, the Peano program [7] for this year included two particularly interesting talks on PHP for Applications [8] (P4A) and Ufficio Zero [9]. According to its Web site, P4A is a PHP framework used to "build web applications as you would do with the most evolved rapid development tools". Ufficio Zero is a fully localized Ubuntu derivative, optimized for inexperienced office users.

As I already mentioned, Peano is interesting because it has the most stable, rich and regularly used e-learning portal [10] we've seen so far in this series. The service runs on a platform whose basic building blocks are Zope and Plone, which Peano teachers have found to be flexible and advanced object-oriented environments. Above all, the Italian Zope Community [11] is very active, and one of its members, webmaster Giuseppe Masili, is an former Peano student. He supported Sofia and the others during the installation and configuration of the portal's software.

Once logged into the portal, Peano students can subscribe to courses, publish their blogs, or participate on the school discussion boards. The on-line lessons [12] currently available reflect the entire range of subjects taught in the school. Electronics, computer security, operating systems, Python and similar IT classes sit beside Literature in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. A separate Project Area [13] hosts materials written by the students.

The rationale behind this multi-faceted portal offering is the wish to fight a serious problem afflicting many of the students in Peano--one that we suspect appears in many other places these days--lack of motivation. Sophia believes that

After defining the terms of the problem and project in this way, Sophia and her colleagues chose to complete their e-learning platform with Future Language Environment (Fle3) and Moodle. The first is a GPL server built on Zope and written explicitly for computer supported collaborative learning, CSCL for the initiated. The Peano team discovered that Fle3 is designed to create and manage, through the coordinated work of different teams, seminars and courses that take place partly on-line and partly in traditional classrooms. The software is developed and maintained by the Finnish UIAH Media Lab [14] of Helsinki. And, we all know that they know how to write good code up there, don't we?

Didactically speaking, Sophia says that "Fle3 immediately charmed us, but we couldn't just download it without figuring out first all the support, upgrades and documentation issues." Eventually they came to feel comfortable with the application for many of the same reasons why other users choose free software: free on-line documentation and mailing lists, maintenance options for worst-case scenarios and other features that come from the large and supportive user community. In addition, they liked knowing that Fle3 already was being used in similar educational settings--the Art and Design and Psychology Departments at Helsinki University.

Another reason that pushed Peano towards adopting Fle3 was the awareness that, according to Sophia, a great interest in it already exists in Europe. In other words, there are possibilities for more support and partnerships. Namely, she told me that European Schoolnet [15] regularly checks out the several European deployments of Fle3.

So far, the interest in this e-learning platform has been high among the Peano teachers and others as well. After the portal was launched on the Internet, Sophia said that "even some private users from outside the school have come to us to get more informations and help to set up their own installations". For these reasons, Peano has opened a demo area inside its Web site. Several teachers have committed to translate all of the Fle 3 documentation into Italian, in addition to their regular schoolwork. The underlying attitude, they say, is the same as is found in the Free Software movement: knowledge must be shared to make true progress possible for all of mankind.

In this sense, the Peano team considers its Fle3 setup to be not only a collaborative teaching package, but a living example of how to work together for the common good. Sophia says:

In other words, the real results are not the IT skills gained on the path, but the method used to get there and the fact that the more you learn in this way, the more doors open. In Sophias's words "it is beautiful. Truly beautiful".

This collaborative development with Fle3 isn't confined inside the school. Peano already shares it work on hacking and IT security themes with the Economics University of Turin. In addition, other schools have become involved this year, creating "a nice working group, full of enthusiasm".

In practice, Fle3 doesn't carry the whole burden of e-learning on the Peano Web site. It is assisted by a more traditional, LAMP-based content management system. Moodle [16] is software written specifically for the creation of on-line classes. Thanks to it, every school department at Peano has its own place to prepare and publish courses. Peano teachers, including those less comfortable with computers, have found Moodle to be easy to use. In spite of this simplicity, Sophia points out, Moodle is not restricted to use by beginners with only basic needs. She says, "it can be used both as a simple container where you upload any didactic material you want to make public or to realize completely on-line classes, with any structure you want and self-evaluation on-line tests". She still likes Fle3 better, due to Moodle's more conservative architecture, but she acknowledges that the latter has a lot of useful functions and is faster and simpler to use for teachers with only basic IT skills. To get an idea of how Moodle is used at Peano, take a look at the course pages mentioned above; they are, of course, in Italian.

Sophia doesn't preach what she practices only inside the school. Recently, she gave a talk on e-learning and open source at the "Penguino in Biblioteca" [17] (Penguin in the Library) events organized by the Multimedia Library of Settimo Torinese near Turin. Both in and out of school, however, she often finds herself in the same situation we have heard about from the beginning of this series: it is difficult to involve many teachers in these kinds of activities. Some have no real interest in any kind of information technology. Others don't feel up to the task or simply find it unfair that all the (re)training needed to use computers effectively for teaching must happen as a personal, unpaid effort after work. In some other cases, the main obstacle is not technology but adjusting to the idea of involving the students directly. The use of CSCL methods is seen as a risk that can lead to loss of control over the educational process, and this, Sophia thinks, scares some teachers. In her experience, as we saw in the other schools, computer-induced fears simply don't exist, or are a much smaller problem, among students. The fears don't exist after, she emphasizes, one has found the right technical solutions to involve them directly.

When it comes to e-learning, Sophia's secret dream--well, not so secret anymore--is to cooperate with other Peano teachers and students and with schools in other countries to create more on-line classes with Zope, Plone and Fle3. She is excited especially by Fle3, because the latter is "very well suited to this kind of cooperation". Her first proposal, therefore, is to work together on a common, Fle3-based project area on any teaching subject. If interested, contact her directly (sophia.danesino@libero.it [18]) to define the details, but please let me know what comes of it! A much more rewarding project for Sophia, though, would be teaching others how to customize Fle3, but she admits that it is more difficult. She tried once, but only a limited group of students was skilled enough to follow the subject.

When I speak with teachers who are succeeding in using free software in their workplaces, I often ask: "Given your experience, what is the first error that everybody else willing to follow your steps should avoid, or what's your best tip for success?" Sophia's answer is: "Don't think or hope that all the other teachers will immediately feel some unstoppable need to get involved. Involve the students from the very beginning, instead".

"Linux in Italian Schools, Part 1", www.linuxjournal.com/article/8309 [19]

"Linux in Italian Schools, Part 2", www.linuxjournal.com/article/8507 [20]

"Linux in Italian Schools, Part 3", www.linuxjournal.com/article/8508 [21]

"Linux in Italian Schools, Part 4", www.linuxjournal.com/article/8657 [22]

"Linux in Italian Schools, Part 5", www.linuxjournal.com/article/8677 [23]