2024-10-10, 17:20–17:50 (Europe/Luxembourg), 42 Cluster 3
The Free Upgrade for a digitally Sustainable School (FUSS) project has been a groundbreaking initiative in South Tyrol, Italy. Since 2005 16,000 students and around 2.000 teachers have benefited from the adoption of open-source software in their educational institutions. This seminar will showcase how the project has successfully delivered high-quality teaching and learning experiences while promoting digital sustainability. We will explore how the FUSS project has enabled schools to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and improve digital literacy among students and teachers. Leveraging open-source software, the project has created a collaborative ecosystem that fosters innovation, flexibility and community engagement by setting a nationwide example of how software should be acquired by public schools with a focus on sharing and reuse in full compliance with the principle "Public Money? Public Code!"
Paolo Dongilli graduated in IT Engineering in Padua (1998) and he began to pursue one of his early passions, Computational Linguistics at EURAC Research and then at the Faculty of Computer Science of the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano. In 2008, he left research and joined the Information Technology Department of the Province of Bolzano, where he worked for the Office of Strategic Orientation and IT Planning in the Enterprise Architecture Group. In 2016, he received a position in the Italian Education and Training Directorate as School Technical Inspector and Coordinator of the FUSS Project. He began exploring the world of Free Software in the 1990s, when he was studying at the University of Padua. Once he returned to Bolzano, together with some friends he co-founded the Linux User Group Bolzano-Bozen-Bulsan (LUGBZ) with the aim of spreading the culture of Free Software in South Tyrol, Italy.