The document describes a research study conducted at the Scuola-Città Pestalozzi primary school in Florence, Italy to involve students in designing an app to support the writing process. Through focus groups, the researchers analyzed students' needs and perspectives regarding writing and writing tools. The study aims to promote students' metacognitive understanding of writing while also involving them in innovation through app design.

1. Involving users in the design of apps for
the writing processes.
An experiment in the primary school
Maria Ranieri & Liana Peria
University of Florence
Bristol, 9th October 2013

2. The Research Context
Scuola-Città Pestalozzi is
a public school in
Florence, founded by the
Italian pedagogist
Ernesto Codignola after
the second war conflict
(1945) and largely
inspired to the
philosophy of Dewey,
where education and
democracy are strictly
related.
Scuola-Città Pestalozzi - Florence
Key words: Education & Democracy

3. The Research Context
It is an experimental
school organized in four
two-years periods
including primary and
middle school.
Since its foundation, the
didactic has been always
based on laboratories
and project work (see
e.g. The Journal ‘Il
nostro piccolo mondo’).
Scuola-Città Pestalozzi - Florence
Key words: Inquiring & Project work

4. The Research Context
Scuola-Città Pestalozzi of Florence
Nowadays the school
participates in
"Scuol@2.0" (National
Plan for Digital School)
and is committed in
combining the heritage of
the best past experiences
(continuity) with the
transformation of the
learning environments
through ICT (innovation).
Key words: Continuity & Innovation

5. The Research Context
Scuola-Città Pestalozzi of Florence
The school received large
funds to buy iPads, but not
for training or testing.
However, in continuity with
its history, teachers are trying
to critically introduce these
devices as means to improve
their teaching approach with
special attention to avoid the
“McDonaldization” of
education.

6. The Research Context
Something about apps
There are many apps on the
market for storytelling. They
are mostly characterised by
a series of editing features
and library of visual or audio
resources.
Much less has been done in
terms of ‘technology
enhanced writing’ referring
to more specific
(meta)cognitive dimensions.
Just some examples

7. Theoretical framework
Linda S Flower & John R
Hayes (1981). “A Cognitive
Process Theory of Writing”.
In College Composition and
Communication32.4
(December 1981): 365-87.
John R Hayes (1996). A new model of cognition
and affect in writing. In M. Levy & S. Ransdell
(Eds.), The Science of Writing. Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum
Scardamalia and Bereiter (1983). Model of the CDO
process. Procedure of revision adapted with permission.
In D.Alamargot & L.Chanquoy, Through the Models of
Writing. (2001): 102: Kluwer Academic Publishers
Architecture of planning, translating, revising processes
in writing models
Writing as
an
interative
process of
rewriting
From writing as a
cognitive process of
problem solving to
writing as a social and
contextual activity
1 2
3

8. Aims and objectives
Research interest is focused on meeting/convergence between
1. Educational reflection on needs of writing process of text production in
primary school
- Planning process (Ideas generation & Structure organization)
- Translating process (Editing with Structure facilitations)
- Reviewing process (Reading & Listening, CDO cycle)
- Monitoring and Process controlling
2. Main technological characteristics of mobile devices (tablet)
portability, mobility, significant battery life, ubiquitous connectivity, personalization, dimensions of
screen, sensors availability, native gestures, multitouch screen & specific affordances, marketplaces
& their infinite number of applications
To investigate if (and how) involving pupils in the design of a app for
writing can help to promote a better metacognitive control on their
own writing needs and, at the same time, to learn to take part and
guide an innovation process on a micro level into the school.

9. Participants
• 19 Pupils (11 females &
8 Males) aged 9-10 (4°
grade)
• 1 Teacher
• 2 Researchers
Pupils were divided into two
groups, one attending the
Linguistic Lab and the other
the Librarian Lab.
The experimentation took
place within the Linguistic
Lab on Tuesdays, from April
to May 2013, with each
single group for 45 minutes.

10. Methods
General approach - Design-Based Research (DBR)
We adopted a D-B R. approach by involving the teacher and the
pupils in the participatory design of an app while fousing on
pupils’metacognitive reflection on their specific needs in the
writing process
Instruments
Three focus groups for (explicit and tacit) needs’ assessment in
relation to the process of writing a text and to gather elements
for design. Each focus group was based on:
- Providing a document as a stimulus and collective discussion
- Teacher’s moderation of the discussion
- “Participant observation” by researchers

11. Phase 1 - Needs Analysis and Participatory Design
(February – June, 2013)
Phase 2 - Development and Implementation of the app
(July-November, 2013)
Phase 3 - Testing, Validation and Dissemination
(from January 2014)
Main steps

12. Phase 1 (Feb. – June, 2013)
Needs Analysis and Participatory Design

13. 1° FOCUS GROUP: Me and the text
Goal
Gathering a first set of data on pupils’idea of a​​
text and on the aspects of textuality
considered as working or not working
Used tool
Story (narrative genre fiction) written by a girl
of the same age as an input for discussion
Questions
1) What are the most significant words (or
sentences) in the story? And why?
2) Do you thing there are some sentences that
could be deleted since it is unuseful or not
clear? Please, highlight it in the text
3) Could the story be real? How do you infer
it?
4) If you were asked to rewrite the story, what
would you changed and how?
1st
document
Phase 1 (Feb. – June, 2013)

