Expo Milano 2015: Supporting a World-Wide Educational Experience

The Universal Exposition taking place in Milan, in 2015, has decided to have a decisive impact on the future citizens of tomorrow in relation to its crucial theme: “feeding the planet, energy for life”. HOC-LAB (a laboratory at Politecnico di Milano, one of the largest technical universities in Europe), officially in charge of running the competition for schools by Expo Spa, has thus prepared (and tested through a pilot edition) a number of educational supports to enhance teachers’ and students deep understanding and change of attitude on the Expo issues: sustainability, biodiversity, world-hunger, inequalities and so on. “PoliCulturaExpoMilano2015” is the result of the effort: it entails a competition for schools from all over the word, based on digital storytelling; 3 Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) on digital storytelling and the Expo themes; a powerful set of educational resources (more than 300 pages of interviews to experts, being published as a series of eBooks on Amazon), educational guidelines prepared by a staff of teachers volunteers, a “Time-Bank” where teachers can trade help and support as money. This paper describes the project (goals, design, deployment, evaluation), the pitfalls and the successes of this first example of world-wide educational effort. PoliCulturaExpoMilano2015 is a successful format that aims at being replicated at every new Universal Exposition. Introduction School