The free wi-fi in schools across Italy should be available by 2012: this is the promise of Minister Brunetta and Minister Gelmini, who are active in the plans for the digitalization of Italian schools and public administration.
Bringing wi-fi to schools all over Italy is the main point of the project “Schools in WIFI“, an interministerial initiative involving Renato Brunetta (Minister for Public Administration and Innovation) and Maria Stella Gelmini (Minister of Education, University and Research). The goal is part of the broader aim to digitize the Italian public administration.
The first schools to embrace the free wi-fi initiative are those already participating in “ScuolaMia“, which already have an access point inside the school for teaching activities. Currently, there are about 3,000 schools, which will rise to 5,000 in the coming months, until full national coverage is reached by 2012.
The investment in this field will be significant: about 5 million euros are needed for purchasing and equipping access points, but with quite substantial savings estimated, as we will discover shortly.
As for the expenses related to connections and thus the generated traffic, each school will be responsible for covering them: no funding is planned.
With this project, the aim is to enable interactive teaching, but also to involve families electronically, primarily focusing on spreading report cards and online communications, resulting in savings on paper and printing costs, which – it is learned – amount to around 35 million euros just for producing and distributing paper report cards.
If registers also became electronic, another 30 million euros could be saved; 25 million euros more could be recovered from enrollment procedures if they all became online.
Families are therefore called to online consultation of grades, report cards, absences, and communications related to their children, quickly and remotely.
This clearly implies that schools will also need to equip themselves with digital signature systems and PEC email accounts, additional steps necessary for the broader completion of the public administration digitization project.
Undoubtedly a useful project, finally aligned with the web; however, a major problem remains affecting many areas of Italy from north to south: the digital divide.
While it is true that digitizing public administration is necessary, it is also true that the network does not cover the entire territory. How will the free Wi-fi project be applied in schools in those areas not reached by web connections?
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