14. 2° FOCUS GROUP: The text and the writing process
Goal
Gathering data on the aspects that
characterize the writing process
Used tool
Text reports (non-fiction) written for the
school’s newspaper by a child of the same
age
On the background
According to all the pupils it was "a well
written text"
Questions
How the pupil managed to write this (well
written) text?
1)FIRST the pupil…
2) DURING the process the pupil …
3) AT THE END the pupil …
Phase 1 (Feb. – June, 2013)
2nd
document

15. checklist
Goal
Reflecting analytically on the needs related to the process of writing
Used tool
A checklist including 16 different "aid" (considered as "facilitators" ) to be
judged as more or less useful for the design of the app (rated 0 to 5)
Proposed supports
- Plannig
1) Recording the story before writing
2) A map to note ideas and words
3) A scheme to order ideas
4) A visual library with images and pictures representing differents situations and contexts of life
5) A visual library with images and pictures representing people may help describing the characters
- Translating
6) A scheme to be filled in to develop the story
7) A scheme always visible during the writing
8) A list of words useful to describe the situations
9) A list of words useful to describe the characters
10) A dictionary
- Reviewing
11) A reviewer for orthographic mistakes
12) A sheet to monitor during the process what has been written
13) Freely moving parts of the story to change their order
14) Listening the reading of the text by others (vocal software)
15) Recording and listening tothe story
16) A sheet to monitor at the end what has been written
17) Other [specify]...
3° FOCUS GROUP: The facilitation of writing
Phase 1 (Feb. – June, 2013)

16. 1) Me and the text
2) The text and the writing process
Phase 1 (Feb. – June, 2013)
First results
high awareness low awareness
- alternative strategies for assessing the
quality of the text in addition to the personal
understanding of the story
- "time" awareness of the story
- role of descriptions
- concept of rewriting as reworking (complete
overlap between rewriting and correction)
- importance of the ongoing revision (the
control is final)
- tendency to identify the transcription with
the conclusion of the work
- lack of awareness of a metacognitive
organic plan (writing is essentially an
executive technical exercise)
- situation of fiction
- narrative text function to tell something to
someone
- narrative function of the phrases
(attention focused on their meaning)
- narrative significance of the title
- actions needed for text generation of
news (observation, attention to the reality,
looking for an interesting topic,
organization and order of ideas, scheme of
5W)
- complexity of the task (need for
concentration , use of strategies)
- habits and practices emerged during the
study as a result of educational preferences
of the teacher

17. - automatic reading of the written text (the
aid more strongly desired)
- corrector of spelling mistakes
- listening to the recording of their reading
written text
- tab to control, during the writing, the part of
the story already written
3) The facilitation of composition
Phase 1 (Feb. – June, 2013)
First results
high usefulness low usefulness
- list of useful words to describe the
"characters" of the story
- list of pictures of different environments ...
to get better in the situation
- list of useful words to describe the setting of
the story
- available to dictionary
high agreement low agreement
- usefulness of being able to reflect on the
various aid proposed by the checklist
- draft as a traditional compositional strategy
privileged
- revision as a means to control singular
words/phrases
- facilitation represented by the digital writing
but infrequent use "afraid to delete"
- strong disagreement over the use of the
schemes (great attribution of positive scores
but little used in practice)
The use of a schema is considered:
- unnecessary if you know what to write
- useful only for long or complex text
- useful only to those who have yet to gain
safety

18. (Meta-/)Cognitive functions and related working areas
Ideas generating
- section 1 on the left
To collect notes of various types (text, drawing, pictures, audio/
video) that are placed, one after the other, in a vertical scrolling
list (not yet ordered)
Planning - Organizing
- section 2 on the left
In order to put ideas into a diagram (vertical scrolling list) from
pre-designed templates chosen by the teacher according to
different and appropriate educational reasons
Translating
- section 1 on the right
To compose text according to the scheme that is structured
automatically starting from outline
Working areas
- To support a global visualization of different phases of whole composing process in
a single screenshot organized in two columns always visible (with their scrolling
sections)
- To macht to the habit of entrusting to the mind both the process of ideation
(especially conceived in a linear way) and the process of composition (essentially
additive)
Phase 2 (July-November, 2013)

19. drag &drop
tools for reviewing (to include in the right column)
- automatic reading / recording their reading
- preservation drafts
- synchronization
- sharing for collaborative correction (teacher and/or peers)
- use of corrective/evaluative tags (social tagging)
Monitoring
as a recursive process
always possible
starting from a
global view
Reviewing
cycle CDO
Compare: listen to the text
already written (automatic
reading and recording voice)
Diagnose: automatic spelling
correction and collaborative
correction
Operate: make changes
Phase 2 (July-November, 2013)

20. Conclusions
• A first consideration refers to some limitations of the
experience in terms of transferability. The overall process takes
time and requests some resources (e.g. for the implementation)
• However, the enthusiasm that pupils have shown towards the
idea of being designers of App encouraged us to pursue this way.
• In particular, we want to get some ideas from this experience
to develop sustainable mobile scenarios where pupils are not
passive consumers of ICTs but active citizens able to master the
new digital artefacts of our time.

21. Thank you! 
maria.ranieri@unifi.it
liana.peria@unifi.it
Liana Peria, Teacher and PhD Student in Telematics and Information Society
Maria Ranieri: Supervisor